My other half and I were lucky enought to be invited to Amour at Cirque for the Valentines Night .
Cirque is a relatively new burlesque club that has recently opened it’s doors in Manchester in a lovely victorian building.
Cirque has a really great atmosphere, some nice cocktails, great tunes to dance to, combined with some sexy and well choreographed burlesque entertainment. A great place for a night out.
Cocktails, Drinks & Refreshments
The Location
The Dancefloor
In the small hours of the night and still going strong. 🙂
The Show
What Do You Think?
How have you spent Valentines Day? Have you been to Cirque or do you plan going or do you maybe know some other great burlesque venues?
If you are looking for last minute affordable plus-size valentines outfit then here is my oersonal plus size wish list coming to your rescue along with “last orders” information to make sure you still get your dream outfit in time.
What do you think? Do you have a favourite?
Last Orders?
In order to receive your last minute outfit in time for valentines you need to order by:
Asos
Next Day Delivery: Friday 12.02. by 12pm, if you are willing to take some risk you might still be lucky if you order before 5pm on Saturday 13.02.
Missguided
Next Day Delivery: Friday 12.02. by 4pm
Sunday Delivery: Saturday 13.02 by 9pm
Boohoo
Weekend Delivery: Friday 12.02. by 8pm
Weekend Delivery: Saturday 13.03 by 7pm
Your Plans?
What are your plans for valentines day? Will you spend it with your loved one or go out with the girls, but most important, what will you be wearing?
Hello Internet, I have changed my hair colour again. This time it is purple & I am very much in love with it.
Many, Many Colours
Although it is probably not much of a surprise, anybody who may follow me knows that I do have a thing for changing my hair colours often. . Not to forget that I do have a thing for colours that are not the most natural.If you don’t yet feel free to have a browse through my past posts and I am sure you will notice that over the last few months I have collected quite a wide range of different colours.
Dyeing Tips Series
I am planning to write a bit more about this soon, giving you the best tips I have, from the bleaching to the dying and how you can same money, as there seems to be quite a bit of interest for this topic, while this is more of just a little colour update.
What This Purple Is Made Of
If you wonder where to get this purple, it does not come out of any bottle,as it is like almost all my hair colours self mixed from multiple dyes. This colour was mixed from a large portion of Conditioner, Bruised Violet, with a largish portion of Out Of The Blue with a dash of Directions Lilac and Atlantic Blue.
I was going for something more blue but I am more than happy with the result. I actually prefer this over the colour I was going for. The very best thing of this colour is actually that it goes perfect with my favourite MAC Lipstick – Up The Amp Amplified.
Exciting
Every time I dye my hair with a mix it is quite exciting to wait to find out how the colour is turning out, as the colour in the bowl never quite looks like the colour on your hair, but with experience you do get a good feel for it. The other advantage is that this colour is not permanent and always can be dyed over soon… 😉
Using Up My Bleach London Stash
For this dying cycle I wanted to use some of my Bleach London Dyes because I was planning to move over to La Riche Directions. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing which Bleach London, they are good dyes and I have made good experiences with them, I just personally prefered Directions and in particular their range of colours, but after how this colour has turned out I might stick withBruised Violet & Out Of The Blue For A While.
Unfortunately you can’t just pick Directions up at Boots, like you can with Bleach London, you will need to get them online . But this is still simple enough as Amazon does offer the full range, many even over their prime service through which you get unlimited free next day delivery: here 30 days free prime – just don’t forget to cancel, if you do not want to sign up for a year.
A Few Tips
While I want to save how-to’s for a later post there are a I essential tips I would like to give you, just in case you are considering to do something similar to your hair.
It is always best to leave the bleaching to a professional, if you decide to do it yourself, educate yourself well about the process and substances before you do it.
Regarding the actual colour start simple and search online for example images of how it has turned out on the hair of others.
Maybe abstain from mixing for now, consider to go for the colour out of the box.
You can control the strength of the colour by how much conditioner you mix in.
You can always increase the experimenting with experience.
I had not many things go wrong, but it has happened to me. Reduce the chance of that happening to you, And as a last tip, that is something you do not want to have happen to you without some backup colour to dye.
What Do You Think?
Would you go for an unnatural colour? What colour would it be? And what colour would you like to see me wear?
Ok girls it is time for another rant. I know I am ranting quite a lot here recently but there is just every other day some thoughtless body shaming or other stupidity going on. So recently I just really have to vent… a lot.
Its Instagram, Again
So what has happened this time? This time it’s Instagram, again. After banning the female nipple, pubic hair peeking our of a bathing suit, women on their period and not to forget being one of the breastfeeding nazis (read more here). Not to forget to time and again take down bra selfies of women above a size 10 while those of skinny women are fine. It is now shame to get shame people based on their bodies once again, as they have now put the word #curvy on their blacklist, which will not allow you to search for this hashtag anymore.
So when you as a larger lady post your next cute outfit on Instagram you might need to reconsider what hashtag you want to use if you would like to enable people to find you… Words you can choose now I guess are:
fat
chubby
chunky
corpulent
rotund
overweight
By the way #fatf*** also still works, in case you would like to use thatLovely isn’t it?
Why #Curvy Matters For Plus Positivity
But let’s be honest most terms have very negative connotations. The word curvy is a word that finally was a positive word, a word that enabled someone that will have struggled with a very negative body image for a long time finally to start looking at themselves in a more positive light
The debate of what to call your body type when you have a few more kilos on you has been going on for quite a while. And admittedly some #curvy women might be a little more round or boxy and some people really get weirdly angry about people that do not sport a traditional hourglass shape and call themselves curvy.
Does this really matter so much to the rest of the world that the word curvy is getting a second definition if it helps a fair amount of people gain a better and more loving self image. While I personally have made my peace with the word fat and have no problem calling myself a fatty at times, it is still hurtful for many. I am sure the word curvy will have contributed to giving a lot of women out there a positive self image, they can identify with.
Official Reason For Ban – Nudity
So why have they banned it. A spokesperson from Instagram apparently stated that a lot of the images tagged with the hashtag #curvy contained a lot of nudity.
Just the fact that a lot of the images that contained this hashtag apparently also contained a lot of nudity to blanket ban it, while a lot insulting and bullying terms can still readily be used by the trolls out there to put people down, that is just not a jhourglassshapeustification and a completely wrong approach.
This Is What Instagram Still Allows
So let’s have a look at what Instagram in it’s endevour to reduce nudity still allows: like #dildo, #sextoys, #asses, #pornos, #bigfatass, #titsandass and #pornstargay, these are fine but #curvy clearly has to go.
Next to these sexual terms Instagram also allows you to search for an array of negative and insulting terms regarding overweight that are not only containing a lot of nudity (depending on the specific term in question) but also are used to bully people some examples are #obese, #fatf***, #fatbitch and #fatpig. Yay for Instagrams priorities.
#obese
So now let’s have a look at what happens on the other side of the weight range, ins specific: what happens when you search for keywords like skinny or thin. Shouldn’t those attract pretty much the same type of pictures and shouldn’t Instagram react in the exact same way here? Well yes to question 1 (some nudity here as well) but a big fat no to question 2.
Instagram obviously is aware that that these pictures are containing an amount of nudity as they warn you when you when you click on the hashtag that the results contain graphic content, so they are aware of the nudity here. However these terms along with other searchable terms like #ana and #mia are known trigger terms for eating disorders, which Instagram also seems to be aware off and solves with a link to an eating disorder site, but you can still go through and admire the thigh gaps and see all the images of self harm, diet tips and food diaries.
So bottom line is they do allow sexual terms, derogatory terms all aspects of the other side of the weight range, despite being aware with all the issues connected with those terms, while a term that has had body positive effects for so many people gets straight away banned? Wait can somebody please explain that for me? I am not sure I understand their logic.
Why Not The Same Type Of Warning?
For some clarification. I am not asking to ban keywords like skinny, but rather ask for same treatment for the word curvy. Couldn’t they have slapped another one of those content warnings on it? If you like even with a link to a nutrition page for help with weight issues if someone at Instagram is worried about the health of the posters.
Not sure about their agendy
The bottom line is, I am not quite sure what their agenda is here. I can’t believe that the ultimate goal was to decrease nude pictures and their accessibility. Firstly because of all the offensive terms out there that I can’t believe they have not approached before this one but mainly because there is a very simple and targeted solution if they really wanted to target nude pictures.
If It Is About Nudity Why Not Use Nudity Detection Software?
Monitor the keyword with a program scanning for images containing nudity would be the perfect solution… Captain Obvious. Yes these programs do exist, they were made to speed up checking computers of suspects for illegal pornography and the way they work is scanning images for flesh tones (a little more complicated but that is the bottom line). These programs are so good, they can do this even for black and white pictures.
Apply this, with a few employees who check the pictures that it spits out as blocked. If you want to go with even less effort directly block the images or warn the users that their image is going to be blocked within a few hours if they don’t submit it for a review and boom only those are are submitted for being falsely detected need to be reviewd even more time saved. There you go, a fairly non complicated and targeted solution found.
An Alternative Movement Is Already There
Luckily the body positive movement is alive and well and there is already a protest movement forming within Instagram that have come up with an alternative term. So you don’t need to use the words from the list above, use the tag #curvee. There are already more than 500 images with this tag and they are getting more by the minute.
What Do You Think
So what do you think about the #curvy search ban? What do you think about Instagrams approach and will you miss the term or do you think it won’t make a big difference? I would love to hear from you.
For quite a long time I was mad with my mother, as to me she was the reason why I never got to wear a bikini…. What happened was, I had been given by someone a used bikini when I must have been around 6 but my mum did not allow me to wear it. She thought I was too young to wear one, as she believed a bikini is a piece of clothing sexualising the wearer and this would have been a bit too early for me.
You Are Too Fat To Wear A Bikini
Ultimately she was probably right with this. (I believe I was about 7 or so). Why I still ended up a little mad with her about this, was that once I was actually old enough to wear a bikini, I now felt myself that I was unable to wear a bikini.
Now it was society that had been successful in letting me believe that I was not allowed to wear a bikini, as I was by far too fat. What made it worse, the way it looked that was not going to change soon. Ultimately I had missed “my one chance” that I had. So this is how I ended up for a long time half jokingly blaming my mother for never ever going to be able to wear a bikini.
I Am Not Too “Anything”! I Will Wear A Bikini!
This all changed last year. Now the plus-size movement had come along, by now I had become a plus-size blogger and tried all sorts of “crazy things” like wearing a jumpsuit or showing bare my shoulders (#shock, #horror) Gabi Fresh had started the #fatkini movement and in a weird moment of “what the hell” I decided to order and try a bikini. And that is when everything changed.
I stumbled across a so called swim bra, which is what it says on the tin. A proper bra, holding everything in place and pushing it up made of swimwear fabric. Combine that with a nice high waist bikini bottom and you have the perfect beginners plus-size bikini. The first step to getting used to it. Bottom line: This was a lot more flattering than a lot of swimsuits or tankinis I had tried over the years I loved it as soon as I put it on.
Long live the #Fatkini
The underwired Elomi swimbra is really absolutely amazing and the best piece of swimwear I have ever owned. It gives amazing support, giving your bust the perfect support and the multistraps give you a bit of variability It gives such great hold you can even take the straps off and wear it as a bandeau bikini top.
The super high waisted Mary of Sweden bikini bottom which are not only giving the whole set a nice vintage look, it is also a great way of easing your way into the world of bikinis without having to expose too much of your tummy all at once if you are not ready for that yet.
So ultimately my very first bikini was still very plain, simply being black, nothing too flashy. But you have to ease your way into it somehow. So after I had hit the local pool a few times and nobody had run away screaming due to seeing my plus size bod in a bikini I got a bit bolder and decided I wanted to go for a bit more colour. Well it ended up a lot more colour as that was the time when also my rather drastic hair change happened.
Magisculpt Tropical Print Bikini Top – JD Williams
This lovely specimen of a #Simplybekini sports an absolutely lovely tropical print and still gives your boobs a really great amount of hold, not as much as the Elomi swim bra, but costing only £12.50 it is way cheaper than the Elomi top. At the time I bought this lovely set at Simply Be, however they do not appear to offer it anymore so,while you can still buy the top at JD Williams, the bottoms appear not to be available anymore. But you can easily mix and match. I actually myself like to wear the top combined with a black bottom and the other way round. I am a big fan of mix & match Bikinis.
A Lot More Choice Lead To A Massive Obsession
Well anyway, this is how the obsession started. Since then and particularly now that the Summer has come and we are in the middle of the Swimwear & Bikini Season, I find myself quite obsessively browsing plus-size bikinis.Since last year the choice has grown massively.Last year it was pretty much Gabi Fresh’s original #Fatkinis at Swimsuitsforall which notoriously appeared to be sold out or Simply Be. Now it is not anymore only the usual plus-size retailers that might have 2 or 3 bikini sets if you are lucky, now a lot more regular retailers like Asos, Boohoo, Missguided and Forever21 have entered the plus-size bikini scene.
Current Discount: there is currently a 30% discount on the Missguided Holiday Shop, including their plus size range, using the code SUMMER – Valid till 29th June 2015
The scene is going into the right direction I am loving my Bikinis, and nobody will tell me again I can’t wear one. I am loving the new availability of Plus-Size Bikinis, the only issue this is neither helping my issue with being really bad with choice (you won’t want to go to a restaurant with me if there is a too large menu…) nor is it helping my wallet… I guess though I can live with that.
Ultimately my message is and stays. Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t wear a bikini because you are to fat. Go and get your Bikini!
Gosh it was not easy to decide what to wear for Plus North, I still had (and have) quite a few outfits to show off that I had not worn yet and there are just so many great pieces that just have come out for the new season. On top of all that I just had changed my hair colour, (and at that to orange!), which really changes the look of *everything* on you.
So as said above, I was really unsure what to wear and went through about a thousand different options, till I came on Asos Curve across what you see below and then what I was about to wear was immediately made clear.
I am currently absolutely in love with pleated skirts and if you follow my blog you know that there is basically no skirt or dress I am wearing without a belt. However, on pleated skirts most belts appear to look a bit “off” and somehow never sit right or stay in place. So the contrast waistband on this skirt is really amazing and exactly what I was looking for.
Bodies are my new love. I am currently discovering so many new things that work for me. And one revelation for me was that I actually like the look of myself with my shirt tucked into my skater or a-line skirts and even feel comfortable in it.
However, that once again can be a bit of a pain as, depending on the shirt, you might constantly have to keep an eye on it if it is staying properly tucked in. The amazingly simple solution? Bodies!
I would have never thought I would ever be found in a body again. As a kid my mom had to force me into them, but now they are my new found love. I already own this beauty and am loving it, although unfortunately it is currently sold out. I am sure I will be collecting more bodies (of the textile variety of course) in my wardrobe over the next months.
The Cherry On Top: The Accessories
The final pieces to top the outfit off and to give it the proper 5os style were the accessories: The absolutely essential 50s worker style headscarf from Asos and a killer necklace from Missguided.
So far this outfit has been one of my favourite outfits. I absolutely adore the 50s plus-size pin-up style. Not only since blogging but, well basically ever. It is a killer outfit showing off my best curves and enhancing them to a nice hourglass shape. Most importantly it is also a great homage to the 50s and the pin-ups of that time. Not to forget that this day was also one of the first times I (more or less) successfully managed to style my hair in a way that involved back-combing.
What Do You Think?
What do you think? Have you been to Plus North? Did you have the same dilemma? What is it you like to wear to events like this? I would love to hear from you!
British Plus Size Awards
I am proud to announce that I have been nominated for the British Plus Size Awards in the cateogory “Best New Blogger”. I really would appreciate it if you would take you time to vote for me.
To vote for me and your favourite plus-size retailers & celebrities just click on the button below:
