juillet...

  i'm adding a new feature to the blog. every month, i'm going to talk about my favorite things. i'll talk about things i like from beauty products to instagram accounts. here are my july things!

no. 1

no. 2

no. 3

no. 4

no. 5

no. 6

no. 1: i'm kind of a coconut oil addict. i have really, really dry and sensitive skin, so i'm allergic to so many beauty products. i was reading on the free people blog about how coconut oil is beneficial to dry skin and can even reduce redness. i decided to give it a go, and now i'm hooked. i use it on my face as well as on my body. for my face, i melt it and mix in some tea tree oil and for my body, i use it in as it comes in the jar. in the jar, it's almost like a paste. coconut oil is a wonderful way to ease dry skin and it smells really good. 

no. 2: i wear my birkenstocks pretty much everyday. they're the most comfortable pair of shoes i have ever owned. it took some time to break them in, but now they're the perfect shoe and they go with most everything i wear. 

no. 3: it's really hard for me to find jeans that fit. they're either way too short or way too long and the sides where one's hips should be aren't exactly well filled out. i rarely go shopping for pants because i can't ever find the proper fit. last week, i was in chicago and had to go into anthropologie because it's my vacation destination. i found a pair of jeans in the sale room and decided to try them on. pilcro jeans from anthropologie are the best fitting jeans i've ever worn and they're nice and soft after one wash. 

no. 4: this is miss james mccoy and she writes my most favorite blog, http://bleubirdblog.com. i suggest you check it out. she has great recipes and the best clothes i've ever seen. oh and one fricken cute family and home. 

no(s). 5 & 6: my two favorite songs this month are cigarette smoker fiona by the arctic monkeys and finger back by vampire weekend. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXHPTO6BQc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oPbpPIG_mQ

bastille day: vive la francoise and brigitte!

perspective.

  the idea of a positive body image is something we all try to instill in young girls and women. phrases like "real women have curves" and "women aren't a size zero" are used as the standard for girls developing a healthy body image. but what if phrases like these plastered on pictures of curvy women are negatively affecting the thin girls? 

  girls are being told that skinny is gross and unhealthy. that no one wants to be a zero and that real and respectable men don't like thin girls. these are all things that i have heard and read on the topic of body image and young women. you can't look through facebook or twitter without seeing a picture of a curvy woman captioned with things like "beyonce doesn't have a thigh gap" or some guy saying "no guy likes a girl who's all bones". seeing that people believe a "woman" is someone who isn't thin can lead a naturally slender or boyishly shaped young woman to hate herself and think that there's something wrong with her because she isn't a real "woman". no young woman deserves to feel that way and someone shouldn't feel ashamed that they are naturally thin. "woman" isn't a body type. a "woman" is a girl that is emotionally sure of herself. it's not being a size four or larger. 

  people are outraged that j.crew has released a new size, the 000. they think it's just one more factor in the pressure to be thin affecting girls and women today. if we teach girls that women come in all shapes and sizes, why aren't we acknowledging that some healthy women are naturally in need of size 000? i myself, am 00. yes you can see my collar bones and ribcage and my natural waist size is a women's 23. that doesn't mean my body is unhealthy. it's the way i am and shouldn't feel bad about not being very womanly shaped. it's the way god made me, but the way girls think is to naturally put ourselves down. we shouldn't have society putting down any body type causing us to continue to put ourselves down. 

  believe it or not, it's probably just as hard to find clothes when you are naturally smaller than society's size of an adult woman. i am a nineteen year old young woman who sometimes still has to wear kid's clothes. i had to shop in gap kids the other day because my body was too small for the gap women's size zero. tiny women shouldn't have to dress like a child to find clothes that properly fit them. a worker at gap kids even told me that she sees so many petite women trying to pick out the more "mature" dresses in the store because they can't fit into the women's clothing. that's why there should be a 000 and we shouldn't put down the women who need that size and assume that it's promoting eating disorders. not every thin woman doesn't eat and slender young women don't need to feel they aren't a real "woman" or that they aren't beautiful because they don't have as many curves or a womanly body.