Confidence is Beautiful

A few days ago my friends and I went to Gradball - we got dressed up and went out to this end of year event because we've finally finished university (YAY!). We had a great time and took tons of pictures. 

Today I decided to upload one of those to my Facebook as my profile picture; this one to be exact:

In this photo, I feel confident. I love my smile, I love the fact that I have a tan (a rare occurrence), I like my hair, my makeup, I like everything about this picture. 

What I didn't expect was to upload it to Facebook and get comments about it being 'too revealing'. Albeit most of these comments were from family but to me that didn't make it any better. 

Yes, this is not the kind of photo I would normally take or post on social media but, whether that is the case or not, what is to say that I shouldn't when I feel hella good in it? 

There was a comment that said I needed to put more clothes on, another that said it was a bit revealing and one that said I should put my boobs away. First of all, there is barely any boob on show in my opinion, just skin, and why can't I post a picture where god forbid there's some kind of skin showing in it anyway, when it's okay for a man to post a picture of himself topless? Or it's okay for another girl to post a picture of herself in a bikini? Are neither of those revealing? Because I rarely see comments on those photos telling them so.

Personally when I see pictures of other people, like the one I took, or even just pictures where someone's wearing a beautiful dress or looking very dapper in their suit, I tend to look and think 'wow, they look amazing'. Not once have I ever considered telling them they have too much skin on show.

I'm a self conscious person at the best of times, so the fact that I looked at this picture and thought that I looked confident and happy in it made me happy, but then comments telling me to 'put it away' made me question that, leaving me feeling less than happy about the photo in the end. I debated taking it down and just changing it back to my old picture (where I'm wearing a jumper so there can be no arguments about revealing too much there - although if I was to have had that picture taken standing up I was wearing a skirt, so I guess that outfit would probably be too revealing as well), but then I came to the conclusion that why should I?

Not nearly enough people in this world have enough confidence, never mind body confidence and, I'm not going to lie, it's not something I have a lot of either, but if I feel good in this picture then I shouldn't let a few comments change my mind about that.

I know that none of the comments made were meant to make me feel less confident or less happy with myself but that doesn't change the fact that they did. They made me question myself. It may not be the kind of picture I would normally post but that doesn't mean I shouldn't post it. Since when did showing off some skin become such a taboo thing in the 21st century? I've seen plenty of celebrities online and in magazines wearing outfits that are a lot more revealing than a bit of my chest so surely I cannot be seen as a bad influence to any of the young people in my family that might see this photo - surely, if anything, it should be a good thing for them to see someone looking confident and happy with themselves.

So many people of all ages, but especially younger people, have problems with their self-esteem because of celebrities and their friends at school. They need to know that it's okay to be happy with yourself. One young girl in my family has just got Facebook, she's only eleven but she pouts in nearly every photo and everybody is always telling her she doesn't need to pout to be beautiful but she always replies saying yes she does. Is that how we want such a young generation to think? That they have to be like everyone else and think they have to act a certain way to be beautiful? They don't. Everyone is beautiful when they're themselves.

Confidence is beautiful.

Katie x

Snapchat's Issues

Hello!

I never used to be that into Snapchat. When it first came out, I got it because everyone said it was great but I didn't really get the allure to it so I gave up, keeping it just so I could receive other people's Snapchats. However, since coming back to uni, I have become a bit of a Snapchat addict - but only on a night out.

For those of you who don't know what Snapchat is (where have you been for the last two years?!), it's an app you can get on your phone, where you take a picture and you can send it to a friend for anything up to 10 seconds, then after that it's never to be seen again. They have a bit on it now called "My Story" too, which is what I make the most use of, anything you add to it will stay there for 24 hours then disappear, again never to be seen afterwards. 

Well this comes in very handy if you're going on a night out with your friends because, not only does it document your night to all of your other friends who aren't there, it allows you to look at all the photos you took the next day - including the really awful ones that you wish no one had ever seen. 

I have previously mentioned that I'm not much of a drinker when it comes to alcohol but that seems to have changed slightly this year. I still don't drink to the point where I can't remember anything or I start throwing up everywhere - I know my limits, don't worry! I definitely drink more this year though and sometimes you forget the little things in the moment. For example, one of the first nights my flatmates and I went out on in Refreshers Week, a random guy came up to us as we were trying to take a selfie and said he wanted to be in it - to get rid of him we took the selfie with him, posted it to Snapchat and that was that. The next morning, when we were looking through our stories, we found that picture and burst into laughter remembering it, because it was such a small moment we'd forgotten it even existed. 

But, as good as Snapchat is, there are still a few problems with it:

1.

Screenshot.

I mentioned earlier the picture can only be viewed for 10 seconds if you send it directly to the person, well that's true, unless they screenshot it. Yep, that's possible. The worst thing? I'm one of those people. I screenshot all of the disgusting-triple-chins-hilarious selfies that my best friend sends me because duh! So when anyone does it to me, I can't even complain at them.

2.

Butter Fingers.

The problem you come across not necessarily when you've had something alcoholic to drink, you just need to be clumsy like me, where you send the picture to the wrong person. I have done this too many times for it to be acceptable. The amount of ugly selfies my brother has accidentally received because my fingers have slipped at the last minute. It's a horrifying moment when you watch it send and know there's nothing you can do about it. My brother's the loving kind of person that will probably use it against me in years to come...

3.

Lighting.

The quality of Snapchat photos is not the best on a good day but when you're in a nightclub with flashing lights everywhere and it's a bit darker than your average room, it doesn't help. Needless to say, you're often left looking like a creepy stalker that's all dark in the back corner of the picture or you're bright white and every flaw you have is emphasised - this is usually what happens to all of mine. Just my luck.

So there are a few of Snapchats issues. Luckily, to help combat the last one, they do have two filters now. Two. Wow. But yeah. I have a love-hate relationship with Snapchat and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.

Katie x 

Completely unrelated side-note here but, if anyone could complete THIS survey for me that would be amazingly helpful - it's for a uni thing and I hope to get a placement at the end of it, so any and all feedback is welcome! Thank youuuu! (Here's another link, in case the other one doesn't work :) https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CVG5YBB )

Memory Lane

Hello!

I'm making a new scrapbook so I was sorting through some pictures today and I found some really cute, old pictures that I thought I'd share with you!

This is my niece and nephew who are now 11 and 13 years old, needless to say this was a hell of a long time ago! I really wish I could remember how long ago but I'm guessing maybe about five or so years.

This wee pup had an obsession with the bottom of this cupboard. She took all the books out, apart from the dictionary, and slept in there for as long as she could. The bigger she grew the more books she took out, until eventually she couldn't fit in there at all - if only she was still so little!

Christmas 2006 - I look soooo young in this photo... too young! But look at Kate! The same little girl from the first photo but even younger!

This was my grandma and grandpa's doggy, Heidi. She was the most gentle dog ever. She was scared of her own shadow most of the time and followed my grandpa everywhere he went (including the bathroom), she was super cute though.

Here are Megan and Sophie when we went camping three or four years ago. In other words these are Daisy's big sisters! As you can see, they were excited for our camping trip.

And, finally, this is Daisy only a few days after she was born. She was so tiny - if anybody tried to hold her like that now, she'd wriggle her way out of it!

I think that's enough of a trip down memory lane for today... It's even made me a little teary.

Katie x