Street Harassment: How A Stranger Stole My Hat

Last night at eleven, I was getting off a train at Manchester Piccadilly after a day in the countryside. As soon as I hit the streets, I realised it must have been a football day or something, because the city was one huge chant. Teenage bullying and general life experience makes me wary of large groups of men, so I kept my head down and power-walked onwards to the bus stop.

So there I am, pressing the wait button at the traffic lights, one earphone in blaring Fun’s Some Nights on repeat to distract me from the world, when I feel someone behind me. A man snatches the hat off my head and keeps on walking. I turn around to see a group of five or six “lads” jeering, pointing and shouting at me whilst the thief in question adjusts my hat on his head.

Pull Yourself Out

(ETA: I decided to write OUT my thoughts  on depression. specifically mine. Warning: It’s self-indulgent, rambling and  off the top of my head so maybe even I won’t agree with it in the morning. If you don’t want to read about how mad I am, keep scrolling. all opinions are my own and i’m not claiming my experience is everyone else’s etc etc etc.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about depression recently. Well, who am I kidding, I think about depression most of the time. Occasionally I devote bus journeys to wondering why certain people’s brains came attached with happiness-seeking-missiles, but generally I’m thinking about how great I’ll feel when I’m not sobbing and clawing at the walls of my bathroom.

COMPETITION TIME: Guess That Sentence

Testing, testing. One iphone with voice recognition. Two or three terribly exaggerated accents. Eleven first lines from famous novels, read out in these voices and transcribed exactly as twenty-first century technology receives it. Can you guess what these opening gambits are supposed to be?

Can You Help Save Wizard’s Way?

Most of you won’t know this about me, but when I was fourteen I used to be pretty big on the Wizard scene. I’m not talking about party tricks, where you pull multicoloured silk scarves out of a tube or guess whichever card someone picks. No, I’m talking about hardcore, magicballs-to-the-wall wizardry.

Why The Gaming Industry Is Still (Button) Bashing Women

It seems impossible for anyone to still insist that video games are a male past-time now. With a games console in practically every home that can afford one, anyone can play from five year old kids to eighty year old pensioners. Yet there is still a stereotype, an opinion that women don’t understand games, aren’t very good at them or just don’t fit into video game culture.

The evidence stacks up. Female characters are usually super-sexualised or placed in frail, supporting roles. Peach longs to be rescued and Bayonetta “can pick up an enemy’s spear and use it as a stripper pole”. Sexy, slim and beautiful but without the muscle definition, obviously. Something nice to look at. The idea seems to be that if you have a strong female character at the forefront of the game, men will not be able to relate to her. Good luck girls, because sex is still selling. You’re just not allowed to buy it.

We Are Disgusted, But Rarely Surprised

With intensive coverage of the gang rape of a woman in New Delhi, people have been quick to condemn India and it’s relationship with the female body. “A Dark Day For India”, “India Should Be Ashamed” is the general opinion of bloggers, journalists and people on the street. This mentality is strange to me, because of it’s utter hypocrisy.

Why Does Everyone Hate Taylor Swift?

This week, the tabloid news tells us that Taylor Swift has split from her brief relationship with One Direction singer Harry Styles. I don’t know why I felt the need to mention his band’s name, as I’m pretty sure even my Grandma knows who Harry Styles is by now. You can’t buy a scrunchie from Claire’s without squeezing past a gondola of 1D-themed keyrings, bags and necklaces. Suffice to say One Direction are huge, which has led to some assuming that “Haylor” was only a PR stunt to begin with. But hey, they went to the zoo. That’s a pretty cool marketing contract to have with someone.