So I went on a little bit of a shopping spree a while ago, featuring Kurt Geiger, Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Boots. I picked up what I thought were some really lovely items and I just thought I’d share them with you all today!
| HAUL FT. KURT GEIGER, TOPSHOP, BOOTS AND MISS SELFRIDGE… Continue reading |
For those of you don’t know, Wilkinson in a low end, affordable department store we have in the UK. That means that it sells toiletries and cleaners but also does D.I.Y, pets and some really lovely home and kitchen items. It’s known for being cheap and cheerful and to be honest I probably wouldn’t even think to shop there had to not worked there for three years. Anyway, they’ve revamped their whole make up section so I went in to take a look and picked up a few bits and pieces I thought I’d share with you all.
| A WEE WILKO HAUL… Continue reading |
You’ve probably been seeing these beat cancer selfies all over the internet recently. I did mine a while back on facebook, but I thought I’d post it here as well to further raise awareness!
| TEXT BEAT TO 70099 TO DONATE £3 |
Over six days an enormous £8 million was raised for Cancer Research UK by this wonderful campaign. Cancer is a disease that affects so many lives and the work needed to eradicate it still needs so much money. I have had family members affected by cancer and in fact I know very few people who can say that it has not affected their lives in some way.
There are those that will tell you that donating to cancer charities is a waste of money, that pound for pound, more good is done in relieving poverty, hunger, malaria, AIDS etc. And while this is indisputable and while these are good causes also, we need to be feeding money back into research if we are to hope that things will get better. I wish everything could get better but it can’t, not in this current state of affairs.
I wish I was better at giving to charity. I picked up a £30 playsuit from River Island a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely love it, but do I need it? Absolutely not. There are people dying of hunger for goodness sake, how do we live like this? According to USAID $10 can feed a family of six for two days, so my overpriced please of fabric could give roughly thirty hungry people a whole days worth of food. But did that stop me from buying the playsuit? No. Do I feel guilty? For the most part no. It should be disgusting, we should all be disgusted at ourselves, but we aren’t.
I’m not a psychologist, I’ve never studied psychology or sociology so I can’t tell you any of the reasons why. I can’t tell you why we’re allowed to grow up in this heartless culture of consumerism and not one person, not one faction has gained the support to stand up and contest this hideous way of life. I’d imagine you’ve seen the hunger games (hopefully you’ve read it, but that’s not the point right now), well think about how the people in the Capitol make you feel. Think about it, because 99% of people reading this are not too dissimilar from those blissfully ignorant fools the novel so delicately depicts.
According to Hope Africa, AIDS turns a child into an orphan every 14 seconds. According to World Hunger the world produces roughly 2720 kcal of food per person per day (the RDA is 2000/woman and 2500/man) and yet around 870 million people suffer from undernourishment. The shocking statistics go on and on and on. I don’t know how we let it happen. And I’m certainly not here to preach about the issue, I am as much a part of a problem as you are. But it’s 2014, how haven’t we got to a point where we recognise that all humans are fundamentally equal? How are we still clinging to these foolish notions of state sovereignty and national identity. What is it going to take to bring us together? Yes our cultures are gloriously different but they come closer every day and our genetics are the same. We are citizens of the world and we owe ourselves that title. We owe it to those who aren’t empowered enough to use it.
But at the end of the day when I’ve wrapped up this blog post am I going to sell all my material possessions and travel far away to live the life of poverty I deserve? No. Am I going to return that River Island Playsuit? No. And that’s all you need to know about the sad state of the modern world, really.
So raise awareness about Cancer, raise awareness about poverty and hunger and AIDS and all the things you are about, but I think what I’m really saying here is something that I’ve come to know only recently. Just be grateful. For every small thing, for every victory and all the things you’d forgotten that you need to be grateful for. It’s easy to forget and I don’t ever want to forget again.
| SOURCES AND RELEVANT LINKS |
Cancer Research UK || Checking for Breast Cancer || Guardian Article
I’m aware that making my first non-introductory blog post focused around a rant isn’t exactly the greatest way to start. But it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last week or so and I have therefore decided it’s better just to get my thoughts out there.
| THE PROBLEM IS… |
This bag:
Now granted the bag itself isn’t all that offensive. Baby pink isn’t really my colour and I’ve never been one for a clutch because of the probability that I’d manage to drop it and break my phone or my camera or something equally fragile. But all that is beside the point. This bag, which you can purchase here at amara.com in case you were wondering, costs £63 (which is roughly 103 USD or 76 Euros).
Oxforddictionaries.com describes broke as “having completely run out of money”.
Now if I was really “broke” where did I find £63 to spend on what can only be described as a flagrant waste of money? The correct answer is I didn’t, unless I bought it with the last £63 I had to my name in which case I am an imbecile and I fully deserve to be broke.
I know it sounds like such a petty thing to be ranting about, but to some people £63 is a lot of money. I won’t regurgitate the “less than a dollar a day” facts that we’ve all heard a million times over. But just because we’ve heard them before doesn’t make them any less true or any less important.
Sept Bruxelles, the accessory company that designed this bag, sell some really beautiful things and I’m in no way opposed to spending £63 on a bag or another luxury product, but the phrase on this particular item is in my opinion thoughtless. I know it’s just a seemingly harmless clutch bag and it’s only meant in the sense that ‘I love shopping so much I’m always broke’, but it’s just a little irksome.
What can I say, I’m a stickler for accuracy.
Am I being a hypocrite when I buy myself a £70 pair of Topshop heels? Or £55 on Origins face serum? Because that’s the first thing you think whenever you read a post like this. It’s all very well complaining about something but aren’t I part of the problem too? The answer is yes and no.
Yes I am part of the problem, I’ve been well and truly sucked in to this mass media, consumer culture of the developed world. I spend money on unnecessary things all the time, and I know that I shouldn’t, but I do. There should be a word for that, something we know we shouldn’t do but we do anyway; a deliberate error, a conscious mistake, a chosen wrong. Whatever it is I’m guilty of it and perhaps it makes me a bad person, but that’s a discussion for another time (in fact, Hank Green summarises it beautifully over here).
No I am not a hypocrite. In this instance, in this little rant I present to you, I’m a bit cross with the wording on a bag. I’m not saying I wouldn’t buy a bag of the same price or by the same company and I’m not saying that other people shouldn’t either. Do I give to charity? Yes. Do I give nearly enough? No I do not. Not if I’m a believer in cosmopolitanism, not if I strive to be a citizen of the world. And perhaps that’s something I’ll pick up on at a later date.
/rant
| SOURCES AND RELEVANT LINKS |
World Hunger || World Bank: Poverty || Sept Bruxelles
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