For shame...

My friend Dawn over at Inanity & the Girl posted about Fat Shaming on the internet today.  Now I appreciate that not everyone is fat (or perceives themselves as such), but Fatness is society's worst thing to be at the moment & the internet holds many horrors & much bile about it.  Unless you're on the receiving end of it or go out of your way to look for it, you might be unaware of how really, REALLY vile commenters are about the size of a body.

Please follow the link & read it for yourself.

Here is my comment;

Oh Dawnie, where to begin?! Speaking as someone who has heard it all, and often to my face, I can honestly say that FAT is THE most reviled & horrendous thing to be EVER. I think I'd go as far as to say that, by contemporary standards, it's even worse than being of colour. It's acceptable to be as thick as two short planks (& seemingly proud/blissfully ignorant of it judging by levels of literacy on the internet), but you must never be fat or you'll be pilloried mercilessly. I once appeared on a Youtube video of a very popular friend & the comments were vile. One particular one went on about 'how dare I PARADE myself & my fatness IN PUBLIC & subject innocent bystanders to said horror'. That one actually made me laugh & I replied, the gist being 'parade? Now there's an idea! Let me just research your IP address & me & all my fat friends will cone & have a glorious parade of plumpness down your street'. I have a thick skin though. Probably because of all the fat beneath it.

When you overhear children getting antsy you'll hear the word Fat. When folk on Jeremy Kyle get insulting they'll use the word Fat. When the upper classes of our country want to berate the plebs they use the word Fat. Fat has become far more than an issue of size; it's now an issue of control & fear & shame. Eight year olds are being treated for eating disorders because the shame of being PERCEIVED as fat is so horrendous that they'd rather starve themselves. 

I'll let you into a little secret of they male psyche when it comes to Fat. Men are terrified of the sensuality of a Fat Woman. Being fat has connotations of indulgence & letting yourself go & giving in to temptation & this immediately makes men think of sexy things. I've lost count of the times it's been assumed that my being nice to someone is a come on for some rumpy pumpy. Seriously! There's something SO appealing about a bit of jiggle that men are TERRIFIED of it. They'll say the most outrageously sexual things then try to make a 'joke' out of it.

We've come to a time when denial, self control & all it's associated misery are what women are expected to do to meet a body ideal which appeals to men. It's the equivalent of wearing a burka so as not to inflame the desires of men. 

Haters ARE gonna hate & it's fear that makes them do it. Real primeval fear. The shame of being fat, the shame of liking fat are simply too much for modern society. 

Fear & Shame coming soon to a body near you!

My advice? Be who you are, how you are & where you are & fuck 'em. Their opinion is ultimately meaningless and, in times to come, something else will be the epitome of shame. I don't give anyone the consent to make me feel ashamed of who I am. I KNOW they're afraid of me & what my body represents; all those sensual pleasures they deny themselves all their lives and for what? None of us get out of this alive.

There are so many pressures on women today about how we look, how we act, how we must be perceived by others.  Isn't it time we were just AUTHENTIC to ourselves?!  I personally see being unkind, hateful, dishonest, condescending, cruel, intolerant & a bully as far worse crimes than could ever be committed simply by the size of one's body.  I'll judge you on THAT, not what you look like.  

As an aside to this which is very relevant, a Twitter friend asked her cousin if he'd seen me when I was at CenterParcs (he works there).  How was I described?  Not as 'a fat woman on a mobility scooter' but as 'a glamorous woman on a mobility scooter'!  My glamour is obviously perceived as more evident than my size LOL.  THAT'S how we need to be thinking about people; by their QUALITIES & CHARACTER and not by their size.

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First of 2014!

I've just had confirmation that my first product test of 2014 is on its way!

Thanks to Harper's Bazaar magazine I'll be testing Clinique's Even Better foundation for the next two weeks.  I had to use the Foundation Finder tool on Clinique's website to deduce my ideal formulation & shade so we'll see how well that works.  I would normally never buy a foundation without testing it first for the correct shade <GULP>!

Once I've completed all my feedback I'll let you know how I got on with my first ever Clinique foundation.

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Tru's 2013 Top 5 for your face.

In no particular order, here are my outstanding face finds of 2013;

5.  L'occitane Immortelle Brightening Moisturiser - £48 from here.

There's a fine line between brightening/illuminating face products and either 'glitter' or 'face dunked in grease'.   This moisturiser gets the effect absolutely perfect.  Fine lines become invisible, pigmentation not so noticeable & that radiance is visible underneath your foundation.  Heck, I even wore this WITHOUT any foundation as my skin looked so good!  It's hard to explain as the look on skin isn't a sheen or shine, but looks like being under flattering light.  I received this from The Beauty Bible to try out & review & I might never have looked to L'occitane for skincare otherwise.  I used up the entire jar & intend to put it on my Birthday Gift List as I know I'd use it again & again.  Smells beautiful too.

4.  Boots No.7 Lift & Luminate Day & Night serums - £24.95 from here.

Used in conjunction with the L'occitane moisturiser mentioned above or on its own, the Lift & Luminate Day serum is FANTASTIC.  It's another product that gets the illumination effect just right.  The downside is that the night serum is included too.  I really didn't feel significant benefits from it, but I'd buy the day one by the bucketload!  This is another product I was sent to try for the new Beauty Bible anti-ageing edition, but I was already familiar with it.  There was something about having to look closely & scrutinise a product for review that made me realise just how fab this day serum is.  Now if only Boots would sell it singly & in larger quantities.

3.  Bobbi Brown Bronzing Powder - £27 from here.

I have a fat, round face.  Always have had, yet contouring remained a mystery to me.  I'd tried bronzing powders before of course, but the effect on me can be summed up by the word 'grubby'.  Not the sweeping, chiselled cheekbones & razor sharp jawline for me, oh no!  UNTIL I bought this.  My shade is Golden Light and it looks NATURAL.  I actually discovered this when I used the Chat feature on the Bobbi Brown website.  I had such a great conversation with advice & tips & no hard sell, that I ordered both this & the Bobbi Brown bronzer brush too.  My new-found confidence served me well & I can now look as sculpted as I like (which isn't, in fairness, incredibly so; just less moon-faced).  Ladies, I can't impress on you enough that The Right Tool For The Job makes a staggering difference so invest in the brush too!

2.  Laura Geller Balance & Brighten foundation - £28.04 with brush here.

Technically this wasn't a new discovery for me in 2013, but I DID find myself using it more & more.  I'll be honest with you, I can't be done with endless blending when it comes to foundation.  I like some liquid foundations; some are outstanding, but, when it comes to everyday Getting My Face On, this is what I use.  My colour is Fair &, as you can see from the above image, 'fair' covers a few hues!  This is what makes this foundation so easy; it's VERY forgiving when it comes to skin shade.  Despite being a powder (which I apply with the Real Techniques Buffing Brush - buy here as part of the Core Collection) it blends into the skin like a liquid leaving your skin natural looking yet with medium coverage.  Any efforts you've gone to to illuminate your skin aren't lost either as this looks like your real skin - just BETTER.  I know it might seem a bit 'old lady' to buy make-up from QVC, but they really do have some gems on there!  This is one of them.

1.  Decleor Hydra Floral BB Cream - £23.29 from here

BB Creams, they're SO 2012 right?  Wrong.  My ears pricked up when skincare supremos Decleor announced they were launching their own.  What could they bring to the BB market that nobody else could?  I was incredibly lucky enough to WIN the Hydra Floral collection including this BB cream last year so I got to find out.  Now I've used BB Creams before; many brands.  Most require some sort of foundation over the top when your skin's as old as mine, & I felt this pretty much defeated the entire objective of using a BB cream.  Surely you just slap it on a cleansed face & there's your skincare needs & foundation DONE.  Well that wasn't the case for me until now.  There's more pigment in this Decleor BB so it's definitely more than a tinted moisturiser.  It also skilfully manages to avoid BB uber-shine which lesser brands deem 'illuminating'.  With this my skin feels moisturised, balanced, smoothed, even-toned & it LOOKS like it too.  Pigmentation is diffused, fine lines & pores minimised, yet it still looks like skin - just GREAT skin!  Initially this was released in one shade only, but even that colour-matched my fair skintone very well.  Now you can get in 3 shade choices & I've found the Fair shade is perfect for my Winter skin.  As if all of that wasn't good enough, it smells DIVINE too.

I hope this Face Top 5 is helpful to you & a great introduction to what I'm hoping to achieve with this Blog; no-nonsense, honest tips & advice for us over-40s gals who haven't given up the ghost of glamour just yet!

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2014; looking forward & looking back.

I had the amazing luck in 2013 to test out some fantastic skincare & cosmetics. I'm nobody special but I do sign myself up for competitions & trials wherever I can & 2013 was the year the plan came together! Some of the things I've tried remain a mystery to me (ClixResearch tend to use non-branded packaging for their trials) & I've been sworn to secrecy about others (The Beauty Bible for their new edition), but there's still lots to tell you about.

2013 was also about HAIR for me too. My hair is currently longer than it's been in decades plus it's two-toned which lends itself to being played around with a bit more than usual. It also means that it's a lot more damaged than usual so I've been on a crusade for The Right Shampoo & Conditioner. Yes, that IS as difficult as The Right Shade Of Red Lipstick!

I'm hoping to make some Youtube Videos to show some of my favourite things as well as using a fab little video tool called Screencast-O-Matic to share some product reviews whilst simultaneously showing you what I'm talking about online. To show you what that looks like, here's a rough, ready & a bit amateur review I did of the Foreo Luna Mini ultrasonic facial cleansing tool which I tried out for BzzAgent;
Tru's Review

So, if you're a lady of a certain age who doesn't necessarily want to look like Rhianna or Beyonce on your trip to Tesco, but who DOES want to know about skincare & cosmetics which actually work, stick around! If you want to know how to be more Smoky Eyes than Panda Eyes, bear with me! And if you want to just be more relaxed about your wrinkly, crinkly laughter lines, uneven pigmentation, stubby nails & split ends, join the club! We can all be fabulous over 40.

Starting the year as I mean to go on; delusions of 30 years ago...

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