Dyke Beauty in Derry

In Derry if I talk about things I like about myself I get treated like I’m fishing for compliments. If I say that I’m glad I’ve gained weight I get a chorus of people telling me I haven’t and I look great. Which is not what I said and I know that I have. I …

On altering clothes and giving up on thinness

Three-ish years ago I was dragging my friend around every charity shop in Berlin looking for a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding. We worked our way up every floor of the Frankfurter Tor Humana until we got to the vintage section on the top floor. I didn't find anything for the wedding. All …

ARE YOU BREATHING JUST A LITTLE AND CALLING IT A LIFE?

I've written previously about the fact that for as good as all of my teenage years I did not go swimming once. I didn't even own a swimming costume. My body and I were not friends then. My body was my greatest adversary. When my family went swimming on holiday I sat by and watched, …

Forever Is A Feeling is for Hopeful Romantics

I got into Lucy Dacus just before the release of her third album Home Video. It was love at first listen. The way that she wrote felt like she had put a microscope to my thoughts and was unspooling all the knots of my brain.  Home Video came out when I was eighteen. I had …

Grief and Symbols

I've been trying to write about grief for a long time now. My friend Natasha died 6 years ago. She was pure magic. I always struggle to explain who she was to me, I always say she was my godmother, or like an aunt. My parents hired her as a babysitter when my sister was …

You can’t conform your way into self acceptance

I have always believed ideologically that I am inherently worthy as a person no matter how I look. I have always known that was true. However, despite my steadfast feminist beliefs that I don’t have to be pretty or thin or hairless, I desperately wanted to be.  I grew up bigger than average, both in …

Teenage Girls On TV: The Good, The Bad, and The Overly Sexualised

Pretty Little Liars, Elite, Riverdale, Euphoria, Gossip Girl. Teenagers in teen dramas tend to be played by hot 20-somethings, and they tend to spend a lot of their time drinking, having sex, and pole dancing in order to join their boyfriends’ gangs. Using 20-something actors as teenagers circumvents scheduling and child labour laws, yes, but …

The Hunger Games and the Importance of Romance, Rebellion, and Happy Endings

This contains a lot of spoilers for all three of the Hunger Games books, including major plot points and deaths. The Hunger Games is a popular trilogy of dystopian young adult novels written by Suzanne Collins, known for its violence and grim outlook. The book is set in what used to be the US, now …

Lovleg feels like it was written for me

Lovleg is a Norwegian mixed-media web series written by writer and poet Kjersti Wøien Håland about 16 year old Gunnhild, played by Kristine Ryssdalsnes Horvli as she navigates life after moving away from home to a flatshare for her last years of school. It follows her as she befriends her flatmates, ‘popular in middle school’ …