“Being a lady today means being a fighter. It means being a survivor. It means letting yourself be vulnerable and acknowledging your shame or that you’re sad or you’re angry. It takes great strength to do that.”
Lady Gaga
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a18630/lady-gaga-womanhood-essay/
“Gender is such a boring way to determine anything. Why should one’s sex limit anyone in anything? Or define one’s creativity? In saying that, we’re not trying to marginalise the female experience- after all our magazine is feminist. It’s just that, in an ideal world, it’d be great if gender wasn’t such a restriction, a constraint. Women should have the ability to do things without being confined or defined by their sex.”
“This generation is very feminine in the sense that it’s very emotional and there’s so much chaos – but it’s beautiful chaos, and everything goes in circles. Everything is confusing and crazy and yet beautiful.”
“And hate is like a rotting tomato. You throw a tomato, it splats, you can clean it up. Love, it’s like blood on marble, you can’t get it out, it stays. You can clean up a rotting tomato.”
Such an amazing interview. 
I have been inactive for quite a while now, so I thought that I would share some quotes from some of my favourite books.
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the life you could have had. Some people’s emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. This is not fancy. If a potter has an idea, she makes it into a pot, and it exists beyond her, in its own separate life. She uses a physical substance to display her thoughts.”
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“Romantic love has been diluted into paper-back form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.”
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“Words that are on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they’re supposed to do; comfort and discipline”
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“It made me want to shake her, to pull off all my clothes in the middle of the street and yell, ‘Remember this body?’”
We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. But I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better.”
Why Be Happy When you Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson
“Her suffering was her armour. Gradually it became her skin. Then she could not take it off. She died without painkillers and in pain.”
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“It takes courage to feel the feeling – and not to trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even to transfer it altogether to another person.”
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be.”
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
“He told me his tan came from playing tennis, and when we were sitting there side by side flying down the streets in the open sun he took my hand and squeezed it, and I felt happier than I had been since I was about nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died.”
The painfully cool and inspiring Glacier Girl (otherwise known as Elizabeth Farrell) is a tumblr phenomenon with a difference: this teen activist is demanding change in our attitudes to the environment and is doing so through the use of series of stunning yet poignant pictures. With an aesthetic that denotes similarities with Charlie Barker and Joanna Kuchta (however Elizabeth avoids regressing into mild sexism and promoting an awful diet), she is targeting her younger audience with her powerful message to protect our planet.
Her mission statement seems to be trying to rebrand what is meant to be an eco-warrior, by homing in on the ‘tumblr generation’. Gone is the cliché green recycling logo and in its place is an unfamiliar blue to match her hair; she completely glamourises the environmental activist stereotype by vanishing the images of dreadlocks and poor hygiene and replaces them with a captivating and charming artist to represent those standing for environmental change. Elizabeth protests whilst wearing handmade ‘Shell’ sweatshirts; she explained in an interview with i-D that her handmade clothes are important to her, as they represent how money is not an excuse for shying away from ‘the revolution’.
Elizabeth fearlessly adventured to North Norway to witness the effects of global warming first hand and, true to her ethos, she camped while staying there, documenting her time in pictures. Having only previously camped at music festivals, her bold mission took her to Jotunteimen National Park, where she studied a pre-glaciated area. She described the experience as “a similar feeling to walking through a graveyard”. This commitment is not unique to Elizabeth, as I believe that current teens are some of the most diligently committed environmental activists to be found, however Elizabeth’s evangelical yet subtle approach is truly an inspiration and a refreshing rebrand of what is meant to care about the environment.
As I venture into my final year of English schooling, I am being bombarded by angry students who complain of the uselessness that their education (both private and state) has been. However as I begin my last year, I feel rather torn between feeling both gratitude and resent to my time in the English education system: as many teachers have aimed to stretch my thinking beyond syllabi and encourage a critical approach to the information I am being fed, others have seen me merely as another cog in the system to achieve the desired grades.
Some of my most stressful and upsetting experiences have been due to school: collecting results, talking to teachers, receiving disappointing results and hopelessly trying to cram in revision have all been common experiences in the past few years. The media tirelessly repeat their narrative of the detrimental effect of education on teenagers’ mental health and this idea has certainly been corroborated by experiences my peers have shared. The fact of modern education is that students all over the country will find school is a source of stress. Although some may argue that this stress is necessary to push students’ intellect, the reality is that the current system is detrimenting huge numbers of young people’s mental health in the name of education.
School ought to prepare children and young adults for life in society, so why do so many students feel completely unprepared for life beyond secondary school? The government’s attempt to prepare young adults for life in society is presented in the form of PSHE lessons, taught once a fortnight by any willing teacher who happens to have spare time. PSHE lessons consist of making posters and songs that rally against drug use and unprotected sex: what young people are more concerned about (unemployment, dealing with student finances and mental health to list a few) is completely ignored. So not only is school triggering disturbingly large numbers of mental health issues, students are not provided with the necessary education to understand these problems.
However easy it is to blame our teachers in perpetuating the unbalanced education, I believe it’s important to sympathise with teachers, especially those who truly challenge the education system and provide a platform for students to completely immerse themselves in the subject, without chaining them to the constraints of the mark scheme. Much of the way I think and express myself today is almost entirely due to the true passion that my teachers have conveyed and for that I can only express gratitude. However there is also so much frustration and bitterness that I feel towards the awkward, jarring gaps and loopholes in the education system; but, ultimately the experience has been relieved by teachers who inspire their students, aim to provide a balanced and well-rounded education, and care for students’ mental welfare.
I believe that there is little rebuttal against the claim that the English education system is flawed, perturbed by awkward curricula and lack of appreciation for students’ individuality. Students want to know how to survive in the real world, but this plea is being ignored. The only thing we can do is thank the teachers who have helped us: pushed us when we were bored and cared for us when we were struggling. The system may be failing us, but at least we can find comfort in inspiring teachers.
Ex Disney channel actress Miley Cyrus has been stirring the innocent character she once played for a while now and has evolved into, as I believe, a charmingly admirable voice of modern feminism. Although she delivers her feminist message with a deliberate potency, her progressive mentality has exceeded this and lead to Cyrus exploring and demanding change of a variety of topics: how we view sexuality, LGBT homelessness and veganism to name a few. However, I believe her feminist attitude is too often hushed as the media slate her embraced sexuality and call upon slut shaming to discredit her feminist ideas.
Cyrus seems to be trying to highlight the media’s preferential habit of holding seriously perverted double standards. Miley Cyrus first came under intimidating scrutiny after the release of her music video for her song Wrecking Ball: the video featured her swinging naked on a wrecking ball as she sung a pop-ballad about a collapsing relationship. This video was followed by a backlash of slut shaming and misogynistic criticism: The Daily Mail stated that Cyrus had “finally gone too far this time”, Entertainment Weekly stated viewers would feel “disappointed in Billy Ray Cyrus’ parenting skills” and the Guardian condemned Cyrus’ transition from Hannah Montana to the image that had appeared in the music video. The music video is a source of outrage because Miley Cyrus is naked. She is naked because she is trying to explain to the viewers her emotional exposure and deep-rooted upset that is sourced in the tragedy of lost love, not because she is attempting to boost viewings by resorting to her body.
In an interview with Marie Claire, Cyrus began to raise some important questions about the criticism she received in comparison with the overwhelmingly positive reception that Taylor Swift’s video Bad Blood received. Swift’s video exhibits a range of celebrities preparing for war in an attempt to seek revenge over an assumed failed relationship. The celebs are clothed with disturbingly powerful weapons: guns, knives and nun chucks are merely a few. This video is angry and violent, glamourises revenge and is alarmingly damaging to the environment. Swift has tried to empower women by calling upon her impressive cast of successful women however her use of violence is only reversing this feminist desire; there is no sign of equality but instead a psychotic war between two sadists.
“I don’t get the violence revenge thing. That’s supposed to be a good example? And I’m a bad role model because I’m running around with my titties out? I’m not sure how titties are worse than guns.”
Moreover, Cyrus’ nudity is only corroborating her support for Free the Nipple, a key feminist movement. Cyrus has vocalised her upset by the media’s sexism with reference to her song We Can’t Stop: male rappers freely drop references to their drug habits in songs, however when Cyrus lyricises “trying to get a line in the bathroom” it explodes out of control. Jay Z’s song I Know is littered with drug references but where is the horrified uproar in response? Miley Cyrus is standing for a positive change where people are treated with equal respect and the environment is treated respectfully and the tragic reality is that the entertainment industry isn’t ready for it.
My frequent perusals of the British Humanist Association newsletters repeatedly encourage my concerns of not only the principles of state-funded faith schools but also what they teach. In my London borough, many of the best performing grammar and independent schools are rivalled and often surpassed by state-funded faith schools: such tough competition between faith education and both the grammar and private sector eludes to a serious questioning of why these schools are accepted in today’s society, that openly questions religion. I will endeavour to display how these schools both segregate and embolden disturbing contradictions of science and out-dated sexual education.
The most salient objection I hold to state-funded faith based schools is that they abrogate modern history’s attempts to achieve equality. Such as the feminist and civil rights movements are viewed upon as keystone achievements of the twentieth century, I believe the religious segregation that is welcomed today ought also to follow in such footsteps. Not only are prospective students suppressed from an healthy questioning of their beliefs in an attempt to convince teachers that they are zealous followers of such faith, but the applications (particularly for primary education) are based upon their parents’ commitment. This is to say that one child is selected for a sought-after place at a prestigious school over another due to, in many cases, solely their parents’ Church attendance. How can this demonstrate an equal, socially mobile and just education system?
Furthermore, the statistics of the typical student body of a faith school epitomise this segregation that ensues the favourable education of faith schools. For example, state-funded Muslim schools experience the luxury of school sizes that are under half the size of schools with ’no religious character’; non-religious schools have an average secondary school size of 963 students whereas Muslim schools have an average of a mere 474 students. Similarly, Catholic primary schools have an average of 84.5% white students, which is significantly higher than the non-religious figure of 74.1%. This continuing theme of inequality can be explored in the percentage of students who are eligible for free school meals: in a non-religious primary school, 20.1% of students are eligible for free school meals however only 3.1% of students at Jewish schools are eligible. Surely these statistics explicitly highlight how religious schools provide a basis for similar students to detach themselves from our multicultural, socially mobile society.
The second crucial issue with state-funded faith schools is their inexcusable freedom to teach scientifically incorrect hypotheses and shameless views on relationships. One of my local schools, classified as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted, was brought to public attention on its teachings on homosexuality. The school “urged pupils as young as 11 to sign anti-gay marriage petition”, following from the strict Catholic teachings that also explain their rejection of evolution in favour of The Bible. The teachings that directly oppose the scientific consensus ought surely to be not indoctrinated by teachers who are paid by government, nor ought the prejudicial attitudes that detriment all relationships (largely due to the awry education on sexual health) be encouraged.
I urge a complete reconsideration of the state’s attitude to religion in education, which would hopefully grant a socially mobile and equal playing field for students of religious backgrounds.
SeaWorld is a branch of entertainment parks, containing an abundance of various sea animals. Over eleven million people visit SeaWorld annually, leading it to being the ninth most popular amusement park cooperation in the world. Comparably to other large zoos and animal parks, the animals at SeaWorld are forced into suffering a life in captivity. The most notorious abuse is that of orcas.
In the wild, Orcas thrive off cooperating in large, complex social structures, which allow for successful hunting of small fish, penguins and even other whales. However the confinements of a small tank prevent the whales from travelling their usual 100 miles a day and consequently their diets consist of solely herring, smelt and squid. Not only are the effects of such a limited diet unknown, but the deprivation of the whales’ hunting instincts contributes to the dire boredom that is caused by their cruel captivity. Furthermore, orcas use the echolocation to navigate, communicate and hunt. This incredible, evolutionary marvel is detrimental to the sanity of orcas in captivity, who are surrounded by the reverberations from their sonar. This torment is, as described by oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau, the equivalent of an imprisoned man forced to wear a blindfold. The orcas are unable to engage in normal social activity, as infant orcas are usually separated from their mothers at birth: in the wild, calves remain in the same pod as their mother for life.
The ramification of the killer whales’ treatment is unsurprising. The unnatural conditions of the orcas in SeaWorld ensue a reduced life expectancy: orcas in the wild life can live for over a 100 years, whereas the orcas of SeaWorld struggle to reach their teenage years. The animals’ desires to hunt attributes to their teeth grinding and all adult orcas in SeaWorld have developed collapsed dorsal fins. This collapse is thought to be due to “alterations in the water caused by the stresses of captivity dietary changes” (National Marine Fisheries Service). Although this disease can be found in wild orcas, figures of orcas off the British Columbia coast reveal less than 1% of orcas display this disease.
The most salient outcry of this breach of animal rights is the attacks on humans: the most infamous cases being the deaths caused by Tilikum. Tilikum has killed three humans due to his desperate boredom and psychological trauma that has resulted from his captivity. The first death of Tilikum was of Keltie Byrne in Sealand of the Pacific in Canada in 1991. Tilikum and two other orcas submerged Keltie until she drowned. Tilikum was then moved to SeaWorld. The second death was eight years later. A man named Daniel Dukes was found dead in Tilikum’s tank after he had evaded security in order to enter the Orca tank. His autopsy concluded that he died of drowning, after finding several wounds that masked his body. Tilikum’s third killing was in 2010 where he killed his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, after a show. Tilikum was relocated to a smaller pool, which is supposedly aimed to calm him down. Surely preventing further harm to Tilikum, trainers or spectators will be achieved when Tilikum is returned to the wild and depriving him further of any normal social interaction or space to swim will worsen his psychological trauma.
The documentary Blackfish reveals the barbarism that faces Killer Whales in captivity. This is leading to a decline in SeaWorld’s ticket sales, however further action needs to be taken to emancipate these beautiful predators and return them to the sea.
https://www.change.org/p/seaworld-end-captive-orca-breeding-program
Ruth Elizabeth 