On Saturday I wrote this post about the ALS Ice Bucket challenge.

First, let me apologise to anyone who has read it and is offended by it. I don’t mean to be offensive in the slightest, but parts of it are very blunt.

Second. I don’t know anyone with motor neurone disease. If I did, I’d probably be all over dumping water on my head. I’d definitely be all over donating. If you are able to donate to a charity, that is such a good thing, and you should definitely do that as much as you are able, because charity is a good, powerful, wonderful thing. Just because I would choose to donate to something else, does not make a donation to a cause you care for less valid, of less value, and certainly it doesn’t make it wrong.

Third, the clarification. The main thing I wanted to get across in my post is that if you’re willing to take the time to donate to charity, and willing to spend the money, please take some time to make sure you are donating to a cause you think is worthy, and don’t just bandwagon. Facebook likes are great, but the world is made of more, and it’s good to care about what that more is. Websites like JustGiving can help you choose a charity which matches your personal priorities, and Charity Navigator can help you make sure your donation will go where you want it to.

Please don’t not give, but please also give knowing that you are informed.

And if you can’t give right now, FREE RICE!

Let’s talk about the Peshmerga. Carlsberg don’t do armies, which is probably a great thing, but if they did, I like to think they’d be like the Peshmerga. Given that I am not a fan of the armed forces, and armed combat in general (since I firmly believe it has no place in a modern world, and if we all disarmed we’d be the happier for it), it’s quite a big deal for me to say that the Peshmerga are a fighting force I like. Let me tell you more about them.

The Peshmerga are basically the armed wing of the Kurdish people. You may have heard of them, since they are in the news every few years, each time that they try to push for more independence. They want independence because a while back while the “West” was screwing up the Middle-East region in general, they plonked whacking great borders right through the middle of Kurdish land, rather than doing the sensible thing and making it into a country in it’s own right.

This resulted in a dispersed Kurdish population who were marginalised in each of the countries they found themselves in – Kurds in Turkey are afforded reasonable rights as citizens, but have been consistently oppressed including the mystery killings in the mid-90s where many important Kurdish figures were killed. In Iraq, the Kurds have routinely been victims of genocidal crimes, and in Syria, they are simply declared to not exist (even though they make up the biggest ethnic minority in the country). Iran is the only country of the four where Kurds are treated as equal citizens, and though the Iranian government is against a separate Kurdish state, they do have many rights to self-determination and governance.

So, the Kurds have had a pretty cruddy time of it since the West screwed up their patch. Let’s look some more at the Peshmerga. As I already mentioned, they are the armed force of the Kurdish people, and in fact any Kurd who is willing to fight for their rights is a Peshmerga, not just the ones doing the actual fighting with the guns and etc. They are an inclusive force, and allow women to fight alongside their male counterparts, and they are currently vital in the conflict with ISIS in Iraq.

Which comes round to why I love them so much. In a world where there is a huge amount of injustice, and a huge amount of side-taking, the Kurds have mostly come off pretty badly. They have spent a century fighting oppressors and dealing with acts of terror against them on a genocidal scale. Now, they are being threatened by everyone’s favourite enemy of the common good, ISIS, and it would be fair to assume that they would pretty-much just try and dodge the action. But no. The Peshmerga are currently one of the best defenses which the Iraqi people have against ISIS, because they are being the bigger guy, and protecting EVERYONE.

If ever there was a group with a legitimate reason to tell the rest of the world to sod off, it’s the Kurds, but they have stepped up and are defending huge numbers of people. Carlsberg don’t do armies, but if they did you’re damn sure that they’d be the Peshmerga.

Since I’ve started using HabitRPG, I’ve been waaay more productive in general life, but it’s also made me feel less busy. I’ve always been a person who does just, loads of stuff, and I think that the previous haphazard nature of it all made me feel busy, which is a feeling I like.

Consequently, today I’ve had a meeting, designed some business cards, done an online shop, written my blog (almost) and washed my towels. Shortly I’ll embark on uni work.

It’s a good thing, but honestly I’d prefer to be normal busy.

Recently I wrote this post about how much I liked Meghan Trainor’s single “All About That Bass” because of it’s body-positive message (and great beat). I shared my thoughts on it with a friend of mine who I think has some great things to say about body image and body positivity, and she pointed out that at one point in the song Meghan sings –

“I’m bringing booty back, go ahead and tell those skinny b*tches that”

which in her mind (and mine as well, once I’d thought about it) made the song less body-positive and more just fat positive.

There’s a big movement of fat acceptance on the internet, and I follow several bloggers who write with this in mind, and who I think are incredibly inspirational people. However, I struggle a bit with the notion of ‘Fat Acceptance’ just because there are people who use it as an excuse not to take care of their health and well being. So, when I read this article today, I realised it perfectly expresses all my views on body positivity. The article is titled “Reasons #fatkini Selfies Aren’t ‘Real Women’ Expressing Themsevles” which is a nice controversial way to begin. What the article was focussing on is a trend of #fatkini pictures which have been turning up across social media, celebrating larger women embracing their figure. Buzzfeed then ran an article lauding these women as “Real Women” (which to be fair, they are).

What was really interesting to me though, was the message of the piece. What the writer said, in a nutshell, is that women celebrating their bodies using the #fatkini hashtag (I know it’s tautological, but we live in that kind of world now) aren’t the only “Real Women”, and using phrases like that is just damning to a different sector of society and fashion. Movements like the #fatkini trend are sadly resulting in other women are being slammed for wearing size 000 clothes, which is absolutely as bad as fat shaming. Which brings me back to Meghan Trainor because unfortunately that is what she does in the quote above – she marginalises a group of women who are thinner than her, and calls them names, and frankly, that’s not on.

So I take back my support of Meghan Trainor’s song, and put it behind today’s article. Body positivity and acceptance is something which should be open to absolutely everyone. Whatever body shape or size you are, if you are happy and healthy, you shouldn’t need to, or have society expect you, to change. I hate to think that any of my larger friends consider me a “skinny b*tch” because I’m quite little and am trying very hard to get healthy to improve, among other things, my lung capacity for the singing – not just to be “skinny”. I’m sure they don’t, but I think when people like me who are not on any extreme of the spectrum start to feel the sting of body shaming rather than body positivity, the world has finally gone mad, because if I have a response to this debate, then people on the real receiving end must be having a horrible time.

What I’m trying to say is, be happy, healthy, and love how you are. If you are fat and post a #fatkini selfie, you’re a real woman. If you’re thin and post a selfie, you’re a real woman. If you take issue with the whole selfie craze, you’re still a real woman. The only people who aren’t real women, are people who choose to designate themselves as “real” something else. And even they should be happy. Let’s just all be happy, and be who we are.