Friday 2 May 2008

I look as if I've had a red cat sat on my knee.
I've now officially stuck more pins into a foam board than I ever will needles into patients.
I'm rather fed up of sewing in ends, mattress stitch and seaming.

If you hadn't guessed I'm sewing up a jumper. My very lovely, very red, extremely long overdue Ice Maiden. This is a pre-blog project that I started almost three years ago, finished the pieces for over a year ago and have been putting off blocking and sewing up ever since. I've managed to force myself to sit down over the last few days and get it finished, I'm nearly done and at the stage of thinking "never again" or at least contemplating shrinking myself down to rather more slender proportions so that seeming won't take quite so long in future. 

Actually that's not something I should joke about, as a future nurse whose dream job is either in eating disorders or child and adolescent psychiatry, and more importantly someone who's happy with her body and weight, I'm finding myself increasingly disgusted at the media's attitude to body image. I realise that were I a celebrity I'd automatically be labelled as lazy or on the verge of letting myself go for saying that I like the way I look. I turned on the TV a day or two ago to find some children's programme or other playing where the presenter was talking about body image with a group of pre-teen girls, some as young as 8 wearing full facial make up and talking about manicures and various other beauty treatments they have on a regular basis. And then some statistics flashed up showing the results of a survey that had been carried out indicating a high percentage of these girls were unhappy with their looks, associated thinner with happier and wanted to emulate glamour models and it girl types. I can't be the only one that finds this so wrong, and as a nurse I can't help think that if we could just stop putting all this pressure on our children we wouldn't be in half the mess that we are. Rates of self harm among under 16's is just going up and up, eating disorders among children and teeangers (particularly among boys) are on the rise and all we as a public can do is say "oh dear". 

Anyway rant over, pictures of my latest finished object to follow once I've got myself, the jumper, lsb and a camera in the same room at the same time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you were a celebrity on TV, it'd be okay if you were overweight, as long as you were a comedian. In fact, the more overweight a woman is the funnier she tends to be, and that's a scientific fact. Look at Dawn French! She's magnificent. As is Joe Brand.

But I do agree, media is RUBBISH when it comes to making people too self-conscious. Which is why I want to become famous, so I can say "Look how skinny I am, and IM not attractive! Okay I admit, I'm the sexiest damn thing you've ever seen, but the media is WRONG!"

Oh how I miss you Fliss. x