Plus Size Models and Body Image

Earlier this week I read an article that covered the fact that plus size model Tess Holliday had signed a modeling contract with a big agency, being the first in her size to do so.

Ppl forget that I'm a person. Why is it ok to diminish how hard I've worked my entire life & pushed against great odds because of my size?

— Tess H🍒lliday (@Tess_Holliday) January 30, 2015

I’ve been following Tess on social media for a loong time and I did a celebration dance when I heard this fantastic news!

 

I think it is so important that we start to see the lovely beauties of different sizes doing their thing! Tess is an absolute fox and the work that she does with trying to help other girls to be proud of the body that they have through her EffYourBeautyStandards is amazing and so important! The media has taught us girls to hate our bodies if it does not fit into the size that they have decided is the right one. We are bombarded with commercials, movies, music videos etc. that shows us bodies that are photoshopped to someone other than that person who actually stood in front of the camera.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that this isn’t the case for everyone. Not all of them are twisted versions of the truth but there’s no secret that way too many are! It’s time for a change and that change has been very much needed for way too long! And I think that women like Tess is a big part of that change (no pun intended)!

So when I was done doing my dance I looked for any cover of this story in Norwegian newspapers, and sure enough, there it was! Hurray!! But then I made the fatal mistake of reading the reader’s comments below and it made me so sad and angry.

Most of the people who posted comments agreed that it is a good thing that we are seeing models who’s got some meat on their bones, but then the rants came. How Tess is an unhealthy role model for young girls. How they think that it is irresponsible to show “fat” women because that will make young girls think that it is healthy to be obese/fat.

“This is the counterpart of starved and anorectic! We need healthy role models for our kids, not this!!”

 

Really? Is this really what people are taking from these great news? Let me set the records straight right now!

The focus on this news is not what size she is! Does who follow Tess will also know that she does work out and is healthy but has always been a big girl. She was bullied out of school as a young girl and never thought that she would be a model even though she really wanted to.

So all of you with all of that negativity out there, throwing it around like you just don’t care: What makes you any better than does bullies? Haven’t we grown past that yet? Shame on you!

So when you’ve maybe gotten that through your head then tell me this: Are you comfortable in your own body?

I hope you are, because we should all be! We always find things that we would like to improve, and that’s fine, but do it for you! NOT for anyone else. A size zero won’t make you happy!

The important message that Tess is all about is redefining the standards of beauty. To love oneself and letting go of does stupid ideals that’s been pushed down our throats for way to long. To stop the bullying and to see the beauty that is in us all. To reach for the stars and follow our dreams no matter what other people say!

So I say: YOU GO TESS!! I’m rooting for you!!!

 

Let’s shake it off and chase those dreams!!

What’s in your mailbox?

When I was a little girl I had lots of pen pals and I remember the joy of looking into our mailbox finding an envelope from one of them. A paper written a totally different place in this world. Stories of cultures, lives and personalities. It was like going on a new adventure every time.

Time passed. Life went as it usually does and now I sit here and I miss that feeling. I miss looking into my mailbox and seeing something interesting (other than bills and spam), finding yet another adventure.

I remember how I loved discovering other people’s handwriting. Getting e-mails can be all fine and dandy, but there’s something so special about seeing how someone else writes. It feels like a tiny window into someone else’s soul that one can look into.

In this digital word of ours I miss the touch and feel of a personal letter. A letter to hold and to keep not just put away in a folder on my Mac.

Sitting here missing that special feeling I’ve made up my mind.

From now on I will send one snail mail every month. To a friend, a family member or maybe even a stranger? Maybe to you?

If there are any one else out there who remembers this joy, misses it or maybe you’ve never had a pen friend before but always wanted one? Then maybe we could help each other out?

Send me an e-mail on christina@geek-heaven.com and join me in my Project Snail Mail 🙂

Let’s go back in time… Together!

You could also contact me through the thingymajiggy below:

 

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Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk – REVIEW

I hope you enjoyed this video review of Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk! Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel 🙂 

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Would you like your own copy of the book? Click on the Amazon or BookDepository logo below:

  

 

A Teacher, Eh? by Grist and Larsen

I’ve been a fan of Mark Grist for quite some time now. I still can’t get enough of this movie and poem:

I have no idea how many times I’ve watched Girls Who Read. It touched me in a way that is rare. It’s a special kind of love that only true artists can make one feel.

About a week ago Grist and Larsen posted a new video on their channel and this one is just as powerful and strong.

Enjoy 🙂

Red Queen The Substrate Wars by Jeb Kinnison – REVIEW

Red Queen is the first in The Substrate Wars series and was sent to me by the author for an honest review.

This is a science fiction thriller set in the US in the not too distant future. The  country is run by a Unity Party, combining the worst of both the Democrats and the Republicans. The Bill of Rights is being ignored and people are being monitored by the government. Terrorist attacks results in more restrictions on people’s freedom and privacy.

The story follows a group of young people who are tired of their countries censor, stagnant economy and no jobs for young educated people. And when one of their favored professors suddenly disappears after being contacted by Homeland Security who suspects that he’s staying in touch with a former student who now runs a rebel group.

These young students discovers a new kind of technology that could ever free mankind or be the ultimate weapon to control or destroy us if it falls into the wrong hands. What are they to do with it? And they have to work fast before Homeland Security arrests them all and get their hands on the technology. Who can they trust? How do they know that they’re not being watched already?

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I was very intrigued by the synopsis when I was contacted about this book and it did not disappoint me. It was fast-paced and exciting. The characters were really well made but I would have loved to have gotten to know them a little bit better. In the beginning of the story some of the writing could get a bit too technical for my taste, but it definitely picked up and got easier to follow as the story progressed.

I can’t say that I’ve read anything quite like this before so I went into this with a very open mind and was definitely pleasantly surprised!

I’m really looking forward to seeing where this series goes and I definitely recommend this if you like political thrillers and science fiction.

Want your own copy? Click on the Amazon or BookDepository link below:

  

My Own Writing Published

From time to time I enjoy a little erotica either in the form of short stories or novels. And after seeing the statistics around Fifty Shades of Grey (even though there are so many better alternatives out there in my opinion) we can’t deny that most of us do enjoy those words that has our hearts pounding a little harder.  I’ve been writing some short stories myself over the years but I’ve never sent them anywhere. Though about it many times, but wasn’t confident enough about my writing to have it leave the jungle of files on my Mac. But last year I decided that I would give it a go. I wrote a new erotic short story and sent it in with sweaty palms to Cupido. This was early in 2014 if I remember correctly.

I had it in the back of my mind a long while but as months went by and I didn’t hear anything I thought that it didn’t make the cut. Then one late evening in the summer of 2014 I got an email from the magazine where they apologized for the long process time but that they enjoyed my story and wanted to buy and publish it! First came the shock. I just couldn’t believe it! Then came the happy dance and the smile that would have gone all the way around my head if I didn’t have ears 😛

The one thing I remember the most from that moment was what my boyfriend said to me. He is so incredibly supportive about my writing and that makes me love him even more!

“This is the beginning!”

Those words really got me and I will never forget them. Some might say that it’s just an erotic short story, but to me it is so much more. It is my writing and my name making the cut and getting published. And yesterday I could finally see it in my print. There it was! On the shelves! A magazine with my writing in it! This might sound cheesy (and so be it) but I’m proud of myself for taking the chance, trying and making it!

This is the beginning and I look forward to sending in even more short stories and seeing where it takes me. I have some partly finished and some are still just ideas to erotica and other genres, but I’m really looking forward to working on them. Things are going slowly with the condition of my arm now a days but I’m getting new treatment now and I’m hoping it will do the trick 🙂

Thank you guys for reading and commenting here and on other platforms. You guys are amazing and I love sharing my journey with you!

For those of you Norwegian readers in here, the issue of Cupido with my short story in it is out for sale now! You could also by the digital copy on www.cupido.no 🙂

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – REVIEW

In this book we meet Jacob, a sixteen year old boy with a grandfather that has told him unbelievable stories about the orphanage he grew up in. He showed Jacob pictures of peculiar looking children that possessed different sort of gifts and he also talked about monsters as though they were real. As Jacob grows up he is told that there is nothing true to his grandfather’s stories, it is only a coping mechanism for what he experienced as a child during the war. Naturally Jacob is very disappointed and when his grandfather gets older and more and more paranoid he sees him not as the magical person he was in his upbringing but more as a delusional old man who needs to get into a home.

One day his grandfather calls him up and ask about the keys to his weapons cabinet (which the family has hidden so that he won’t hurt himself or someone else) and when Jacob tells him he doesn’t have it he gets angry and sounds even more paranoid. Jacob decides to go over to his house and finds his father missing. They go searching for him and find his body in the forest behind his house. He’s body looks mangled as from an animal, but suddenly Jacob sees a creature in the woods that looks anything but human.

After experiencing this (and having to tell the police and his parents what he saw) they believe him to be suffering from post traumatic stress and making it all up. He’s even told so by so many that he starts to believe it himself even though his nightmares about the creature comes back to haunt him every night.

After going through his grandfathers house and belongings he decides to go to Wales to see the orphanage that his grandfather lived in. He tells his psychiatrist that it is a trip to cope with all that has happened, but there is more to it than that. And what he finds will change everything.

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I found this book to be much more than what I expected. All of the pictures and illustrations throughout the book is absolutely amazing and I was even more thrilled about the whole thing when I read that the pictures are real and only a few of them has had some minor editing to fit into the story.

Riggs writes in a captivating and fast paced way that gripped me from the very first page. The mystery and creepiness of it all made for a very different and interesting read. I felt like I was right there, next to Jacob, experiencing all of it with him.

There are lots of interesting characters in this book and a story very unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I really liked Jacob as a character and could definitely relate to that feeling of so strongly believing in something magical as a child and then one day having it torn away.

A fantastic story and an absolute beauty of a book! Highly recommend it!

One of my favorite quotes from the book:

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

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I hope you enjoyed this review! Have you read this book? Let me know in the comments below what you thought of it or if you have anything else on your mind 🙂

Toodles!

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen – REVIEW

This book is the first in The Queen of The Tearling trilogy. We meet Princess Kelsea Raleigh a girl raised in exile awaiting to take the throne of Tearling at the age of nineteen. Hidden away so she won’t be executed her two guardians teaches her about history and the practice of being queen, but there’s so much they won’t tell her about her mother (Queen Elyssa) and her kingdom.

Kelsea is very ordinary, plain even. She has not inherited her mothers beauty and she needs to lose weight, but she is smart and she loves to read.

“Her throne awaits.. If she can live long enough to take it.”

No one expected her to live to be nineteen, but she finds herself nineteen and leaving the only place she’s ever known going to a kingdom (her kingdom) where there are multiple forces working against her, stoping at nothing to try to avoid her coronation. Her uncle is one of them and The Red Queen of Mortmesne another. She sets out on her journey with the glowing Tearling sapphire around her neck and her one priority is to stay alive.

***

I went into this with such high expectations and ended up being really disappointed. It had potential to be great but didn’t live up to it. The story was interesting, but I had trouble connecting with the character. The thing I had most problems with was the world build in this story. A post-apocalyptic world where our now present time is the past. They have plastic surgeons but not a printing-press?

We have this fantasy realm where Kelsea is reading Tolkien, Grimm and Rowling. That just feels wrong.

I read through a lot of the reviews on Goodreads and this is obviously a love it or hate it kind of book. I’m one of the few who falls in the middle here. I wasn’t bored, but I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I was hoping to.

I would say it ended up as a 2,5 stars for me. It just wasn’t for me, but I will probably read the next book in the trilogy as well to see if might change my mind somewhat.

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Want your own copy of The Queen of the Tearling? Click on the Amazon or BookDepository logo below:

Kill Your Boss by Shane Kuhn – REVIEW

Kill Your Boss (published in the US as The Intern’s Handbook) tells the story of John Lago. John is an assassin working for HR inc. This book is part confessional, part how-to book for surviving as an assassin. HR inc. sends their assassins into corporations disguised as interns.

“Interns are invisible. You can tell executives your name a hundred times and they will never remember it because they have no respect for someone at the bottom of the barrel, working for free. The irony is that they will heap important duties on you with total abandon. The more of these duties you voluntarily accept, the more you will get, simultaneously acquiring TRUST AND ACCESS. Ultimately, your target will trust you with his life and that is when you will take it.”

Slowly gaining trust and getting access to their target they work as interns and work hard on not being remembered or noticed.

John Lago finds himself at the age of 25 (which is quite old in his line of work) and ready to retire from the life of an assassin. He just have to finish one last assignment and then he is free to live a normal life. This is the story of that last assignment and with it comes most of his tips and tricks for survival and succeeding. His last assignment turns about to be much harder and more difficult than any he’s experienced before.

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I must admit that I bought this one just as I buy my wine from time to time. “Ooo! That one’s pretty!” I’m a sucker for a pretty, unique or funny cover. My boyfriend and I had seen this cover (and mentioned that it was quite funny) a few times while browsing in some bookstores and one day I just had to get it without taking the trouble to find out anything about the story. Let’s just call it going into it with an open mind.

This story is just as fast paced as an action movie (might have something to do with Mr. Kuhn’s career as a movie producer) and it is a page turner for sure. Written as if it was a memoir/handbook and very witty as well it is a fast read and I enjoyed it very much. I was on the edge of my seat (sofa.. mostly sofa..) and I giggled loudly and even had to read out some quotes to my boyfriend as I was reading through this one.

It was funny, exciting and very different! Definitely a pleasant surprise when I went into it with no expectations 🙂

Highly recommend this book if you want something action packed and witty, but on the lighter side!

One of my favorite quotes from Kill Your Boss:

“Above all, you must be humble. When you are humble, you are like a sponge, taking in the world and letting it fill you with the knowledge of what is real. Pride and arrogance are a dry sponge. You learn nothing. You think you know everything when it’s not even possible to know everything. And then you’re the dumbass with the surprised look on your face when someone puts a bullet in you.”

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Click on the links below to get your own copy at Amazon or BookDepository

*if you use my affiliates links I get a small commission*

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Until next time, Toodles!

 

Christmas Book Haul

Just uploaded my Christmas Book Haul! Have a look and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already 🙂

Toodles!