Trending; No Make-Up Selfies - UPDATED

Last night my Facebook feed was chocca full of make-up free selfies.

At first it was funny, then as it started to fill I found myself getting annoyed.

I mean, how the hell is a photo going to help our fight against cancer?

Sure, we can 'raise awareness', but I don't know a single soul who doesn't know what cancer is.

We all have an idea of how to avoid it (plenty of suncream & no smoking).

We've all had the 'I've found a lump' panic (even if it's only a split second until you realise that's a bone and it's always been there. I recently had a mole go all peculiar, turned out to be a strategically placed spot. Boo hiss).

And we've all been scarred by losing someone to this terrible disease.

No make up selfie Vs cancer?

Seems ridiculous.

Until I dug deeper.

Too often, women can be awful to each other. There's always gossip, mis-information and far too much stirring behind each other's backs. It drives me to distraction, so it's nice to see us working together, as it were. 

There is something very beautiful in the solidarity between all my female Facebook friends.

ok, so not all these women are my FB friends lol, I added a few extras :)

What's even nicer, is that it seems this no make-up trend actually derived from an act of support from a woman to a woman. 

Laura Lippman posted a selfie on twitter with the hashtag #itsokkimnovak after 81 year old Kim Novak received a lot of negative attention due to her appearance at the Oscars.

Laura Lippman's selfie

Kim Novak at the Oscars

 It immediately went viral with both women and men posting selfies using the hashtag.

In a matter of days it seems, the trend on Facebook has twisted it to 'raise awareness' for cancer. Bit random, but Facebook does always have a tendency to be a tad sensationalist.

I don't know why Lippman chose to go make up free when Novak was being attacked for her over use of plastic surgery, but I hope she was trying to express that we should be more accepting of how a woman chooses to present herself to the world.
I mean, yes ok, she's 81 and she's had a hell of lot of work done, but she's old school Hollywood. That's her life, not mine. Her choice, not mine. What she does with her face is her business (literally).

This made me laugh, not because this is how I view my naturally beautiful friends, but because my inner nerd loves this movie.

But it does raise a valid point.

We're all so afraid.

Most of my friend's selfies come complete with an apology for looking so rough.

The no make up selfie could be about accepting who we are as we are and trying to be more content.

The happier you are with your body, the more likely you are to touch it, check it and therefore spot anything unusual. We are also more likely to nip off to the docs & get our bits out for inspection & therefore get the treatment we need.

Only the other night I was watching Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies. Dr Christian was measuring men's penis' (is the plural peni?) so they could gage 'growers' and 'show'ers'. His main point was that if they aren't ashamed of their manhood & aren't worried the Dr will laugh at the size of it, they'll be more likely to get it checked if anything peculiar cropped up.

And that's how the no make-up selfie could help raise awareness for cancer. 

By making us love ourselves that little bit more.

As well as a surge in self love, I hope that cancer charities all over get a surge in donations too.

I'm so pleased to see some of my FB friends have chosen to post links to donation pages, because I think, though it's lovely to wave a sympathetic hand, but money, actual money is of more use.

A really easy way is to text 'beat' to 70099 to donate £3.

Cancer Research will receive at least £2.81 depending on your operator.

(UK only)

Or you donate another way here. 

When I've posted this, I'll be sending that text.

It's of course up to you. It's your money. I'm not judging anyone.

For now, here's my selfie.

I'm not wearing any make-up - honest.

I want to end with something I found on the Militant Baker's FB page.
"I'd rather be an honest mess, than be a perfect lie".
(If you want to start learning about self love, start there)

**************************************UPDATE***************************************

I had to add something here, simply because after I wrote this, the no-make up selfie did do something completley amazing; donations are up by record levels.
stuff like this kept apearing on my news feed;

 However cynical you might feel, that's awesome.

Don't Panic. It's only Facebook.

I am constantly being driven mad (but not driven away it seems) by the shit people post on Facebook.

The constant;

For crying out loud. The fact they are always so unbelievably easy tells me one thing.
Information sharing spam.

The incessant 'police' warnings making women feel unsafe going to the frickin store (that's a rather in depth rant that I'll not get into here, but it had to be mentioned).

The candy crush invites....

These;

Whatever your beliefs might be, the idea that angels or god or whatever is 'challenging' you through Facebook is absurd. I think this shit is nasty for so many reasons. In my humble opinion it is false hope giving lies. This comes from a place of love and care, but if your life is so broken, only you can fix it.

I hate all 'like'/'share'/'ignore' memes. Full stop. Especially the ones that use photos of really poorly children....grrrrrr.

I'm also annoyed by the fact that every other day there is a new 'missing person/dog' spread on Facebook. I usually google them, if I have a moment. The reason I've never shared one is because they have almost always been found. Of course I understand how useful social networking sites can be for sharing information quickly, but it's a useless tool if people become blasé about seeing these things presuming them to be bullshit. If we checked them before we shared them, it would be a far more powerful weapon.

So anyway, now this;

Now we're all terrified of six legged spiders??

Cue the back story which has made me write this today.

Yesterday my boys were playing with a spider, which by the time I caught them and recommended they put it in the bug collector so they could look at it, only had six legs. I presumed they had managed to pull in the off in the unmentionable game they were playing with it before I came to the rescue. But when I saw this on a friend's page, I began googling, fearful that they had in fact been playing with something quite dangerous.

Now I'm going to have to say it.

I didn't want to. 

I didn't want to be a bitch. 

But people, will you please, before you put something on your FB wall, will you please google it? 

Find out for yourself if it's true or not.

This is what I found, after months of being annoyed by the whole 'sudden influx of 10,000,000,000 deadly spiders in the U.K.' thing.

Google was mostly full of cheap newspaper articles about deadly spider bites, but there was also some real information about the species.

Interestingly, this spider the noble false widow, has been in the UK since it came in on some bananas in 1870. 
So no sudden influx. 
Just an increase in numbers and a movement north as our climate became warmer.

Also, it turns out it's not so deadly, since no one as actually died. Ever.

Warning, don't watch this video if your stomach turns at the crawling of a spider over a persons hand. Mine does. I held it in because my boys were watching and I'm trying to be brave.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/false-widows--it-s-probably-a-false-alarm-152131532.html

I learnt a fantastic new fact today. There are 670 species of spider in Britain (blurgh), but only 12 of these are capable of biting a human (yay!).

So, I think we should try to be more responsible about what we throw onto our timelines, and not just click it without thinking.

And let's try not stress people. 

Relax.

Even if you've seen it on Facebook, doesn't mean it's true :)

Annoyed by other people's statuses...not me

On the radio this morning they were discussing that one issue that just keeps cropping up when it comes to Facebook and twitter; how easily annoyed people are by other peoples statuses about their kids/dogs/jobs, etc.

I understand their point of view, but why are people so miserable?

So what if I go on about whether or not my kids have gone to bed nicely? So what if a friend’s baby took her first steps? So what if someone’s dog had a great walk in the woods? And so what if they are counting down until Friday coz they hate their job? I think these are the things that are important to people, that’s the sole purpose of Facebook/twitter feeds, these are the things happening in our friends everyday lives, and that’s exactly what I’m interested in. We can’t all only ever put cool witty remarks on every single update.

I don’t watch Eastenders or Corrie, but I love reality TV, I love watching real people reacting to real events and situations, and I think that’s why I love social networking sites. I’m not in it for the wise cracks, the constantly shared photos (except the ones that really make me laugh), or the constant flirting on twitter. I just want to hear/read about people’s normal lives. Raw and honest. And if that means that every Monday and particular person is groaning about their job, and every Saturday someone is out on the town looking a tiny bit trashy, and the constant stream of baby talk, dog photos is absolutely fine with me.

If you’re not interested, turn the damn computer off, or just unfriend/unfollow them. Easy as pie.