Are You Being Served?

In the UK, probably like any other country, monetary transactions in a commercial shopping environment is marred by blatant rudeness. I hear people moan how the sales people in the UK just aren’t quite what they used to be; efficient, pleasant,  polite and helpful. Well, lets be honest they don’t all offer the same level of customer service as that provided in the U.S for example!!!

Yet, is this always the case? Are the sales people really the problem or is there more besides to consider?

Now I understand 1st hand what it is to be a sales person, having worked in retail during my time in college and university. I understand disaffection, dissatisfaction, resentment amongst staff, terrible working hours and wages. Many sales people who serve you in shops, supermarkets and take your telephone calls everyday, are also no doubt college students. Students feeling just as I did; bored and sick of inane complaints over inconsequential things (bad attitude right? Well that’s every college students prerogative)!

Although in mentioning a bad attitude, rudeness for the sake of it is NEVER excused. I was never a surly, lazy or nasty, that is not my style. Yet, this old adage too that “the customer is always right” is completely WRONG!!!

There are those customers who are the thoroughly horrible, nasty, rude, ill mannered, intimidating and threatening type. I know as I have experienced these people. There is something about ‘shops’ in general that induce customers to act in a way completely alien to their normal behavioural types. In fact if such behaviour transpired on public streets, they’d often be arrested for it! I mean what sane person, a grown man for example, is willing to threaten a 18yr old girl?? Only in a shop where the older man is a customer, and 18 year old is a sales person (me).

What right has any customer to call a sales person stupid, a bitch or threaten them with violence??? Is it just because the customer is annoyed with the shop, the products, or annoyed with their own lives and inadequacies? After all the sales person doesn’t own the shop, has no control on the stock and tries their best to do what they can for a customer, even a rude and nasty customer!

I mean even murderers have human rights so why doesn’t a sales person too???

What crime have they really committed except for working for a terrible company that won’t protect their own staff’s safety, by advocating a no tolerance of customer abuse and violence against them. Is it their fault they have ineffective and un-supportive managers, who allow customers to rule the roost?

All of this abuse happens more often than you’d even think too. I KNOW AS I’VE seen it all happening. Appalling,  yes it is as stores think this is OK – that their staff should be OK with this lack of support from people responsible for them, and take such abuse with a smile.

This barrage of name calling and so on can occur on a daily basis, and the customer is never ‘pulled up’ on it. Yet, if the staff say one thing deemed inappropriate, they can face discipline or even the sack. Isn’t it only fair; if you can give abuse you should expect to receive it in return, customer or not?

So, next time you are in a shop and the sale person is a little unhappy, not cheerful, and doesn’t have a fake smile plastered over their face, is a little short tempered or perhaps ill-mannered; give a thought as to why. Consider this  before you jump to conclusions, for vexing your ideals of perfect customer service.

Perhaps just before they served you they had been victims of verbal abuse, threatened with violence, not supported by their management. Perhaps they have been made to feel like garbage just because they are sales people and not Doctors or Lawyers somewhere.

Sales people are only people too; they have feelings, rights, families and aren’t there to be abused.

Think about it!

One Good Run

Aspire to climb as high as you can dream

‘Without pursuing our dreams we might as well be vegetables’, Burt Munro who set the fastest land speed world record in 1967 on a 1920 Indian Scout Motorbike; he was 68 at the time.

Following a dream that others might deem improbable or ridiculous; dedication or delusion?

I constantly talk about following a life path or feeling like I am losing my purpose, and people, even those close to me, look at me like I’ve gone crazy. The concept of a life ‘path’ or ‘purpose’ seems alien to them.

I strongly believe there is more to life than the mundane day in and out routine; shopping, the 9-5, paying bills, and so on and so on. I refuse to believe there are people out there devoid of dreams, ambitions or without ‘illusions of grandeur’. How can people be happy or satisfied with merely the ‘norm’?

Everyone surely harbours some dream, grew up wanting to be something; a teacher, a politician, a dancer or an astronaut?

So, when did these dreams and ambitions cease to exist, and become condemned to the vault of the unobtainable?

Is there something wrong with wanting more or holding onto your life dreams?

Is there a time to merely give up and accept defeat?

Well, Burt Munro never gave up. He began his dedication to racing Motorbikes in 1926, and all the while he searched for new ways to make them perform faster. This relentless pursuit of his dream led him to make a world record that still holds today.

Burt Munro held onto the idea that he had one good run left in him, until the very end of his life. He didn’t abandon the verve required to succeed.

He never gave up, never relinquished what he felt he had to do, never wavered over what was right for him; and that to me is admirable, and to be honest awe inspiring.

Burt surely proves it is never too late, and that you should never give up on your dream or yourself.

Burt Munro never gave up his dreams.

Copy Right Notice:
© Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Who Is Being Allowed To Redefine Normal: Women The Endangered Species – A Life In Vain

Google search results for websites:

Those displaying Anorexia – 32,500,000
Those displaying Pro-ana websites – 8,530,000
Pro-ana tips – 2,840,000
Those displaying ‘thinspiration’ – 2,700,000

……And those displaying ‘curvaceous women’ – 3,950,000

Women with ‘lovely lady lumps’ are indeed outnumbered, maybe they are even becoming an endangered species.

I have become quite obsessed with body image lately, seemingly revisiting my own troubled teen years, but looking at it all through very different eyes now I have gained life experience. I am more analytical of what I once took to be the truth about what women should be. I am fortunately no longer crippled with self-doubts and hatred, albeit, even I’ll admit it is difficult to keep a healthy mind and attitude with the constant bombardment of what we now call ‘normal’. It has reached new heights, far and beyond more extreme than it ever it was when I was a teen (which isn’t that long ago let me add)! So, if I struggle as a grown woman to see myself as a complete person, even though I am not a size 8 and below, then how do the teens of today cope?

I have been doing some research, looking at and listening to; websites, photographs, opinions and documentaries. I have looked at UK Parliament Publications, Mind, Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) Service, B-eat UK and also pro-ana sites (which I am not prepared to name here for concern of promoting such sites). I have seen the fashion shoots of Solve Sundsbo shown in ‘V’ magazine of normal women with curves, Dove’s ‘real women’ campaign and considered the successes of Beth Ditto and Adele. I read about celebrities who struggle with, and eventually succumb to losing the pounds such as; Kelly Clarkson, Kourtney Kardashian, Jennie Garth, Bryce Dallas, Kelly Osbourne; and even Lady Gaga. I have watched ‘Living with Size Zero’, ‘The Truth About Size Zero’ with Louise Redknapp, Dawn Porter’s ‘Super Slim Me’, ‘Dying To Be Anorexic’, ‘Anorexia’s Living Face’ CBS News about Isabelle Caro’s struggle, ‘The truth About Online Anorexia’ with Fern Cotton, Jennifer Livingston’s response to being bullied about being ‘fat’, ‘Supersize v’s Superskinny’, so on and so on.

The amount of information available and the opinions on the content is vast and confusing. It seems starving to be thin is OK, as long as no one really discusses the effects; mental and physical (using Isabelle Caro as an example; how shocked the world was to see what starvation had done to her body, and yet in other ways we are happy to promote such actions. It is all very contradictory, so is there such a thing as too thin? The fashion industry may not think so, but there are people out there who do and are at last being heard.

So why would the average woman, and by that I mean every woman who will by definition of being a woman, have curves; want to destroy her body to re-gain the body of a teen, or of a prepubescent girl? Who would want to have the body and measurements of a seven year old? Why is that deemed attractive, the ideal model and ‘norm’? Why would anyone starve and make themselves so miserable, weak and unhealthy just to have the waist-line of a child; to become a size 8 or below when that is a highly unrealistic goal for them? Since when did exercising daily, eating healthily, taking all things in moderation become the route to being a painfully thin young woman, with unhealthy body and food relationships?

Surely there is still a place for flesh on women’s bones?

Women should have curves, and frankly what is being classed as ‘obese’ these days is ludicrous, and damaging for peoples psyche; hence the confusion over ‘normal’. A size 14 is seen as ‘fat’! Why? When did that become OK as the new rule? Who was responsible for making that rule?

There is no doubt people are being sent mixed messages about what is healthy and normal; vulnerable girls and boys see it everyday, so why do we wonder that so many people are dying to be thin. One minute size zero is terrible, the next, size 14 is obese; who can win the battle of the waist-lines with this destructive attitude being forced on us all. Yet it isn’t just size zero, now we see size 8 as curvy, when I was a teen size 10/12 was the ‘norm’, now size 8 is the ideal of the curvy woman. Yeah, if you happen to be petite, great; I have a niece who is a size 8 and is petite beyond belief, she still eats and drinks like a horse though. The reason, size 8 is her natural frame for her body shape! It isn’t normal for every woman out there though!

If celebrities and people in general stray off extreme diet paths they soon gain weight, and quickly. Yet, the weight gain is more shocking than their lack of weight and the reasons behind it. Maybe their initial weight was too low to be sustainable; their diet and exercise regime too restrictive and unreal. Isn’t having children also a time of normal weight gain for women? Yet even that is shunned and a disgrace.

What then is so abnormal about gaining weight? Every week a new celebrity is seen larger than before, because they are failing to cope with what the world dictates they should be naturally, and they are not! The weight they gain is seen as gargantuan and unhealthy, but no doubt nothing more than again, a size 14, as the camera is said to also add 10 pounds to the body. If in reality everyone is struggling to remain unnaturally thin, and what appears as their natural thinness is a sham, a lie; then their weight gain merely takes them back to the size they should be!

Look at Christina Aguilera at the moment. I applaud how she is embracing her body as a 31 year old mother and enjoying being curvy. I hope she doesn’t cave in to the mounting pressure and relent to revert to her teen image. Which, people also censured as too thin!

Christina Aguilera now

Christina Aguilera as she was in her early career.

I know there are some people who once they gain weight, do become far larger than Christina, but it is no wonder. In the spot light, their heads must be ruined; all the pressure to conform to, the rules they must obey, the ideals of others they have to attain. How can they know what a healthy food relationship is? Yet, it is as equally unhealthy to starve; eating only 800 calories a day, exercising obsessively, seeing protruding bones, skin and hair falling from the body and having no periods. Being ‘obese’ or too ‘thin’; neither extreme is healthy, yet one gets more encouragement as normal, acceptable and healthy than the other.

I know there will always be people who think ‘fat’ is bad. Kate Moss may believe the mantra: ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’, but then whenever I see a picture of her face (without airbrushing), it tells the true story of not eating, clearly enough. She maybe a size of a child, but her face isn’t as youthful. It is just so darn sexy substituting food for alcohol, drugs and nicotine! It’s a glamorous life she leads, yeah, the life of an addict; substituting food for every other prop she can find. Ralph Lauren may have famously airbrushed a model to look so thin that her head was wider than her waist; it says freak show to me, it says he likes to make women look like a joke. It is not a ‘must have’ look, it is not healthy or sexy!

It is the insistence that thin is healthy, and fat of any description is bad, which perpetuates ‘sick’ and destructive thoughts in the younger generations. People can insist they are a size zero and don’t starve themselves, but after watching Louise Redknapp and Dawn Porter both struggle to try to become a size zero, I’m not so sure. Losing weight, restricting calories below a healthy level, and exercising 52 hours a week, hearing what the experts said people do to become a size zero; how unhealthy it is, what damage it causes and how it can kill them. Well I think that is not how a healthy life should be led. Why is eating so unhealthy? People eat, as humans we should, because without it we’d die. It is normal not to eat, but not normal to survive off apples and cucumbers, black coffee and cigarettes!

There are pro-ana and thinspiration sites which help to encourage extreme thinness, as opposed to being a healthy weight. As I have already mentioned previously, I won’t give the addresses or names of these websites in this post. On these sites ‘fat’ women or girls, are encouraged with hints and tips, and the mutual bonding, and understanding of a friendly support system, so they can shed astronomical pounds. It is basically camaraderie of death that is being publicly flaunted. Then there are message boards on ordinary sites in response to articles about weight issues; how distorted people’s views are about being ‘over weight’! I was shocked to read them! People don’t realise that thin models can be ill, anorexic, bulimic, and airbrushed. It seems at every turn normal women are being rejected by an ever harsher societal view of once again, female beauty.

Yet, who is anyone to be a judge and jury; no one is perfect. To blatantly authorise women to kill themselves in pursuit of thinness is ghastly though; morbid and akin to genocide. We ignore these issues every day, and everyday someone becomes victim to anorexia and someone will die as a result of that illness. How is that OK, but being ‘curvy’ isn’t?! Priorities and very wrong, spring to mind.

What is this hate campaign waged on normal women? Lack of food and nutrition kills too, not just ‘obesity’, and it will store up trouble for any woman in the future; low Estrogen levels, infertility, brittle bones, heart disease, wasted muscles (including the heart), kidney failings, and so and so on.

No wonder our children suffer with body issues if the media and world at large project this ‘norm’ onto them. We have a responsibility to readjust body image back to healthy, but we refuse.

We keep reaffirming there is a boundary between; merely thin, losing a bit of weight, counting our calories, increasing the exercise, avoiding eating in public, and being anorexia, but I don’t know anymore. What constitutes a disorder, what qualifies you to fit into food disorder statistics? Is it merely a BMI under 18? There isn’t one person I know who hasn’t some issue with food in one way or another, or issues with themselves and their own body image; so what do these statistics mean when everyone is engaging in some form of abnormal act or relationship with food and their own bodies? Are what we see on thinspiration sites, ordinary chat sites, celebrity sites that pull women apart for being a woman to blame; or is it complex internal and genetic issues that spark food and body issues? Who can be sure for all cases?

So much nonsense saturates into the public domain every day, now our view of ‘normal’ is skewed. What people aspire to be is skewed, as we as a society have become increasingly; obsessed, restrictive, and denying our bodies nutrition for the sake of thinness. So what is so unnatural and wrong if we are seeing it promoted everywhere, hearing about and seeing websites dedicated to extremely thin ‘inspirational’ role models?

Maybe this is the new normal; thin, ill, underweight and so on? It will be, if we cannot curb our hatred towards difference and real women, and quit the morbid fascination with skeletal women.

I’m not saying naturally thin women should be scorned or reviled with disgust either, but neither should everyone above a size 8! Who perhaps doesn’t fit this thin mould we are all pressing as the norm. If we continue this way then it will be the norm for young people from now until eternity; always subjected to hating themselves, pulling their minds and bodies apart, making themselves ill, punishing others to succumb too, and even killing themselves. This viscous circle will never end.

If we are happy with that, happy to kill off the next generation of women and men who become afflicted by body issues, then we should by all means carry on this way. Yet, I would rather see someone eat, be happy with themselves and to live their lives; rather than starve and be miserable, feel pain, waste their lives revolving around food and body issues, only to then die an even more miserable death. All of it in vain.

Is this image grotesque? Does it portray a ‘fat’ or ‘normal woman?’

What about this woman?

Are these images inspirational? Is this the face and body of ‘normal’?

Below are some interesting statistics on Eating Disorders; food for thought for us all –

UK Parliament – Publications:
The amount of people suffering has increased from 419 in 1996-97 to 620 in 2004-05.
These figures only represent individual cases admitted into NHS hospitals in England (not the whole of the UK).

Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) Service:
The highest rates of anorexia are seen in female teenagers aged between 13 and 19, with 51 per of 100,000 cases being seen each year.

Approximately 10% of cases of anorexia arise in men.

Around 5% of cases of anorexia will be fatal.

Currently, in developing countries and black communities, anorexia nervosa appears to be somewhat rare.

Mind UK:
In the UK, 1 in 100 women aged between 15 and 30 suffers from anorexia.

Reports show girls as young as five years of age have weight concerns, and think about going on a diet.

There are many documentaries on Youtube regarding children anorexia sufferers. Very upsetting, but honest.

B-eat UK:
‘The most accurate figures we are aware of are those from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence. These suggest that 1.6 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder, of which around 11% are male. However, more recent research from the NHS information centre showed that up to 6.4% of adults displayed signs of an eating disorder (Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, 2007). This survey also showed that a quarter of those showing signs of an eating disorder were male, a figure much higher than previous studies had suggested’.

Thank you for reading my post, I hope it has given you something to consider?
Leave comments below please!

Copy Right Notice:
© Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Diary of A ‘Shallow Hal’

I have noticed that whenever kids receive presents they are always fascinated by the pretty, and elaborate packaging of the gifts. Colourful and ornate wrapping papers, ribbons and bows hold absolute obsession for them; they have no interest in the box the gifts are in, so preoccupied with the outer appearances they ignore the real gift inside. I got to thinking; are we still those children, only enamoured and preoccupied by the wrappings of people, and not interested in opening the box to discover the true beauty of the person within?

The human race seems to be fascinated with outer beauty and appearances, so much so that we seemingly cannot look beyond. What is beauty? Is it merely powder, paint and Photoshop or is there more to it than that?

After only a quick internet search it wasn’t long before I discovered articles, blogs, posts and so on, pertaining to physical manifestations of beauty. One such article discussed how women who are a size 14 and above are lost causes in the attractiveness scale, while another stated ordinary women are just not attractive sexually; another pondered the deep and meaningful question of why men settle for a second best woman, so on and so on. Others encouraged men to view potential partners on a 1-10 attractiveness scale; 7 being the cut off point for the dating factor! The site said, ‘if a 6 stops eating for a week she becomes a ‘7’, then she is maybe datable’. Therefore, no woman should be dated who ranks below a 7!

The story of ‘Shallow Hal’ seems to iterate this notion of beauty being the ‘b’ all and end all of the things we should seek in others. Shallow Hal is a man who refuses to see beauty in anyone else if they don’t fit into a stereotypical ideal of perfection, regardless of that person’s abilities and personality; until some kind of spell is cast, and then he meets his true love, a 300 pound woman. Surely everyone has seen this movie? Surely everyone knows someone who might be classed as a Shallow Hal? Do we all need that magical spell to prevent us from becoming him?
The message I found was that only outward appearances are considered or even quantified. Everything was focused on subjective opinions of beauty by those writing the articles, posts, blogs and whatever else! Who are these people doing the judging? I wonder what bad deal life has dealt them that they feel they have this axe to grind against people just being themselves, whatever the physical form! Maybe these people have never experienced a grown up and loving relationship, but with an attitude where they measure everyone against a scale of 1-10, I doubt anyone would come up to their expectations.

Who are any of us to really judge beauty/attractiveness when each person sees something different in the next? We are all different shapes, sizes and colours, we all have different facial features and quirks to bring something different into the gene pool, to be a match for someone out there. So then why are we obsessed with being attractive/ beautiful based on the point of view of someone else, or, based on the view of the fashion or beauty industry? We don’t know them and they don’t know us. If we aren’t happy within our own skin then how can anyone else be happy with us?!

What then is any relationship truly about; love or lust? Certainly everyone lusts, but how can anything of consequence sustain on lust? If we can’t value the person for the person, or if we all have to come with ribbons and bows like all children love, then surely the infatuation and fascination will eventually soon wear off; what is the point? In the end, without all the façade there is only us; why then are we so afraid of that truth coming to light?

If it is a case of us all desperately trying to ‘save face’ then what are we trying to prove to ourselves and one another? If a grown man or woman cannot accept a person for being themselves then maybe it is their own being they cannot truly accept, their own issues they have to deal with first; and to be honest they are better left alone until they do decide to sort themselves out. I personally don’t want a relationship with someone who sees beauty as a child would (obsessing on the pretty bows and ribbons), I want someone who sees me for me; even on my bad hair days! Face facts this is the real world not a TV sitcom, no one is perfect regardless of how they may appear to be, sorry to break the illusion, but surely you are old enough to know the truth by now!

Is this the real face of beauty?

Copy Right Notice:
© Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hair Free Expectations.

By chance I read a blog by College Candy, entitled ‘Why This CC Writer Doesn’t Have Pubic Hair. The page discussed a topic which I didn’t realise could hold such fascination; to perform hair removal on the intimate feminine area or not.

Is it a question worth asking at all? I think the reasons behind asking such a question, and the reasons why performing hair removal is seen as the norm are definitely worth considering.

Does being hairy in that area make you less feminine, desirable or hygienic? Is hair free less ridiculed or shunned than being hairy? Isn’t hair removal just about personal choice, or is it a ‘must’ dictated by some societal norm?

Choice should be a personal matter; to be hairy or hair free is a woman’s own decision to make. However, what used to be beauty choices are now interwoven into the everyday good woman’s guide of how to maintain her-self. When there is a pressure to do something to conform to an accepted norm, then where is the freedom of choice?

This pressure to conform then takes the initial questions of hairy or hair free to a much deeper level than merely the topic itself. These questions can be applied to all aspects of self and society; especially people’s reactions to such pressure, and the perceptions of themselves. So how much of the beauty regime that women do, is because they choose to do it and want to do it? How much is done because women have a fear of being ridiculed?

Who decided these measures of beauty as a norm, who decreed these expectations? Who woke up one morning and thought, ‘You know what without the beauty industry I am nothing; Oh, and by the way I really must remove my body hair to be accepted’?  Maybe this is just about women’s expectations, their ideals gone out of control to an extent that it is driving all of this ‘beauty myth’ to new heights, or maybe men and sexual attraction are the culprits to blame?

To have sex, I suppose women have to be seen as attractive by the men of the world, but are men’s expectations of beauty always what women think they will be? Could it be women labour under false pretences, maybe to please a society of men who really couldn’t give a damn about all that beauty malarkey? No man would say, ‘Nope, I’m not having sex with you until you remove that pubic hair’, surely not? If that was the case then does a woman reply, ‘OK, I’m not having sex with you until you remove yours’?

If men do indeed frown upon a woman who doesn’t fulfil her ‘beauty duties’ then God help him if, and when he does secure a stable relationship. Life dictates that most women refrain from being slaves to the bathroom on a 24/7 basis; a girl has gotta work for a living too! What would a man do when he realises this, up and runaway to a woman who maybe does live by the rule of beauty alone? If the answer is yes, then is that man worth wasting yourself on?

Women aren’t merely dolls to be played with. A measure of a woman is surely more than her individual parts? Is she just hair, teeth, skin, nails, and features and so on? How sad it must be to believe you are only as good as what your make-up or hair looks like. In reality, if women did what the ‘beauty experts’ suggest they do to their bodies daily, then such exhausting routines would consume their lives and minds! Hell, no woman would be able to step outside without crippling anxiety that she isn’t worthy, just because she hasn’t done X or Y before walking down the street.

Yet, can this beauty obsession ever come to an end? Are we that reliant on it? What will the pilgrimage towards beauty insist upon next though? How far can the boundaries be pushed until women say; no more of this, this is me and deal with it. More importantly who are women changing themselves for; is it for individual benefit or for others? How can we be certain? If the reasons to change are so inextricably linked to society pressure and norms, then surely no-one can be 100% certain what motivates their choices and why.

Copy Right Notice:
© Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Bex Houghagen and The Savvy Senorita with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.