Wanna be a Princess?

Calm down I’m not writing another blog post about the Royal Wedding or about Prince Harry. As much I would love to analysis Harry some more* this blog is about a different kind of princess. Jip, I’m talking about Disney Princesses.  Recently a rumour has been going around the internet that Disney has decided to stop making Princess Movies due to the fact that they feel that the genre is not producing enough revenue and that modern watchers find the genre anti-feministic.

Wait up…WHAT??!!

Ok, sure Disney has denied that this rumour and has confirmed that they will still be making Disney Princess movies, but I can’t believe that people would make up something so stupid. I was born in 1992 and thus a large part of my childhood involved the Golden Era of Disney movies and most of those movies were Disney Princess movies. A Disney Princess movie doesn’t just have to be a Disney movie about a girl from a royal bloodline, but rather any Disney movie about a young woman who goes through a life-changing adventure of some kind.

(I want to make the distinction that there are numerous Disney movies not involving a Disney Princess, like The Lion King, Bambi, The Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, etc. and even though I enjoyed them as much let’s look past them for the moment.)

 Most human beings enjoy Disney movies and it’s easy to see why. How can you hate the sweet and innocent stories? How can you hate the beautiful songs and interesting characters? Most of those movies are about following your dreams and about standing up for what you believe and for who you truly are. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?

My favourite Disney Princess will always be Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Even though the movie was made in 1989 something about the movie still spoke to me. I guess it has to be the fact that Ariel had the courage to follow her heart no matter what. Ariel wanted to break away and truly experience a life that was different from hers and I can relate to that. Plus Prince Eric is also my favourite Disney Prince and he is oddly and disturbingly attractive for an animated guy.

The claim is that these Disney Princess movies go against feministic ideals is just crazy. Sure you can twist them so that they appear to be anti-feministic, but it would be cheap to do that and it shows that you have totally missed the message of the movies. Fine people, argue that they should take away Disney Princess movies and leave the animation world to stories that are male orientated ‘cause sure that’s a lot more feministic (Note the Sarcasm)

(PS I am 19 years old and the fact that I remember all the times when my friends and I used to love to watch Disney movies should prove that I remember the innocence of childhood. Why can’t we ignore how tough our adult lives are and just relish in the past a bit from time to time. Plus they are so darn romantic! )

*take that any way you want… ;)

Eye twitching fury

So I had another blog post planned for today, but something happened that I thought was more pressing. A gay classmate of mine was harassed the other night by a group of ignorant, homophobic brutes and I am completely shocked and angered by this. I came to Rhodes with the naïve idea that everyone was more accepting, but I guess that’s not the case. Homophobic attacks should be taken as seriously as racist attacks. When those guys made that racist video at UFS a hail of hate and criticism rained down on them. I think that a homophobic attack should be treated the same way! It’s disgusting…

My eye is literally twitching as I think about it. I’m turning into a “giant squid of anger.”

(PS- A Giant Squid of Anger is something you turn into when you are so angered that you have to wave your arms erratically in the air and scream to get the anger out. John Green is the original Giant Squid of Anger, but it applies to me now.)

The gay community has been nothing, but kind to me and I don’t understand WHY people can’t just deal with the fact that there are people who are different to them! I’m proud to be friends with people who are strong and confident enough to be themselves.  It doesn’t bother me at all and it shouldn’t bother anyone!  I reinforce again the notion: “It doesn’t matter WHO you love…It matters THAT you love…

My message is one of acceptance!  Check out this video of what the true process to acceptance looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH4XXT04oUc

http://www.polyvore.com/giant_squid_anger_colored_nerdfighters/thing?id=33622234

Only Thing We Have to Fear?

Those who know me well that I am terribly, terribly afraid of birds. Don’t even try to tell me that they are cute or fluffy or whatever I think they are gross!  I can’t stand a birds coming near me and have numerous times screamed bloody-murder when they were to fly too close to me.  

 Most human beings have some kind of irrational fear or phobia and these phobias are unfortunately quite exposed in public and people often take advantage of this fact. A person who hates or fears walking in front of a group of people will also be forced by their friends to walk in front. Someone who hates their necks being touch will be poked and rubbed all the time. Friends will jump out from behind dark doorways and fake spiders or lizards will be thrown at those who are mortally scared of them. Someone even threw a dead bird at me once…Shudder…

This fear has helped me understand other people’s irrational fears and thus I now realize that I have to be understanding about these people’s phobias. It’s all about perception sure you may hate having your phobia aggravated, but it sure as hell is funny to see other people freak out! At least we are not alone with that one. Everyone has fears which are irrational and it should comfort you that you are not alone… Think about that the next time you are the one standing behind that dark doorway...

(PS This is for one of my best friend who is incredibly afraid of dogs yet has been forced to deal with all our pets on numerous occasions.)

We are who we are!

We have all seen those movies or TV shows where in girls and young women pretend to be interested something they really aren’t into just so that they can impress some guy. The best example of this would be Naomi in Season 3 of 90210 who pretended to be interested in surfing to impress a hot surfer and in the end almost drowned, since she had never surfed before.

In totally understand that you should be open to learning about new things and to going out of your comfort zones once and a while, but seriously if you already know that you aren’t into something then you shouldn’t have to pretend to interested in it when you aren’t!  A few years back I pretended to be interested in cricket just to impress a guy who was into really into cricket and truth be told I know barely anything about cricket. I can tell you now I feel like a fool….Now I know that I don’t have to pretend anymore!

You are into the things you are into and you should be proud of that! You are an individual so act like it! So like the Kesha song I’m going to embrace the fact that I am who I am and that I won’t change for anyone. I have faith that one day there will be some who loves me for all that I am and all that I love…

http://www.polyvore.com/kesha_we_who_lyrics_icon/thing?id=25237207

Drama, Drama, Drama!

I absolutely love the fact that I’m studying Drama! I was so nervous about starting it here at Rhodes, because it’s quite famous for its Drama Department. The vibe in Drama is quite awesome! You walk into your Drama lecture and soooo many people greet you! In feels like a safe space and the people in my tuts. feel like part of my family. I’m so proud of every member of this family and I especially love my tutors, whose support got us through it all…

The Drama lectures are strange, eccentric, and very easy to impersonate! Too many wasted hours have been spent doing impressions of some of our more entertaining lecturers.   

So the tonight we had our first term theatre making exams and it was amazing! Firstly all the groups blew me away and they also made me really nervous! I at least had the greatest group to work with! LOVE them all! <3 <3
When my group went on stage I thought I would pass out, but I threw my heart into our piece and we kicked ass! Sure, it may have been exhausting and I may still be bruised, but it was so worth it! Tonight I picked my major…

I don’t know what I plan to do with the rest of my life or what I would end up doing with my life, but for now life is fun and I can sleep easy. I miss my family, I miss my Bloem friends, I miss my dog, I miss my home and own bed, but tonight made me realise that picking Rhodes was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

(PS - “I was expecting SIMBA to come out.”)

(PSS- I want to thanks all my previous Drama teachers and Drama friends who have helped me get to this point!)

That's GREAT, if that’s what you going for! <3

http://www.musicteachershelper.com/blog/wp-content/images/masks_08.gif

http://www.lionking.org/~tlkpride/images/screencaptures/sp/simba.jpg

Tyler Shields

In an earlier blog I posted a photograph by the famous photographer Tyler Shields and I thought I should talk about him a bit more. While surfing the internet; looking for pictures of the Glee cast I discovered Tyler Shields, a photographer/artist based in L.A.

He got his start directing music videos then began photography. Tyler is known for his work with Video portraits and his photography work in the art and celebrity form. He is currently working on his new book The Dirty Side of Glamor.

In my opinion his photography is edgy, sexy, provocative, bizarre and beautiful all rolled into one! One day I dream to be photographed by this guy who has photographed numerous famous and not so well known people, such as his best friend Zachery Quinto, Glee-star Dianna Argon, Sean Farris, Hayden Panettiere and most controversially Lindsey Lohan.

Tyler Shields is also known for his controversial photography and projects such as staging a fake shoot out at one of his galley showings, trying to break the record for the staying awake the longest and making a painting out of blood for example. Photographs by him usually involve tons of fake blood, glitter, superheroes, Disney characters and overall craziness. It's amazing! <3

Just check it out! (http://www.tylershields.com/)

Here are so samples of his photographs and quotes:

"You will never see yourself the way the person who loves you sees you."

"Don’t waste time sleeping when you’re young. There will be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead."

"No matter how much you worry about the future its going to happen. So let it."

(Disclaimer: Yeah, clearly I don’t own anything of Tyler Shields.)

The End of the World

If you are reading this then you survived the end of the world! Congratulations! But seriously this kind of stuff always frustrates me, because I am a religious person, but I’m also a realist and I know that in the Bible it states that we are not supposed to know when the world is going to end or when judgement day is, because we should be preparing for it during the span of our whole life. In the slightly paraphrased words of Gareth Cliff “We know a crapure we see one.”

I hat e that non-believers are using this as an excuse to bash Christians. I mean my belief in God is not hurting anyone so why do people always have to break me down or mock me about it. Many Christians say that you have try to convert non-believers, but in my experience this isn’t the easiest thing to do so my policy is “Let me believe what I believe and I’ll let you believe what you believe.”

There are many level-headed believers who don’t have the Bible in one hand and a pitch fork in the other.  Seriously, I never really thought the world was going to end, but I my hope is that when I die I go to heaven. What and where heaven is or whether heaven actually exists might be questionable, but for me I’d rather believe in something than believe in nothing… People should just leave me to my own beliefs!

But yeah, I really don’t want to talk too much about religion, because it always starts up bad debates. I love and believe in the Lord, but know that others don’t and I don’t know where my place is in all of it. That’s all I’m going to say. So to the five people who honestly believed that it was supposed to be Judgement Day yesterday…um…sorry I guess. Better luck next time. Meanwhile as some “believers” are baffled about why the world didn’t end their big leader Harold Camping has been hiding out and hasn’t been seen since Friday night.

This morning I woke up and I wasn’t sure whether the rapture had come or not, because a weekend morning at Rhodes looks practically post-apocalyptic almost every weekend so you can’t really be sure.

(PS- Even though I knew that this all so stupid there was a very dodgy circle around the moon which was kinda freaky. Oh! And people on all social media forums keep spelling rapture wrong. It’s not Raptor! If the Raptor was coming then we would have another problem on our hands…

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-12043679-raptor-dinosaur.php

Jar of Hearts

To tie in with my earlier blog post about love I want to talk about Christina Perri’s song “Jar of Hearts.” This song became famous when Kathryn McCormick and Billy Bell preformed a dance routine, choreographed by Stacey Tookey., on it on the show “So you think you can Dance” during the June 30, 2010 show. Since then the song has become insanely popular and it has quickly become my go to song when I need a good cry. (Hey, we all have those days…)

(The So you think you can Dance video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToDZ9Q2hIBk)

 

The song is all about a guy who messes around with the hearts of numerous girls and he stores them up in his “jar of hearts.” Perri drew inspiration for the song from a real-life experience with a love interest who wanted to rekindle a broken relationship, but she was strong enough to tell him that she doesn’t need him anymore to be happy. I love this song soooo much!

"I wrote the song after I went home to Philadelphia for the holiday last December. I sat in my childhood bedroom and hid from the boy (with the jar of hearts) who wanted to see me. My heart wanted to see him, my head knew better. I couldn’t take one more break so I wrote the song instead."

In the video, Perri states "I really hope that the video connects me to the song and entertains all of the fans of So You Think You Can Dance because it’s because of them that this even happened. I really hope that they love it. I hope that they love the dance…and that they just feel like we did this song justice with this video."

 The music video for the song was directed by Jay Martin and “So You Think You Can Dance” contestants Allison Holker and Kathryn McCormick appear as dancers in the music video, performing choreography by Stacey Tookey.

(PS- Disclaimer- the song, music video and pictures don’t belong to me at all. )

http://odduckoasis.deviantart.com/art/Jar-of-Hearts-com-172908905?q=boost%3Apopular%20jar%20of%20hearts&qo=31

http://septemberrayne.deviantart.com/art/Jar-of-Hearts-203763688?q=boost%3Apopular%20jar%20of%20hearts&qo=488

Love means slowing losing your mind...

A good friend of mine, Linda, wrote quite an interesting blog the other day about what love is. Just like the Foreigner song “I wanna know what love is!” I’m pretty sure I know what love for my family and friends and my fat Labby feels like, but what about romantic love? Does it really feel like what I thought it did? Was feeling love for these guys?

I agree with Linda that love and relationships are complicated and often outside interferences or distance can ruin something wonderful between two people. In high school so much importance was put on finding boyfriend, but in ‘varsity it’s so different.

They told us here during Orientation week that ‘varsity isn’t a matching making program and that we are here to get our degrees; not husbands. Yet, you seem to hear that a lot… “Oh, Darling, university is where you will meet the man you will marry!” Seriously, how can can say that! There are barely any boyfriend-worthy ones around; not exactly husband material.

 I just turned 19 and I don’t know what I want. I’m still young- I can still date casually and have fun, but at what point should one begin to worry about being a bit more serious? Even talking about marriage at this age is killing me! I mean how can a person at the age of 19 or 20 know that they’ve picked the person they want to spend their WHOLE life with?

Saying “I love you” is serious and people shouldn’t take it lightly, but then again when you know you love someone you should tell them as much and as often as you can.

Anyway, the weird thing is that the expression “love hurts” is not just a clique. I’m sure that no matter how old you are it seems like you will alway remember the first person who broke your heart. I know I do…It hurts so much when love doesn’t turn out the way you it to, because you gave them everything you had. So many tears shed for stupid reasons (or stupid guys, who couldn’t make up their minds.)

Life won’t have a fairy-tale ending, it hurts a lot and love isn’t like what it is in the movies. If it were we would all be bumping into the guy of our dreams all the time.  It’s not all bad- I’m sure we won’t end up crazy cat ladies, but we mustn’t expect some miraculous moment in which everything lines up perfectly and you end up with the prefect person.

James Marsden’s character in 27 Dresses once said   “Love is patient; love is kind; love means slowly losing your mind.” And that might just be true. I'm a hopless romantic and my heart aches when I think about how most romantic things are just fantasy ideals...

Despite the fact that love hurts there comes a point where you have to get out from under the covers, switch off the Taylor Swift ballad and suck it up and live your life without just focussing on trying to catch the “perfect catch”. A bit of fishing knowledge for you…The prefect catch can often be scarred by all the hooks it has to fight off. 

"Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore."
— Lady Gaga

Basically in all my ramblings I’m trying to say that we won’t know ever truly know what love is. I’m just as confused as the rest.  Does true love exist? If it exists is it worth it? Are there “only exceptions”? Maybe I won’t truly ever know… and maybe I’ll meet some who proves me wrong…

Right now I might as well live with my heart on my sleeve even it hurts, because you never know what could happen…

(Here’s to being daring and speaking to that cute guy I see on campus and see how it goes…)

Sweet Lord...of the Rings!!

When I thought about writing a blog ‘The Lord of the Rings’ popped into my mind. I guess it’s ‘cause in my mind blogs are always linked to a love or an obsession of some kind. That is beside the point. Anyway...The Lord of the Rings. For some reason I though it wise to tackle reading the JRR Tolkien classic during my last year of High School. I must have simply decided to ignore the fact that the series is so long that it might that me a decade to read...

So I optimistically set off with the Fellowship of the Ring; nostalgically absorbing the details I had gained from watching the movies years ago. Yes, the book is brilliantly written and yes, I loved it, but wow, the book is long! After 30 pages you get an idea of what the valley looks like! Tolkien was a genius. I can barely think up what to write in a blog and he thought up a whole world; with its own history and a thriving population.

Naturally after reading the first one I had to read the rest, but my mind needed a rest so reading the Vampire Diaries seemed like the best way to shut off my mind for a while. (To clear up I have nothing against the CW series, I love it in fact, but the books were awful. How they managed to create a thrilling TV series based on that rot is beyond me, but more on this later.)

But after reading the Fellowship of the Ring and then enthusiastically discussing it with my brother, instilled a deep urge in me to see the movies again. So my brother, what a champ, convinced his friend to lend us the special extended edition pack of the whole series! Sure it took four day, numerous interrupts and random bathroom breaks, but in the end we watched all three movies (plus some extra special features.)

FACT: Viggo Mortensen is the best actor in the series. He should have won an Oscar by now for his work. Those who have seen “The Road” can confirm this. The man practically makes me want to weep after every performance. And even at his age he still looks fine! Shout-out to Dominic Monahan and Orlando Bloom. It would take hours to honour all the amazing actors and actresses in the movie; there are so many. Peter Jackson is the man!

If by the end of The Lord of the Rings you are not in tears then you do not have a heart or clearly you aren’t a fan and thus had wasted 9 hours of your life watching movies you dislike...making you an idiot.

So in the end I managed to read the whole series from beginning to end in the span of one year! It was so worth it… (PS JRR Tolkien was born in my home town, Bloemfontein! =D)

PS-For the full Lord of the Rings movie experience watch the Gollum/Sméagol inner monologue from the Two Tower a few times. It’s still classic! (Just take note that I might only be saying this because our disk got stuck at this part and in an attempt to fix the disk we inevitably watch this scene over and over and over and over again...)

 Peace out! And until next...'My preccioussssss'