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Bodies, boobs and taboos: Is Instagram harming pubescent girls?

The slip of a finger and whoosh, an unedited picture of Khloe Kardashian took to the internet without her permission. Within minutes, trolls leapt into action as though hounds finally being fed.  Are we surprised she looks that bad? I’d ask my surgeon for a refund! She’ll always be the ugliest sister. The Kardashian clan worked hard to have the image removed, but duplicates continued to pop up across Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. After 14 years in the spotlight, Khloe Kardashian adds criticism over this accidental upload to her body-shaming saga. 

Even for us non-celebrities, social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have built an arena around our lives. Offering our biggest critics front row seats, complimentary binoculars and ammunition to hurt us. Criticism that once only occurred face-to-face is now omnipresent. Across Instagram, people hide behind the guise of perfection. An image, lifestyle and persona they maintain through carefully curated shots and editing apps. But, this act of self-defence is having a catastrophic impact on young pubescent girls. 

Hertfordshire-based Wellbeing and Lifestyle Writer, Hannah Louise Murray, 23, is one such woman whose adolescence was dictated by the unrealistic standards pushed upon women. Before graduating, she dedicated her dissertation to analysing the effects of social media on body image for young women. She says: “My mental health suffered tremendously from poor self-image and distorted perceptions surrounding my identity. I have fought long and hard to rid myself of the associated shame. 

“From my physical appearance and my sexual endeavours to my interests, hobbies and mannerisms. I always felt like I was an outsider and that I should feel ashamed of who I was.”  Instagram has opened the female puberty process to a plethora of new critiquing observers. Parroting through comments and direct messages the idea that puberty is a one-size-fits-all process, with a standardised result. Upon entering the app, girls scroll through a never-ending stream of developed, often edited and supposedly happy women. Hannah explains: “We are endlessly bombarded with seemingly perfect people with seemingly perfect lives, so comparison is at our fingertips from the moment we wake up.

“This aspect of social media combined with the media’s relentless torture of anyone in the spotlight is a breeding ground for fear and shame to build. Each of us questioning our own essence in fear of not being enough.” Hannah’s youth consisted of excessively avoiding activities like having sex and leaving her body hair unshaved to spare herself potential ridicule. Nevertheless, the stomach-churning, sweat-inducing feeling of shame crept its way into her life. She says: “Feeling like I wasn’t enough in some areas and too much in others resulted in prolonged anxiety and debilitating depression.” In the absence of social media, Hannah describes her childhood as vibrant and uninhibited. However, these pangs of anxiety began to coincide with the natural changes of her body and presence on social media. 

The female body has always been subjected to stringent, yet increasingly subtle rules. From adorning suffocating corsets and hoop skirts in Victorian England to the notion of respectability politics. This is the idea that conforming to mainstream beauty and behavioural standards will protect someone in a marginalised group from prejudice and injustice. Although decades and centuries pass, failure to comply with societal expectations of the female body still results in condemnation, even for young girls. Feminist Writer and Journalist Sian Norris explains: “Silvia Federici wrote that patriarchal capitalism had to break women’s power in order to assert control.”

Hannah’s slim, lanky body and small breasts appeared in stark comparison to her peers. Body image concerns arose, as she felt both developmentally behind her friends and that the changes occurring weren’t happening correctly. She says: “My girlfriends were becoming more and more womanly and voluptuous. I felt like I was remaining a child, whilst they were turning into ‘real’ women.”

The tendency to compare body developments is not limited to the parameters of Hannah’s youth or Instagram’s creation in 2010. As a digital native, Hannah grew up with the digital world at the swipe of a finger and flick of a button. Whereas Writer and Ex-Regional Digitisation Manager for Art UK, Hazel Cameron, 61, spent her adolescence playing outside with other children on her council estate. Hazel recalls: “I always wanted bigger boobs, as most of my friends were shapely and my aunt used to say mine were too friend eggs, then jokingly add – with burst yolks.”

Female puberty has always been overshadowed by confusion and comparison. However, Instagram has increased the number of people young girls can now compare themselves to. The comparison pool has widened from those around them to celebrities and people that live thousands of miles away. The image-sharing platform allows the upload of edited and filtered images, enabling girls to compare themselves  and attempt to emulate a version of someone that doesn’t exist. 

Typically beginning at 11 for girls, puberty is a time of experimentation. Young girls start to define themselves outside of the family unit and explore alternative identities. Naturally, throughout this process errors in judgement are made. The creation of social media has placed teenage debacles on a pedestal for examination. Hazel says: “Before it was just your family and close friends who shared your shame moments but now you can be shamed by millions. What I find worse is that the shame is never erased, it can always be found.”

Besides growing breasts, female puberty witnesses the start of periods, growth of pubic hair and release of hormones that can lead to growth spurts and sexual arousal. Unsurprisingly these changes remain a shameful episode in the lives of young girls due to the minimal conversations surrounding them. ”When my boobs started developing, I thought something was wrong with me and told my mum I had a lump, her laugh and telling me otherwise was very embarrassing,” says Hazel.

In 2015, Instagram repeatedly removed a photo from Poet Rupi Kaur’s account for ‘breaking community guidelines’. The image depicted a fully-dressed woman in bed with bloodstains on her trousers and bedding. Instagram’s censorship of projects like Kaur’s, that aim to set healthy body standards and destigmatise menstruation contributes to the lack of educational discussions on women’s health. As a result, girls grow into women like Hannah and Hazel that live with the stigmas surrounding their bodies. 

For Hannah, this meant she was fearful of getting tampons out in her all girls’ school and learning to understand her vagina through a pornified lens. “In porn, I only saw neat, tucked away vulvas, but my inner labia protrudes from my outer lips and they aren’t quite even in length,” says Hannah. “I never discussed it with my friends or family, and it became a growing source of shame for me, I even researched into labiaplasty at an awfully young age.” Hazel’s family struggled to buy basic sanitary products. Elaborating on her puberty experience, she says: “The worst was not being able to afford sanitary products, often having to cover up blood marks on my clothes or bed sheets or skipping off school.”  

Over 50 years later, ongoing ignorance surrounding menstruation means that period products are not readily available to young girls and women. Plan International UK found that three in ten, 14 to 21-year-olds struggled to afford or access these products during lockdown. In the 1970s lack of understanding and open dialogue, led to the production of unsafe tampons that sparked Staphylococcus infections. Subsequently, menstruating girls and women experienced Toxic Shock Syndrome. And, with self-adhesive towels not yet invented, many that opted to wear them wore sanitary belts to keep them in place.

Today, girls are predicted to start puberty a year before Hazel and her peers did in the 70s’. We’ve undergone a culture shift, with the Women’s Health Market commodifying the puberty process and female body. Pumping out unending ‘solutions’ to any and all bodily conundrums with the help of social media influencers. “We are constantly told that we are not enough, that our faces are too blemished, our tummies too big, our legs too hairy,” says Hannah. “These companies use advertising to make us questions ourselves, and then in turn convince us that all we need to be perfect and happy are their products.” The covert nature of influencer marketing leads young girls to believe these products will make them as desirable and happy as those promoting them. They don’t see the editing and money that go into achieving the images on their feeds. 

As Hannah’s body continued to develop, it brought with it a want for sexual exploration. Alas, this discovery was shrouded in shame. She recollects: “When I was at school there a constant undercurrent of slut-shaming which gripped every girl around the neck throughout our uniform-wearing days. Is she a virgin? Who has slept with who? Does she masturbate?”. As a result of socialisation that encourages ‘sexual reserve’, The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Sexuality found girls reported more sexual guilt and shame. 

Slut-shaming culture prevents young girls and women from openly talking about sexual harassment, assault and rape. Due to the fear of not being believed, being blamed or viewing their discomfort as a natural feature of sex. The distorted relationship society has constructed between females and sex has resulted in young girls exiting puberty with low self-worth and poor ideas of healthy sexual relations. Hannah says: “Sex is one of the most natural parts of life, yet the patriarchy wants girls to remain ‘pure’ for the gratification of men, which in and of itself is absurd.”

Historically female sexuality has been pinned to reproduction, family honour and male pleasure. Sian explains: “Women who stepped outside this model – particularly women who were seen as sexually voracious or who had sex with multiple men were shamed, treated as freaks or killed as witches.” Sian believes that whilst we think we’ve progressed since the “angel of the house” model of womanhood, we haven’t. Women that exercise their sexuality or deviate from gender stereotypes are met with judgement, exclusion, sexual violence and death. In 2007, a Saudi woman was gang-raped by seven men and imprisoned for being in a car with an unrelated man. Only four of the seven men went to prison. Describing the Madonna-Whore dichotomy Sian says: “Women are either Madonna’s – modest, mother, virginal as in not sexually knowledgeable, quiet and serving. 

“Or they’re whores and deserving of punishment. The idea that women can even inhabit a role somewhere in the middle is denied.” Beginning as young girls, female sexuality is promoted as conditional. They’re encouraged to be sexual for the enjoyment of others, but not for themselves. Sexualised images of girls and women regularly achieve large-scale engagement on platforms like Instagram. Influencer marketing furthers the commodification of the female body and adds to the performative narrative young girls absorb surrounding their sexuality.  In the attention economy, people that achieve notable levels of engagement are rewarded with opportunities and finance for retaining users on the platform. Highlighting for young girls the prospects available from adopting rigid standards of female appearance and femininity. Whilst, Instagram benefits from the upload of sexualised images, they excuse themselves from safeguarding the girls and women in them. 

Beyond puberty, the female body continues to be held to unrealistic standards. But the expectations change and you grow to care less. Sian says: “People will shame you for having children, not having children, breastfeeding, not breastfeeding, staying at home, going back to work – “a woman’s place is in the wrong” as one friend put it to me.” Instagram has opened young girls up to more critics and sources of comparison than ever. Choosing to not care appears the only way to make it through. As Khloe Kardashian shows, you’re ridiculed regardless of the version of you the world sees.

Hannah says: “The society we live in is flawed in its values and I commend anyone who manages to scrape through unscathed. A ‘fuck it, I’m me!’ attitude is an essential part of any modern woman’s survival guide.”

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Bristol’s biggest battle: SEVs should they stay or should they go?

Bristol City Council Offices. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this year, Bristol City Council debated approving a new policy that would reduce the city’s two adult sexual entertainment venues (SEV) to zero. Multiple online sources define SEVs as ‘any premises at which a live display of nudity or live performance which is intended to stimulate sexual activity is provided before a live audience for the financial gain of the organiser or entertainer.’ 2021 wasn’t the first time Bristol’s relationship with this type of venue had come into question.

In 2018, Avon and Somerset’s police and crime commissioner, Sue Mountstevens joined Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire in opposing the relicensing of Central Chambers and Urban Tiger. Mountstevens and Debbonaire weren’t and aren’t alone in their dislike of SEVs. Three years later as public consultation is underway, the Bristol Women’s Commission are resolutely in favour of banning these types of venues.

An ITV online article, described this debate as between “those fighting for female empowerment, while on the opposing side are those battling for gender equality. The Bristol Women’s Commission believe these venues perpetuate and profit from “harmful sexist attitudes…and sadly do, lead to violence against women.”

Bristol’s Liberal Democrats took to their blog to tear down the justification that SEVs hinder women’s safety, instead of deeming that these ideals contribute to the objectification of women.

Amélie, an Urban Tiger employee was quoted in the blog saying “As a woman, I feel way safer working in a strip club, walking around in my underwear, than I do going out to a regular club fully dressed.

“Punishing and blaming women for men’s behaviour is dangerous and is simply victim-blaming…I do not believe a nil-cap on SEVs will solve any issues regarding VAWG or women being objectified.” Councillor Dr Caroline Gooch said, “…Evidence from the Avon and Somerset police illustrates that more sexual assaults occur in the main clubs in the city centre than in the SEVs. Therefore, in terms of sexual assaults, the main clubs are a considerably higher concern.”

In the last few months, concerns over sexual assault and spiking within the city’s main clubs have risen. Across social media and local media outlets, articles and examples have been made of spiking victims and perpetrators. Articles such as Bristol post’s article ‘Bristol teen recalls ‘gurning and foaming at the mouth’ after horror spiking incident’ illustrates this.

Furthermore, publications such as The Evening Standard, Bristol 24/7, The Independent, The Tab and The Times covered spiking cases throughout Bristol.

In response, venues like The Louisiana and Kingstreet Brewhouse joined the Bristol Nights ‘Bristol Rules’ initiative to combat toxic attitudes to drinking and spiking. Bristol Rules is a collaboration between the city’s council, universities and venues aiming to advise and support those venturing out to enjoy the “nighttime economy” (Bristol 24/7, 2021).

The project operates a six rule system – posters and 3D signage are visible throughout the city’s venues and popular drinking spots. Its rules include, ‘Out together, home together’, ‘Call it out’, ‘Don’t be a creep’, ‘Respect everyone’, ‘Keep away from the edge and ‘Take it easy’.

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Being ‘streetwise’: footwear thoughts

Trainers on a wooden floor. Image credit: Pixabay

When getting dressed, I habitually think about my potential safety. Glancing in the mirror, ticking criteria off my mental checklist, all in the hopes I’ll get through the day unscathed and unbothered. 

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my footwear. Can I run in these? Are they grippy? Can I get from home to B and back again? But, Sarah Everard was wearing running shoes in broad daylight and Wayne Couzens still murdered her. So what’re we to do, when the things we’re told will keep us safe don’t work? Doesn’t that suggest the narrative’s floored?

Public discourse has codified a safe existence for women, making it conditional and the responsibility placed solely at our feet. Our appearance constitutes large clauses of this code. Don’t wear anything short, don’t smile too much, don’t do this or that or this. Like others, I’ve been led to believe appeasing this criterion will keep me out of harm’s way. 

Sarah’s not alone. Women around the world are disappearing, dying and being harassed when running, walking, clubbing and trying to exist. Research by UN Women UK found that as of 2021, 97% of women have been sexually harassed. With 96% choosing to not report these instances because of beliefs that little would change.

Commonly, these incidences are met with the response that we as women should alter our behaviours, routines and lives to evade harm. We do need to contemplate personal safety, but when people actively endanger our lives the problem is not with us. 

Social media platforms and news organisations assist in the dissemination of this rhetoric. This year, as ‘needle spiking’ hit the headlines, Durham University coined the hashtag ‘don’t get spiked’. This was met by widespread media outrage, but they have not always been so quick to defend victims of spiking and sexual violence. In 2016, a Sun tweet reading “woman drank six jagerbombs in ten minutes on the night she was raped and murdered” sparked a media frenzy. 

Huffington Post responded with an article titled, “A Woman Was Raped and Murdered. Why Is Her Drink Count Relevant? The piece concludes that The Sun was not only complicit in victim-blaming, but reinforced the notion of excusable rape upon the involvement of alcohol. Corrine Barraclough, a Daily Telegraph columnist hit back, arguing that “Attempting to perpetuate the “right to get drunk” is an alarming feminist fantasy.”

She continued to explain, “If you can’t guarantee your behaviour – or protect yourself when blotto – how can you have a right to get drunk?”  Corrine, we’re trying to keep ourselves safe when we’re sober too and that’s not working? Rightly, she highlights that as a society, we have an unhealthy relationship with drinking. However,  she fails to consider that external threats shouldn’t mean we have to remove ourselves from environments and activities that make us happy.

Sarah’s death single-handedly undermines Corrine’s closing statement, “Step off ‘Feminist Fantasy Island’, get streetwise, and start empowering women to make educated choices.” She was streetwise, she made all the ‘educated choices’, yet Couzens still decided to murder her. 

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How To Survive Thirteen Years Of Friendship

We’ve always thought of ourselves as Yin and Yang type people, you with your unbreakable patience, willingness to see the good in others and well me a tad more on the cynical side. 

Your skort to my jeans, your cocktail to my pint.

Alas like puzzle pieces, we just fit. 

Laughing till we’re crying, crying till we’re laughing. 

From dancing and dress up at eight, to bevs and boogying at eighteen; I often wonder if we’ll be busting moves at 80 – hip replacements and all. 

Whilst not much has changed in thirteen years, we’ve swapped our commute from a fifteen minute walk to a two hour drive and £3 Aldi wine for a cheeky gin and lemonade.

I’d trade a lot to be sat in your garden, watching you unconsciously chain smoke, whilst claiming tipsy status from a single glass of vino. 

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Student 101 : The good, The bad and The ugly.

I wonder what you think of when you hear the word ‘student’? Do you think of sex, drugs, rock and roll or do you think of the youth of today bettering themselves through higher education? The truth is, the most authentic student experience lies somewhere in the middle.

All students experience that first rush of freedom when they first go to university. Whether it’s spending all your student loan during the first week of freshers, joining eight societies at once or eating a pot noodle for every meal of the day (because no one could tell you that you couldn’t!). However, for every new experience, there is a new responsibility whether that be cleaning, cooking or money management. If you’re smart, you’ve figured out that you will need these skills before university. If you’re … well ‘preoccupied’ … you won’t know how to turn on an oven or a washing machine! This was definitely true of me and some of my friends I made in first year!

No matter how many different ways my Dad taught me to slice an onion (diced or sliced), nothing could have prepared me for my first year at university! I like everyone was sold the university brochure life of being constantly surrounded by friends, meeting the love of your life and partying every night whilst somehow managing to get a first in your degree?!? Hats off to those who achieve all of these things, I know it is possible for the very few!

So, I moved away to university believing that I was promised this gold standard experience! But like many things in 2020, my vision of university life took an unexpected turn! I’m here to tell you what it’s like to get the ‘Bounty bar’ of university experiences, how you can get through it and how I’ve grown stronger because of it. Freshers, hold onto your hats!

One of the most exciting things I enjoyed before the summer of university was imagining what my dorm room would look like! I had carefully picked out a VERY pink, VERY Kath Kidston theme for my dorm room! And to my giggly fresher’s glee, I had lots of space to put it in when I got the biggest room in my halls flat! (Show off but shout out to Room 8!). I was so excited to unpack everything, wave goodbye to my parents and finally be the kick-ass independent woman I had always wanted to be! I’m so fortunate in the fact I LOVE my parents so much! I love them so much that I had only ever spent four days away from my parents and twin brother before moving out! Which brings us to our first hurdle… homesickness!

There’s a point for freshers where they suddenly realise, they are not on holiday and they have upped and moved to university. For most, this is after induction at their first 9am lecture, if you’re lucky it might take till Christmas or the end of the first year before you’ve even realised you now live at university! For me, the cheery-waver-offer-of-her-loving-parents, well it took me… 2.5 hours! Which, (traffic-free) is actually the time it takes to travel between my university and home town! I remember the exact moment I began to feel homesick at university.

To pinpoint it, I had just had a microwave curry meal ( that was nothing like my mum’s homemade curry!), hand washed my plate (no dishwasher’s in halls!), sat down in my dorm room and thought…. FLIPPING HECK, WHAT HAVE I DONE!!! I had just moved my entire life to a different county to everyone I knew and loved, all dependant on me being able to become a paramedic!

AH! Now Freshers, when this panic does set in (big scale or small-scale light bulb moment), it would be wise to find your new flatmates. Thankfully, due to a VERY emotional Snapchat story (or sob-chat in my terms), they came and found me! It was such a relief, as although they had managed to avoid feeling homesick on the first day – we were all in the same boat! Also conveniently made for a great ice-breaker?!

NOTE TO FRESHERS: You do not need 8 different sized frying pans, but you do need tissues! If only for freshers’ flu – which you will get even if you only hit the clubs twice! Sadly, this homesickness carried on for … well most of the year! It turned out that being on my own for the first time ever in my existence (as I’m a twin!) made me realise so much about myself. I had truly felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I had left for university SO excited about the city I was moving to – yet felt too scared to explore it on my own.

I had been so confident that I was so strong and independent at the age of nineteen; yet my struggle to ease into the routine of university, making friends with strangers, keeping on top of everything and having my own back for the first time felt IMPOSSIBLE. I was left in tears every day of the first term for what seemed like the whole day, with absolutely no confidence that life at university would get better.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to drop out nearly every day before Christmas. It is beyond sad, that I became this way. But it is worth mentioning as I found out from several of my friends that this is a common experience at university, just not the shiny version of life that is advertised. I’m here to tell you that if you get this end of the stick during university, IT IS OKAY.

The things that got me out of this rut? Well, it’s not a quick fix, it took determination and resilience to build a happier life for myself. I recognise some factors that got me through were by nothing I did but by what others did that I could cling onto. One of these things was the support of my loving family, the tearful video calls and the constant optimism they were able to give me when I had lost my spark in my darkness. Whether it’s a family by blood or the friends that have become your family, hold them close and let them help you!

Possibly the biggest factor in my holding on was my faith in Jesus. It says in the Bible that God has a plan for all of us to ‘prosper not to harm’ us. In believing that everything happens for a reason, I was able to understand that maybe my struggle was just a ‘refining through fire’ and that good would come from it. Maybe writing this and it’s potential to help someone is that good. Other honourable mentions for turning things around: a thankfulness jar, inviting friends out and round your flat (shout out to SAS club!) and messaging your course mates who might just turn out to be your bestest friends! Having this resilience has helped me to be a better student paramedic. That is a whole ‘nother feat in itself.

Life on an ambulance was hard to adapt to in a time where I was struggling to swim through the tide of my own life. But with time, resilience, searching for joy and lots of herbal tea (among the above mentions), I have adapted! I have never been prouder of the work that the NHS does and the humans that act like superheroes during not just a global pandemic but every day. I can personally tell you it is INCREDIBLE and I would clap for them every night if I could!


Bottom line is, the struggle this year has brought has made me who I am and who I believe I am meant to be. Life might not always be rosy, but that doesn’t mean good can’t come out of it! It is through being out of our comfort zone that we grow you will probably struggle in some way… but the best things are always worth fighting for. I am now entering into my second year of university. Although I have grown throughout this year, I am FULLY aware I am not the finished masterpiece. That is MORE THAN OK. I am entering the new academic year with GENUINE confidence in myself and a realistic perspective of life (still keeping my splash of optimism!).


So whether you’re experiencing this strange lockdown life or going off to university yourself. Good can come out of even the worst of times. It turns out either experience of university that you have, can be a good experience. Even if you reach into the chocolate box of uni life and pull out a bounty- remember this and that strength came from it. There are never 365 days of badness, sometimes you just have to work extra hard to find the joy in it. But you will and it will be worth it.

All my love and prayers for you,
Georgia.

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COVID-19: The Virus That Paused The World

2020 was the year the entire world stood still. 

Parents would become teachers, once nameless neighbours would become friends and society would learn that the most neglected workers were, in fact, the most vital.

But, what will the history books recollect? The streets lined with clapping families, the able fetching shopping for the elderly or windows filled with messages of hope – pictures of rainbows that promised this shit shall pass. I hope it’s all remembered, but with the good came the bad. Society will never forget those that lost their lives and the thousands that tirelessly treated people, with no hesitation or thought for their own safety. 

For those of us that stayed at home, that was the year that we found pleasure in the small things. We went on walks and actually enjoyed them, smiled at strangers because for the first time since World War Two; this was something we were all in together. And, whilst many of us had it easier than others, we were all united in our uncertainty at what the future would hold. 

On the contrary to what many journalists initially said, Covid-19 did discriminate; it had a bank balance bias. It picked on the already ill, the elderly and those that had no feasible choice but to work. This was the year the poor would get poorer. Students would pay for tuition they would never receive and rent for a house they would not set foot in. Countless international students would be forced to stay put, far away from family and all alone. 

Many third-year students would never get their end of year shows, exams and graduation ceremonies. Never getting to spend one last Summer in their student houses, abruptly saying goodbye to a city or town they had come to know as home.

Countless people would lose their sources of income, no furlough, no way to pay their bills. Domestic abuse would rise, suicide rates would soar. 2020 was the year we realised the businesses and people that cared. Not the Waterstones, or Wetherspoons of the world, but the Joe Wicks and Captain Toms.

Holidays would be cancelled, weddings postponed, and funerals attended by none. Those that died in care homes would never be forgotten but, the politicians that massaged the death statistics would be held to account. 

It was the year we took as a lesson, to seek out connection in a world that can feel so disconnected. We learnt the members of society we need, the ones that work without flaunting their efforts. Not the billionaires or pointlessly famous celebrities, but the doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, retail workers, delivery people and everyone in-between that just did something to help in their own way.

How will this moment be illustrated in the countless films that will no doubt retell it? With rainbows and window waves, with facetime chats to loved ones – or by the sprouting seeds planted during hours spent in the garden. 

Upon leaving our homes some returned back to their old ways but for the masses, everything changed. Individuals continued to cook and bake they persisted with reading and writing and finally, society saw the value of the things they had ignored. 

And, we would all walk, everywhere. 

2020 was the year we waited out the rain, in the end, a rainbow would appear.