A random idea....

I never thought I would become a 'blogger' to be honest. I am not very technologically advanced for a start. I recently deleted my Myspace page after realising I hadn't checked it for over a year, and I have never been on Twitter, not even to look at someone else's feed. (Do you call it a 'feed'?) I am even growing bored of Facebook and only seem to update my status by blackberry when stuck on a night bus these days.



Recently however, partly through my job, partly through my studies but mostly through growing up and suddenly finding myself a fully-grown-up-adult-woman, I have discovered two things:



1. I love writing. I always did love it and long before I took pleasure in songwriting, I even wrote 'a book' on a two week summer holiday. I was 11. Yes I really was that precocious. Being at university has made me realise that while I am certainly not a great academic writer, I do love the writing process. A tutor was also kind enough recently to tell me after giving me a so-so 65% for an essay that while I should have 'delved deeper into theory', my writing style 'was fantastically readable'. I was quite surprised by how much this comment pleased me.



2. I get angry. Again, I always did have a bit of a temper but these days I have mellowed dramatically and don't seem to get angry in my personal life the way I did when I was younger. I get angry about other things now. Mainly things to do with the treatment of young people and of women; to do with the ridiculous pressures put upon women; to do with the tedious marketing ploys of companies advertising to young girls; to do with the overtly sexualised society we live in; the constant bombardment of messages to girls that they must be thin and tanned and hairless; the sale of NUTS and other such poor excuses for magazines sold next to Beano in newsagents; the fact that we are still fighting for legal abortion in Ireland as well as many countries further from home; the fact that two women a week die as a result of domestic violence; the disturbing views and derogatory terms about women that I hear daily from the young people I work with and mainly the fact that girls and women often hold these views just as much as the boys and men. And what really makes me angry and so terribly sad is the complete lack of sisterhood. Why are we letting this happen? Why aren't we showing the young girls of our society that it doesn't have to be this way? Why do we as adults buy into this sick culture when young people learn from us? How can we tell young girls not to buy into the beauty myth when we ourselves are such slaves to it?



Yesterday I decided that during my travels to and from work I would count all the posters, ads and billboards that used naked or near naked women to sell their products. Arriving at work having already noted seven (including ads for such sexy things as computers, coffee, beer, vitamins and errrr.... cancer) I went online and was faced with the SWAGS calendar and was so incensed I decided to start a blog. (And if you haven't seen the SWAGS diary - I have posted one of the many tasteful pictures here.)



So here I am. I am giving blogging a try.



I certainly don't claim to have any answers and I am actually embarrassed that it has taken me this long to realise that I am in fact a feminist. I have called this blog The Ramblings of an Amateur Feminist because I feel I have so much to learn. I was brought up to believe that women were equal and I have been lucky enough to have never been in an abusive relationship and to have done well at work. Perhaps that is the problem - I didn't think I had experienced overt sexism firsthand so it has taken me a while to get here. I say 'amateur' because though I do read a fair amount of feminist literature and closely follow policy relating to women, and though I work with young women and have always been passionate about women's rights, I don't fully understand the differences between 'new feminism' and 'reconstructed feminism' and I can't quote Mary Wollstonecraft or Germaine Greer but what I can do, is talk about what I see all around me, what I hear from all the young women I work with and what I learn day to day.



So this blog may be more of a rant and a stream of consciousness than anything else. And I will also post links to opinions of those far wiser than me. Please forgive me my self indulgence. I am really writing this for myself but I invite you to visit, read, comment, share, discuss, rant and ramble with me if you so wish.



Charli x