Pop Music and Teenage Girls - An Ode

I was 13 when I went to my first "grown up" concert. It was Fall Out Boy, in Leeds, with my dad. I wore an entire stick of Claire's Accessories eyeliner, my skinniest Topshop jeans, and bought a t-shirt that I still have. Dozens of gigs followed, one memorable being Lady Gaga with my best friend. We were sixteen and got the train to Nottingham after school, painted Ziggy Stardust lightning bolts on our cheeks and made friends with other teenage Gaga fans in the queue. When the music started, we grabbed each others hand and shouted "IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S HAPPENING!" - we joke about how excited we were even today.
I love pop music, and it shaped a huge chunk of my life, and still does. If we're being honest, my first gig was Pop Idol on tour with Will Young and Gareth Gates. But beyond that gig (after which I bought a commemorative scarf), pop music was everything. There's an argument that pop music is lowbrow, reductive, with silly lyrics that don't make much sense, or that popstars are too sexy, self absorbed, or even worse, stupid. But teenage girls, throughout history do not care about how stupid you think their idols are, how little grammatical sense the latest Fifth Harmony track makes. Music, in whatever shape or sound, will play a part in their formative years. Today's thirteen year olds will giggle with their friends to Katy Perry, cry over teenage heartbreak to Little Mix and practise doing their eyeliner to a soundtrack of Rihanna, just like we did with the Spice Girls, Destiny's Child and Avril Lavigne, and Madonna, Duran Duran and Wham! Teenage girls make pop music what it is, and pop music makes teenage girls what they are. There's nothing lowbrow, reductive or stupid about that. 
Ask any twenty something to finish the line of Reach by S Club 7, and watch their face light up as they do. Maybe it's the nostalgia, but the reaction we all have to pop is infectious and pure. The feeling that pop music brings with it is uninhibited, carefree and special. When teenage girls first move on from their bubblegum worlds, replacing fluffy Justin Bieber tracks with concrete Joy Division, it might seem like the end of an era of innocence and silly dance routines in the playground with friends, but put What Do You Mean? on for a teenage girl, and you'll be hard pressed to find one who doesn't at least tap her toes. 
Music is a safe place, one dedicated to camaraderie, self expression and the navigation of emotions. When I went to see Drake with my brother, the Birmingham NIA was lit up with the unmistakable flash of an iPhone camera as hordes of fifteen year old girls took selfies with the new friends they'd made in the crowd. Before he even came on stage, all I could hear was the giggly rendition of Hotline Bling that murmured its way around the room. Music is an emotion we all have in common, subjective and personal. I'll forever defend Kylie Minogue as a groundbreaking artist, and tell you how good Call the Shots by Girls Aloud is. Disagree? Fine, just don't take it away from me. I see pop music as more than just a genre. It's a rite of passage for a time in your life that seems messy, confused, covered in questionable fashion choices and even more questionable crushes. The opening bars of a specific song can transport a woman back to being fifteen and drinking Smirnoff Ice on the park before buying gum on the way home so mum didn't smell it on her breath. It's an important, special and personal part of growing up as a girl. Pop music is a diary.
People are trying to take that away from us. Horror at a concert devastates and makes us angry - and rightly so. And sometimes the call is coming from inside the house, the PWR BTTM scandal - manipulating and abusing young fans disappoints and scares. But there's power in girls, power in pop music. Live music is a joy, a moment of exhilaration and fun. Go to gigs. See your heroes, meet them, take photos, sing until you've got no voice left, please. 
They can't take the joy of music away. 

I Don't Know About You, But I'm A While Off 22...

Last year, I wrote a post of 22 things I'd learnt in my 22 years on this planet. I'm about to turn 24 (May 19th, sports fans, mark your calendars!) and I think since I last wrote that post, things have changed. So I think it's time for an update. Insert Neil Young reference here.

1. It doesn't matter if you haven't found your tribe yet. You will, and when you do, you'll feel sixteen all over again.
2. Invest in skincare, makeup can be good and cheap, Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum foundation will save your life, alongside Kiehl's Calendula Face Wash.
3. Tories are not good people.
4. If you can't afford a therapist, cry instead. It saves hundreds in the long run.
5. JOIN A PENSION SCHEME FFS
6. Music, TV, film, literature, art, it all shapes you. Allow it to, allow yourself to inhale good influences, make a Frida Kahlo painting your phone background and smile each time you check your texts, carry a JD Salinger novel with you and reread your favourite chapter when you're sat at the bus stop. Download the Best of Prince album and sing it in the shower.
7. Your parents are not out to get you.
8. You'll be a lot happier when you realise nobody in the room is judging and laughing at you. I'm still learning this. It's a work in progress.
9. Be a sarcastic little bat if you want. 
10. Watch Eurovision and fully enjoy it as it is meant to be - life is too short to try being cool, nobody really is.
11. HELP OTHER PEOPLE. 
12. Laugh at stupid jokes, tweet your ridiculous thoughts, be a weirdo and own it. It's the biggest middle finger to the girls who teased you at school
    
    
    Here she is, demonstrating just that.
    
13. Nothing will put you in a better mood than I'm Your Man by Wham!
14. The best question to ask on a first date is "What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?"
15. Hoop earrings are great in all shapes and sizes. I am a hoop advocate, they look great on everyone.
16. If you end up without a real job and without a house of your own and it's Christmas and you feel like there's no real point any more, trust me there is. Somehow, it's not the end of the world, and it will be okay again. And it's the sweetest feeling when it is.
17. I'm a firm believer that all email subject lines should be funny.
18. Trainers are the best shoes.
19. If you cannot dance, that's even better.
20. Feminists who reject trans women, women of colour, women of different religions or disabled women are not feminists.
21. Half an hour at the seaside can knock the life back into you.
22. The best healthy living regime is to eat what the hell you want and maybe go to a Clubbercise class once in a while if you fancy it.
23. At least one claim to fame - no matter how small or Z list - is a fantastic ice breaker. 

I'm wary this sounds schmaltzy, I promise I tried not to be too bad! Just wanted to let you know it's okay to not be all #livelaughlove all the time cause it's a bit boring really. Also side note - I like beret hats and think they also suit literally anyone, if there's one thing to take from this list, it's BUY A BERET.

Girls World

I finished the last season of Girls this week. Six seasons of ups, downs, controversies - some very well deserved - and endless quotes, the voice of my generation had fallen silent.
It's potentially an unpopular opinion, but I love the TV show, Girls. I like Lena Dunham. Granted, she's a bit tone deaf with her feminism, she can be polarising to say the least. But the TV show she created with Jenni Konner and Judd Apatow - who forever holds a place in my heart as the creator of Freaks & Geeks - is magnificent.
Girls started whilst I was in my first year of university, a year I look back on as a learning curve. A year of fantastic, stitch inducing, laugh out loud memories and terrible, blocked off, shut away in a cupboard...events. I thought I knew who I'd grow up to be. Then I watched Girls.
The problem most critics have with Girls is its main characters. These four, white, upper middle class New York women who's biggest complaint was that nobody was paying them any attention. I loved it. They're flawed, narcissistic, self obsessed and moany. They have wobbly bits on their bodies, spots, terrible choices in boyfriends (yes I'm looking at you Jessa and Thomas-John). I loved it, because they were me. It shook me to see distorted versions of myself, who were so bloody impossible to like, but who I so desperately wanted to be. Jessa's hair, Shoshanna's clothes, Hannah's razor sharp wit, and well, Marnie dated Ray and he's the best. Watching Girls shaped me. It introduced me to Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louis CK, The Mindy Project, and maybe I started watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition in between, so I guess I kind of have Lena Dunham to thank for my now lifelong passion for the phrase "MOVE THAT BUS!"
Girls felt like the big sister I never had. Like the gentle whispered warning of someone who has been there. It's those episodes I like the best. Those jarring, standstill moments of television that put your heart in your mouth and your hand to your pearls. Episodes like this last season's American Bitch, that left me feeling speechless and dirty all in one, episodes that remind you that Girls isn't fizzy, happy, lols-a-minute, feelgood friendship. It's clunky, sad, heartbreaking and cringey, and it puts Elijah Krantz in a happy place for like three episodes, then rips him away, stomping on him and telling him to try again.
It's not a perfect show, it's thorny and problematic, but the final series surprised me with its grace. It felt rooted in indulging itself as a final farewell, and I couldn't have asked for more, until I could. The last episode of Girls, in a similar vein to Seinfeld and Breaking Bad, fell short. It went full force, guns blazing with the promise of a curtain call that it deserved, but it never got. Like a surf lesson with Paul Louis (played by the incredible Riz Ahmed), the set up was there, but then it never happened. Dammit, Dunham! I believed in you to pull this off! One great review of the finale ended with the summation "you think you know me, but you really don't," - a fantastic symbol for the breakdown of female friendship in season six, and the Brooklyn Mr Big, Adam's hopeless and at times hideous flip flopping between Hannah and Jessa.
I will always love Girls. I will always love Lena Dunham. I will forever wish Elijah was my best friend and that Ray made me coffee everyday. I will daydream about what would've happened if that Marnie episode in the final season ended the way I wish it had. And I will watch it again and again, knowing in the pit of my stomach that it won't end well. But then maybe that's the point. Girls is the best worst relationship I've ever had. Bittersweet and painful, and maybe sometimes worth the perverse peel back of the plaster that's been holding you together, in order to assess how far you've come.