PRIDE, WOMEN AND I AINT JUDGING YOU

Fly by July

This month has lasted forever but at the same time gone

so quickly. So much has happened! We have a new Doctor in Doctor Who which I am very excited about. I have been a huge fan of the show since it came back in 2005 and saying goodbye to a doctor is always emotional but it’s very exciting saying hello to a new one, I’m very excited to see what Jodie Whittaker does with the role. Everyone was talking about Love Island which I proudly didn’t watch, that should be my NO1UO!! Trump is carrying on being the transphobic pig he is. I attended my first festival which was an experience, vlog about it may or may not be coming soon, but I got to sing with Kate Nash which was a dream. Catching up with all my fabulous friends, and werkin like Dolly told me to, 9 to 5 bish. But the best moment of this month for me has to be my Mum beating her cancer. This month she finished her radiotherapy. My mum’s main message is check yo self. Cancer is far more treatable the earlier it is found. Any doubts get down to your GP! I love NHS. Now, please enjoy this post with the help of this month’s No1GuestBlogger, one of my best friends, Olivia.

Pride

Since my last post I attended Bournemouth Pride and London Pride which were both fantastic days. Pride is so important. It is so easy to feel alone and like you’re the only LGBTQIA+ person in the world. Sounds dramatic I know but I’m sure most LGBTQIA+ people have felt like that. And especially at times like this with Russia, Trump and all the hate in the world. It is so special to be celebrating yourself and your whole community and although we aren’t all the same, we all have a mutual understanding to each other, because we were all the gay kid at school. And here we are, proudly being ourselves for our past selves and for all our brothers and sisters in countries we can’t.

It was a crazy and emotional anniversary this month for our community. It marked 50 years of being gay legal in the UK, which is amazing and awful. 50 years isn’t that long ago, our grandparents were alive. But it’s great we’ve come that far in a short amount of time, let’s hope we do the same now with transgender rights. Speaking of that, the day before the 50th anniversary Trump announced he wanted to ban transgender people being in the army, which is so disgusting. I really don’t have many words on it, because I don’t know what to say. I was feeling very defeated and it felt wrong to celebrating the 50th anniversary the next day. But the best thing we can do is remain positive, we actually HAVE to. We will win and we will achieve equality, we’ve come so far but there is so much further to go. We can do this and we will.

I am also super excited for Brighton Pride this weekend and Dorchester’s Love Parade on 27th August! I am sure I will be snapchat & Instagram storying and vlogging and blogging about them both!

July’s No1GuestBlogger – Olivia

Hey, my name is Olivia Zuu and I’ve been blessed to have known Harry for over 8 years now. I study law at Exeter and if there was one thing I could change in the world is that nap times become a compulsory part of the school curriculum up until you complete your education and then it can be optional but available when you reach full time employment. Mine and Harry’s friendship blossomed in middle school where we were both presenters on our monthly school video segments (LOOL). To this present day he hasn’t been able to get rid of me😉

No1 Food: Lasagne

Favourite Quote: I have loads but currently ‘Stay woke’

What annoys you the most: Birds- all birds (apart from penguins)

What would your 15 minutes of fame be for: If in the future napping becomes an Olympic sport then it’s very likely I’d be one of the contestants- and win

No1 Song of All Time: (cringe alert) About you now – Sugarbabes

No1 Song at the moment/this month/right now: Smoke Break - Chance the Rapper

Social Media Username: Instagram - olivia_zuu

No1 moment of this month;

Graduation fever was in the air this month and I was the proud sister of a Psychology and Law graduate as well as a very proud daughter of my mum who graduated from her Professional Masters Programme. The entire day made me feel super excited and hopeful for the future. Just knowing that the past as well as forthcoming late nights and deadlines + the breakdowns will all be worth it in the end. Also, the end of the month I celebrated another year of birth and you’d think working a 12 hour shift as well as missing my mum’s graduation would really dampen my birthday but thanks to my fabulous and hilarious work mates I truly had an amazing birthday. Like how great and important is it when you work day in and out to have colleagues who make work bearable and fun?? I’ve been very lucky with my summer job to have met a great bunch of people and when you work 60 hours a week together you feel like a little family:3

Something I HAVE to talk about;

So this month for me was focused about accepting changing friendships which I’m sure many if not everyone has gone through at one stage. As I’ve mentioned before I’ve just completed my first year at uni and have been very blessed with the friends I made (Big up flat H), however I was always super excited to come home and be reunited with my home friends who I’ve missed on so many occasions. The initial excitement of catching up with home friends faded pretty quickly and I found that I just didn’t have so much in common with the people who were once my close friends. One of the things I should probably highlight about myself is that I’m a very sentimental gal- no lie I still keep most birthday cards from my 13th birthday and really REALLY old cinema tickets/school books/clothes- so when it comes to losing friendships I hold my hands up to saying it’s something I have a hard time coming to terms with. I’m sure most students can look back to last year and say they’ve changed in at least one way to what they were like before that scary yet exciting new chapter opened; taller, more confident, fitter, more stressed etc. And because of these changes we may find ourselves disconnected from the people who we associated with before university—and that’s okay! Sometimes even necessary. So as this month is coming to an end the little lessons I have found are that a) yes- I am missing my uni friends like crazy, b) my home town best friends are still a mega important part in my life and I love them so much and lastly c) I shouldn’t feel sad about the friendships that have faded away. I’m a firm believer that if someone comes into your life and then leaves, no matter how long you’ve known them, they have been placed in your life for a reason and a season.

Thanks for reading, back over to Harry!

No1 Unpopular Opinion of the Month

Women are better than men. Okay not all of them, I’m better than Theresa. But I really don’t see a difference with male and females. How anyone can think one is superior is beyond on me. Well kinda.. I think privilege is very blinding and brings out the worse side in people. And a lot of men are blinded by their privilege. Of course there are some that aren’t, and some men are actually nice people and use their privilege to help end sexism. The same applies with white people and straight people. People are constantly blinded by their privilege and it makes them really ugly. So okay maybe not every single female is better than every single male, but… most are. They are generally more understanding because they’ve been through more shit. Whereas a lot of men get a lot handed to them and take it for granted. I'm not saying women are better than men, despite what my first sentence says. All I'm saying is all the woman I've met compared to all the men I've met in life, are stronger, kinder, funnier and cleverer. Equality for all bitches. PS Gender is a social construct. PPS Before that bitch says "if I said men are better than women blah blah blah" females have been oppressed forever and are still fighting for equality, it's fucking different. Reverse sexism doesn't exist so don't try it. PPPS I am male, ya really think I hate myself?!

No1GuestBlogger Olivia’s opinion on my opinion;

I’m all for girl power and whenever Bey’s classic Who Run the World comes on I am the first on the dance floor but at the end of the day of course one gender isn’t better than another. No way full stop. It is the ideology of superiority in most cases that causes oppression and inequality in the world. Saying all that, and I hope it doesn’t come across as a contradiction, I don’t think it’s wrong to acknowledge the inequality that women have and are still facing, and for that to lead to enabling women opportunities over men if that makes sense? So yeah the typical example would be work interviews within a company lacking gender diversity and a man and a woman with the same qualifications happen to go for the job. If within the employment there is a clear imbalance upon the gender demographic why shouldn’t the employer try to tackle that imbalance? But that doesn’t mean one gender is above the other. I completely agree with the whole privilege thing Harry mentioned (I got you boo). How can one who is blinded by their privilege truly sympathise with another who’s faced discrimination for who they are? It’s 2017 people! Women are amazing, men are okay, but we are all equally perfect😊

What did you guys have to say?

Each month I do a twitter poll to see what you guys think, I hashtag with #NO1UO. I do feel like my

twitter followers don't represent the world evenly,

which is why I love them.

No1 Lesson of the Month

You can’t diss/judge something until you’ve done it. After having serval jobs including, retail, kitchen, office, box office and a few other similar jobs. All of these I had expectations on or judged and was surprised positively or negatively. I dunno why I am using jobs as an example, that is so lame and adulty. But we all judge things we’ve never done and after starting new things I really realised that you can’t judge until you’ve been there or done it. You can show interest, sympathy and/or show respect but you will never fully understand something until you’ve tried it. I think this is very important to understand for everyone to respect each other. Not to judge someone is something we hear a lot but if you really think about it, it’s so important. Because we hear it so much we are immune to it and when someone says it AGAIN it goes over our heads because we’ve heard it so many times. But if you actually THINK about it, it’s so important. Even though we know we shouldn’t we all do it all the time, even with little things. I hate when I see a customer shouting at an employee. That person has probably never been a sales assistant and they don’t understand that it isn’t that persons fault. I’ve never worked as a waiter but my friend Laura is and whenever we go to a bar for drinks she will always take the glasses to the bar after we’ve finished. I don’t understand that, but she’s been there and I haven’t, of course I wouldn’t understand it but I respect it. So judge less and respect more.

Bye July!

After 5 weeks (pathetic I know) of working 9 till 5, five days a week. I am ready for two weeks off before I head back again. No time for rest though as I am currently in good old Dorchester, before I head to London on Wednesday then on Thursday I’m off to Brighton, then back a fore between the two for two weeks. Now enjoy August, I’m so tired but very excited and I hope to be dropping a few videos on my YouTube channel over this month but I will be back here on the blog at the end of the month with another special No1GuestBlogger, until then make sure you are number one, you don’t wanna be no one now do ya? xo

NO1SOTP

Run The World – Beyoncé

Express yourself – Labrinth

Power – Little Mix ft Stormzy

Listen to all the No1 Songs on the 2017 Playlist here