Talking Legs

20 year old girl living in Brisbane but craving travel and adventure. Studying Journalism and a want-to-be famous novelist.

[talkinglegs-blog]

Misrepresentation

Just watched a documentary about they misrepresentation of women in the media and it was insanely enlightening. It was all about the lack of powerful female figures in society and if they are mentioned in the media they are attacked and vicitmised. The main idea of women in the media is solely based on their appearance or their attraction appeal to men. Reading and hearing some of the interviews that respected male American journalists have attacked female political figures in the media was actually ridiculous. No wonder females have such low self-esteem and it can be attributed to the fact that they have no other idea of what a women is meant to be. From a media perspective a woman is a tool to sell things to men. They are not meant to have any intelligence or anything important to say. They are represented as gold diggers and catty if anything. The ever present shadow of body appearance was the least shocking factor. It is well known that females are objectified and always have been. Look at the 1950s and all of the advertisements that depicted women dressed in ridiculous outfits doing the ironing or washing dishes. The media is controlled by men and therefore creates meaning and information that comes from their perspective. Due to the fact that media's only goal is to make money for advertisers and keep up their ratings it is no wonder they use women in sexually perverse roles and objectified positions to do so. 

As a model it made me second guess a lot about myself. Without being fully aware I am in an industry that contributes to this objectification in a major way. Images of myself topless or even just portraying how thin I am directly correlate to teenage girls body issues and self harm. In one sense I feel that I cannot help having a body such as I do as I am naturally thin, and while it may be considered the attractive thing at the current time, I should not be criticised for just being myself. On the other hand I can recognise that the industry I am in is quickly destroying the female image, or at least the average female image.

It seems to be a major catch 22 for me, as I don't wish to stop modelling as I feel it empowers me personally and I actually enjoy doing it, I also completely disagree with nearly everything about the modelling industry. After being told I was fat numerous times and being turned down for not being the ideal body weight (I am a size 8, something which by medical opinion means I am extremely underweight) I rebelled and said that I would not under any circumstance change my appearance to get ahead in any industry. After watching the documentary I feel compelled to take more control of how I am used in the media and to control how I am portrayed in fashion images. 

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Reinvigoration

I just recently had someone who granted I don't know very well but whom I respect and admire their exceptional talent reinvigorate my own talents. It's not often that semi-strangers take the time to compliment someone on something, and to actually be heart felt and sincere in saying such things. It made me respect human society more, something which of late I have been sceptical to do. People seem to just love to bring others down and make sure they are better then everyone else around them. While I agree that in some cases and instances this mindset is completely necessary the lack of kindness and humbleness in modern society is saddening. For this person to tell me to keep at my writing and that he enjoys reading it, made me respect him and the world so much more.

Without realising it he has just given me more drive to keep writing and to be the best that I can be in that pursuit because his response to my blog is exactly why I want to be a writer. I want to transport people to another world, hopefully one that is better than their own, even just for a little while. I want them to appreciate the beautiful and small wonders of the world around them and to never give up on dreaming. I basically just want to inspire people, about the things that inspire me or the things I find fascinating or wonderful or interesting. 

It's scary finding out what you want to be "when you're older" because it means you could really fail at something and that a lot of time and effort could go into something that doesn't work out and then you really have no other options. Regardless of my panic and fear about the future as a young adult still bracing herself to really become a major player in society I want to challenge myself to never give up and go for everything I believe I can possibly do. It's time for me to stop needing other people to tell me I'm good at something and just believe I can do it all on my own. Perhaps that should be my new years resolution (three months late but still valid).

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Hobby

A writer lacking in inspiration is probably like a rugby player with no legs, it just doesn't work. Unfortunately I am completely stuck with what to write. I have flicked over to my Tumblr page over thirty times and have gone to write something and nearly every time come up blank. Even when I do write something it is completely below standard and I feel too embarrassed having ever written it to actually post it. I have a feeling this is all a lovely little side-effect to my boredom due to lack of university and study and purpose in life. 

Only recently have I discovered just how much I love to be busy rather than free and open. The concept of having nothing to do completely freaks me out. I mean when I have day off I feel the need to plan an adventure or go and do something, I can rarely just sit around and read a book all day or lull myself into a mid afternoon nap. Being at university satisfies my need to constantly be moving as I can be studying or travelling to campus or taking notes in a lecture. It's all about being punctual and organised and completely on top of things, all of which are an integral part my character. 

I do wish that I could be content on doing nothing - and don't get my wrong sometimes I do manage just to forget all my plans and just relax. Moreover I wish that I had a time fulfilling hobby. I realised (thanks to the help of my boyfriend) that I really don't have any hobbies what so ever. I mean I read and write, but neither of these things really constitute as a hobby. I do not garden nor do I have any artistic or musical talent. I'm not a photographer or  stylists. Modelling also wouldn't be classed as a hobby as it really is a job and not consistent enough. Maybe I should become a stamp collector or something ridiculous.

I guess the closest thing I have come to a hobby recently would be my ever growing love for cooking and baking. My only problem with that is I am quite often to poor to actually purchase the ingredients and it's not something you can do all day but rather before appropriate meal times. 

Once university is over and I have successfully moved out of home and got myself a well paying job then I plan to make travelling my hobby. I want to see the world. I want to experience different cultures and immerse myself in new ways of doing things. I want to take photos of everyone I meet and every place I go. I want to be able to say when I'm older that I successfully saw the world and did everything I ever wanted to do. 

While at this point in my life all of these things are just wishful thinking I somewhat believe that if you keep believing they will eventuate then you will do everything you can to actually make them happen. 

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Off to a casting today with my new dress and shoes - fingers crossed they impress the client as much as they impressed me on the sales rack!

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Zoo Love

Today my boyfriend took me on a surprise trip to the zoo. Yesterday before I left his house for work he came into his bedroom with a look of complete satisfaction and told me to be ready at precisely 10.30 tomorrow morning that he was coming to pick me up and take me somewhere. Now for anyone that knows me even the slightest bit knows that I have a complete infatuation with surprises. I love knowing that someone else put thought and effort into thinking up something for me and then making it special. As I was leaving I asked what I should wear (pretty cliche girl in a movie line but it had to be asked) and I was told we would be outside so wear something that fitted into that. Pretty vague but it got my mind racing nonetheless. Like any girl would I dreamt of a million different places we could be going but I never really settled on any one place for too long. See that's the other part of surprises, it's incredibly fun trying to guess what it is. Although there is an insurmountable disappointment associated with guessing correctly - it ruins the element of surprise and makes the feeling of being loved and special shorter. 

So today became today and I got all ready and waited to discover where I was being shipped off to on an adventure. I get into the car and he casually hands me over two tickets to the zoo. Now it has become somewhat of a tradition for us that whenever we travel together we always go to the zoo, not actually just a tradition with him but more mainly myself. I have actually never been to the zoo in my hometown so it was a fantastic idea to go and a great surprise. Being in-adequently prepared for a day of sight seeing I ran back inside for sunscreen and a camera.

It was such a good day. We listened and chatted about music on the drive up and then spent the day wondering around in the sun looking at Australian and African and Asian wildlife. I got to see my favourite animal - the giraffe - and we also got to just spend the day alone and in love. 

Today just made me realise even more then I probably already did that my boyfriend is amazing and knows me better than I know myself and I am incredibly lucky to have someone like him in my life.

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Magazine

I love the simplicity and freshness of a brand new magazine. The smell and feel of the pages. The anticipation to find out what or who is in it this month. The way the articles are written to inspire and strike awe into everyone who reads them. It's also just the shear awesome power magazines have on the way people dress, the way people create and structure things. People (well fashionistas anyway) pour their heart and soul into magazines hoping for something inside them that they can recreate in order to separate themselves from the masses. So much power, so much beauty, so much simplicity. It;s no wonder I crave to be an editorial writer for a magazine, I know first hand the impact they have and I wish to be on the other side writing something the gives a reaction such as this. 

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Sunday

Productive is probably the most apt word for my day today so far. I woke up after a really good sleep in and started on a mass clean up with my parents. Threw away nearly everything that was unnecessary and kept all the things that I know will actually get used or that had memories attached to them. Cleared enough space to actually have a study desk all to myself so now I am completely set for university to begin. I love having a place where I can go and just get instantly into study and concentration mode. For a while I was studying on my bed in my room and with the TV and all my DVD's and the basic relaxation mode that floods you as you sit on a bed made it incredibly hard to concentrate. Not to mention how bad my back got from hunching over all the time. Now I have a clean space and a chair to just totally one hundred percent concentrate. Put up some photo's of my trip to Europe and my lovely boyfriend to keep me motivated and a gigantic cork board so I can tack all my important memos to it and never get behind. 

Had a crazy amount of fun at Officeworks too. Little bit sad how buying stationary and study items excites me. I love new notebooks and new pens and just getting organised. My boyfriend calls me a massive nerd and I can't disagree with him. Nearly everything I do or everything about me indicates that I'm a massive nerd. I love to plan, take notes, be organise, be clean and tidy. Nerd.

After the mass clean and organisation spree ended I decided to bake cupcakes. They are currently cooling down waiting to be iced. I have butter icing all ready to go and they smell deliciousss. Then I will make my warm pasta salad for dinner tonight. Cooking is also were my nerd skills come out. I get completely anal about following recipes and love when it turns out exactly like the picture and exactly as it should be. However it is a massive letdown and also embarrassing how sad I get when it doesn't turn out just right. I have this compulsion in a way to be perfect - eventhough the idea of perfection rubs me the wrong way. It's not necessarily that I want to be perfect I just want to get it right so I have no regrets later on. For the most part this can lead to an immense amount of dissappointment. 

My boyfriend is almost the exact opposite to me. He is spontaneous and messy (in a way) and just completely free from having to stick to the rules and do everything as everyone else does is it in order to be happy. At least he is teaching me to step outside my comfort zone and rely on myself a little more. 

In all though the weather was fantastic today and the fact that I didn't have to work and got to let out my organisational side, I'd say that today was a pretty great Sunday.

[talkinglegs-blog]

Table for One

Today I plan to go and have a date with myself. I do not start work until 1 and thought what a better way to fill in the gap between waking up and then. It is raining (yet again) and I just got paid (although spending said pay is the last thing I want to do as I feel with uni and such things coming up I will be one poor blogger) and I have finally started to get really interested in my book. I'm heading to a cute little cafe near my work where hopefully i'll get a nice hot bowl of soup or a really delicious pastry or sandwich. 

I know that work will be dead tonight thanks to the rain and I will probably have to cart around tables and chairs and set up napkins and cutlery and all those really boring jobs, but I'm getting paid and plan to remind myself of this every time I realise how pointless my current job is. I had a discussion recently with a friend about the pointlessness of our current retail and hospitality jobs. We are both studying at university, she wants to be a psychologist and I a journalist, and therefore it is pretty plain to see that our current jobs have no input to our future jobs whatsoever. When you minus the fact that they are earning us money which in the long run helps you are left with nothing really. Perhaps a few contacts or a few interesting views on the world but apart from that it's practically drawing a blank.

The upside to boring jobs when university is in full swing is the fact that your mind goes blank and basically shuts down during your shifts. With a brain overload of studying and learning and assignments and reading and writing it is nice to have somewhere to go where you just turn your brain off and go into hospitality mode. 

I'm off to be my date - fingers crossed its not awkward. 

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Feeling Fantastic and Frustrated

Little bit frustrated today. Went to get my car door fixed - which refuses to close properly when it rains for some unknown reason - and of course it works perfectly fine. It's been raining for almost two weeks straight and on the one day I actually needed it to rain in order for them to see the problem themselves it's a perfectly clear blue sky. Sometimes the world is just way to ironic to be funny.

Had a fantastic session at the gym this morning though which is keeping me going. Did a Body Balance class with my boyfriend and stretched every inch of my body. Worked on my core muscles and feel fantastic. Now all I have to do is avoid the giant bag of chocolate in my fridge and the packets of chips in the cupbaord. Wish me luck. 

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1st World Issues

Waiting for my television programme to load. Australia is so far away from the rest of the world I am forced to watch television on my laptop rather than on a tv like a normal person. Catch up and get current tv programmes already its a bit ridiculous we get everything like 8 months later than everyone else. Same goes for movies really and dvd's and well everything. Just because we are further away than most other countries does not mean we should be treated as the too-young sibling being forced to wait at least a year to get to do all the activities our other brothers and sisters get to do whenever they like. Not fair. 

1st world issues are so God damn hard (I hope people realise I'm being sarcastic here).

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Scattered Brain

Alright so this continual rain we have been having is a major downer. I love rain purely because it entices me to do such things as read my book for hours, watch movies and drink copious amounts of tea. But after a week of rain enough is enough. I can't constantly be lazying about drinking tea, I have to work and actually live life and the rain makes that extremely frustrating. My car door refuses to shut properly in the rain, which is probably where my frustrating is actually coming from. I get in and have to bash it shut like 8 times and put the window down and up until it works all the while getting completely drenched. Then when I get out I have to close it extremely slow (looking like a massive idiot while I'm doing it) and yet again getting drenched. Damn you rain, damn you. 

On another note, I have just started reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. It's amazing, and I'm only like three chapters in. The prose and the rhetoric is crazy good and I cannot believe I haven't given Russian literature a shot until now. Minus the fact I cannot pronounce any of the characters name and have shortened them to English versions I have a feeling I could be reading one of my new favourite novels. Fuck I want to be a writer. I love reading books and getting lost in the story and the characters lives. It would be the most incredible feeling to know that something you created is doing that to people. Dare to dream really.

Excuse the randomness of topics in this post my mind has been scattered all day. Probably because I was bored and my mind had free reign to wonder and think about whatever it cared to. Happy Saturday to you all.

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Geek Flag

Almost exactly one more month until I go back to university and I am going out of my mind with boredom. There is something so fantastic about learning something new and constantly being intellectually stimulated that I love. I hate long stretches of time were I have nothing really to keep me entertained. I have read so many books in the break and now even they are starting to get dated. I don't think it will be an issue once I leave university and get a job in the field I'm studying because at least then I will have a constant stream of work to keep me interested day to day. But at the moment I work in hospitality and the meaninglessness of the activities and shifts just makes me feel as if I'm actually killing brain cells. When I'm at uni and I'm working at the same place it's not that bad because it's a little mini break from studying. I guess I just love having the option to study rather than having nothing to do constantly. 

Just realised how much of a nerd this make me. I am actually complaining about being on holidays and not having any study to do. Probably makes me a massive freak in most peoples eyes but I'm going to give myself props as most people find having an education an arbitrary part of life. Most people around the world don't even get to go to 5th grade let alone study at university, so I guess I'm making the most of it and actually enjoying myself. I love the process of note taking and knowing that everything I'm reading or learning is something new and something that will actually help me further myself in the future.

Massive nerd alert, but I'm waving my geek flag loud and proud.

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Travel Bug

I live in Brisbane. It's a small Australian city that finds itself situated in Queensland. It is incredibly hot in summer and only mildly cold in winter. The city is about the size of Seattle (although I can't really commit to this comparison as I've never actually been there but I think it works). As an almost newly 20 year old this city posses a fair few problems. One there are almost zero job opportunities in anything to do with the arts, two, you find that every single new person you meet actually knows you in some way and therefore you are not necessarily meeting someone new and get stuck in the same group of friends for years on end and three, it possess a complete lack of objects and a monotonous tone that makes life seem incredibly scripted and uninteresting. Minus the fact that my boyfriend, a few good close friends and of course my family (including my precious cat Rusty) I find myself desperate to get out of the constraints of Queensland. To move anywhere, nationally or internationally, even just for a few months would be an incredible feeling. Knowing no one and have a chance to be free and to be whoever you wanted to be would be so liberating. To have everything around you be unknown and in some way completely terrifying and exciting at the same time. To discover new things about the history of the place you are in or even just the differences in activities and food. 

I'm locked in to a another 3 or so years with my university degree, and my complete lack of funds to actually act out these dreams keeps me here in Brisbane. I have a feeling that I will move soon and it will be terrifying and I'll be so home sick but I will absolutely love it. To be independent and to be free from knowing where everything is or having done everything already. The excitement is really all I crave. I have been infected with the travel bug and I'll let you in on a little secret - it's a disease I'm quite happy to be riddled with.