For a while I've felt uneasy about all the seemingly unending praise for Meghan Trainor. Her supposedly 'feminist' and body positive song 'All about that Bass' based all of it's self-loving message on what men want, and simultaneously shamed skinny women. Although she has defended herself saying that she immediately says 'nah i'm just kidding', is it really necessary to include it in the first place?

She then went on to release 'Dear Future Husband', which at the least is confusing and at the worst something straight out of a 'how to jump back in time to the 1950's' manual. The video features her scrubbing a flaw and the lyric 'I'll be the perfect wife / Buying groceries / Buying what you need'. Not exactly the feminist sentiment she seems like she's trying to project at the moment.


In her latest video, 'NO', she is attempting to portray a strong independant woman who doesn't need a man, but 'If I want a man, then I'mma get a man'. The song itself is a good song, catchy enough, i'm not saying it's bad at all but the style, again, flags up something that makes me frustrated.

In interviews Meghan has said that she is 'bringing music back' and that she is bringing 'instruments and doo-wop feeling', yet she seems to have ditched all of this for recycled noughties music. I love noughties music, but I feel like she should at least recognise what got her to where she is, the fact that 'All about that bass' has over 1,000,000,000+ views on youtube, but 'NO' has only 120,000,000 views is very telling (Yes of course AATB has been up longer, but it's undoubtable that NO has had a significantly worse reception). Also, just something I noticed in the 'NO' video, all of the dancer's are the 'skinny bitches' she talked about in AATB - none of them were above a UK size 10.



I feel that if Meghan had just stuck to the original style of AATB and 'Lips are Movin' it would be so much better for her image, and I feel like people would receive her better - I mean 'Better When I'm Dancing' is a great, happy, fun song that I think should have been promoted as much as 'NO'.

What do you think about Meghan's music? 

Apart from being an amazingly fun and catchy song, if you choose to, 'Love Myself' can represent a much more deep and significant issue. Female masturbation. Now, if you've made it this far into the post, well done! The words 'Female masturbation' are taboo, un-talked about and looked down upon, so it's understandable if you felt weird reading these words. Despite the awkwardness that comes with talking about this subject, it is such an important thing to discuss. Here's why.



While male self pleasure is widely accepted as something all boys will do, and are expected to do as soon as, or before, they reach puberty, female pleasure is shunned. The unanomous story I hear from my friends and pretty much every girl I've talked to about this, is that they felt like they were doing something wrong, dirty and in some cases, even a sin. This is part of a wider issue of men's pleasure coming first and women's coming second, or never at all.- the fact that 20% of women never have orgasms during intercourse, and about 80% fake orgasms to speed up men finishing because they are bored and/or fatigued. This also leads in to topics such as the use of women merely as sexual objects, and things used to sell stuff, but that's another post.

By releasing this song, whether she wrote it or not, she is joining a very, very small club of women who openly sing about female pleasure. Hailee Steinfeld has secrured herself a position in the growing group of women expressing themselves unabashedly and this is an incredibly powerful message to be sending, especially since she has such a wide reaching fan base, the majority of which is teenage girls.




With lyrics such as "Know how to satisfy / Keeping that tempo right without you" and "Got me speaking in tongues / The beautiful, it comes without you", this song is undoubtedly about masturbation, and I think that's great. Putting something that's normally taboo into the public eye (and the top ten!) is an incredible feat that is hopefully one more step on the road to female expression being as widely celebrated as male expression and sexuality.

Thanks Hailee.

This week's #MusicMonday is very electic - fun upbeat classic indie pop and wierd elctronic music to suit anyone.

Yesterday I watched the final episode of House M.D. after re-watching the entire program - all eight series. I'm guessing anyone that would be bothered about spoilers has already watched the last episode so I won't put a warning. Anyway, in the last episode when House has disappeared for a few days Wilson and Foreman get worried about him doing 'something stupid'.



While I understand the sentiment and reason why that phrase is used, I mean no one wants to say, 'I hope they haven't topped/killed/offed themselves', I still feel uneasy about the wording. It implies that suicide is stupid, because obviously, right? Why would someone want to end something? Of course everyone's life can get better and every situation will one day get better, right? (If you didn't detect that, heavy sarcasm)

As someone who is a sos I am very conflicted over the subject. I am very grateful that I am still here and that I got the help I needed and that my situation got better, but i'm also very aware that not everyone has the means or privilege for that to happen. The only reason I got onto my path of recovery was because my family physically took me out of that situation. We sold our house, split the family for a year and moved away. Not everyone has the money, resources or the support to do that, and even if they did it would not be guaranteed that things would get better. There was always a chance that the same thing that happened in my last town would happen again in the new one. I also know the feelings some might experience before suicide and how - I can't even think of a word to describe the feelings, I guess isolating, terrifying, calm, chaos, hurt, agony and eventually pointlessness - the person feels. I feel strongly that this should not just be dismissed, because I feel that it often is.

People talk about how selfish suicide is, how wrong it is to do 'that' to your loved ones. This gets me so, so angry. The thing that is selfish is making someone stay in a situation that is leaving them feeling like nothing, or hell depending on your beliefs (I'll come on to that in a minute), is better than being alive. Forcing something like the guilt of hurting someone you love, on top of whatever is causing that person to feel suicidal in the first place, is disgusting and just plain wrong in my view. I know many people disagree and they are entitled to that opinion, however I do believe that those who have never experience suicide or attempted suicide themselves, firsthand, really have no place to place the blame.

This post is really all over the place, so I apologise, but I just needed to get my thoughts out. What's your view on suicide?

Squad. Squadgoals. Whatever you want to call it, it has recently taken over the white world. Yes, the white world. Before researching the topic for this post, I was ready to defend a certain celebrity (you know which one) without even realising what I was trying to defend. What I was going to blindly defend was the unintentional, but still deeply damaging, use of cultural appropriation.

I had originally planned to write this piece along the lines of saying 'why Squadism isn't damaging, but rather the way the media portrays it', but I have realised it goes much deeper.

The roots of #squad, I discovered, lie in the culture of young black people creating a self made family to stay strong in a world still plagued by oppression - racism, sexism, classism - and to survive in a very much white man's world. I had the privilege to be ignorant to this subject, but I am so glad I took the time to read up on it because even the most simplest things to me have a deep rooted history in a culture that I am not a part of, and a culture that was (and still is) oppressed by my culture. By partaking in the use of #Squadgoals without understanding where it came from or how the overhaul by white people has affected the original use, I was inadvertently taking part in cultural appropriation.

And while I don't think that the use of #squadgoals will or can stop, it is so important for people to understand the words they use. Taking something that's been done in black culture for years and making it 'mainstream' (code for 'white') is something that is happening increasingly in social media today and needs to stop - or at the least people need to take the time to understand and appreciate, not appropriate

So, do you think #SquadGoals is damaging, or empowering?

Last summer my dad and I took a road trip around eastern Europe - and it was amazing. I loved nearly every aspect of it (except from the terrible homesickness) and it is the best present I have ever received.

I've always wanted to visit Italy, for many reasons. My nickname when I was little was occasionally 'pasta monster' as I could finish a plate of pasta in roughly 3 minutes, and I mean a full - big - plate. I lived for pasta, and pizza and bread and basically all the carbs that were made brilliant by Italy. My family were also really close with a family who was half Italian so every time we went to their house we always had amazing food. So, you can see why I wanted to go.

When we arrived in venice I was very giddy - it was hot, I'd had too many fizzy drinks and I was slightly worried that I would be overwhelmed by the stench that people say accompanies Venice. Luckily we managed to avoid any smelly areas - although we did get lost. (But of course my dad just said we knew where we were, just not where we were going). But apart from getting completely lost, it was an amazing trip and one I will never forget.

Thankyou Dad