Melissa Steel2013-05-19T12:47:47-04:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=melissa-steelCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Melissa SteelGood old fashioned elbow grease.Why I Think I'm Even Better Than Samantha Bricktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31160062013-04-19T10:22:50-04:002013-04-23T08:44:43-04:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/latest article on her unending attempts to police her appearance included a rather worrying account of a phase she went through in her youth that involved only eating Polo mints. Her 'partners are not only boyfriends but weight-loss coaches,' but I can only hope that no one else was party to this particularly alarming episode in her quest for beauty.
This leads nicely on to my first reason why I am better than Samantha Brick: I can eat a pizza. In fact, next time I do it, I may deep fry Polos for dessert, just to stick two fingers up to the anxiety-riddled image of womanhood that is promoted in such articles. Of course we should all heed the desperate warnings of the posters in the doctor's waiting room and attempt to eat healthily, but recounting such episodes of disordered eating in a piece that, on the whole, lauds dieting is reckless.
As for her other halves monitoring her weight, I would personally find that infantilising. A grown woman, able to regulate her own diet? By herself? What is this black magic?! If my boyfriend tried to take my aforementioned pizza away from me, I would promptly throw it at him in the manner of a clown with a custard pie at the circus. Then I'd probably lick it off his face, ensuring I would not waste perfectly good pizza. Kinky, I know.
It is hard to be a woman in the Western world and not feel ashamed of your appearance. In the press, starlets in bikinis are picked apart more comprehensively than if an autopsy was being performed on them. Scrutiny naturally turns toward your own, inevitably inferior, body. So, although I tip my hat to Samantha for her boundless appreciation of her own beauty, comments like 'I maintain a food diary. I never shop when I'm hungry, I always read the packaging, and I weigh myself every other day', reveal a sadly indoctrinated point of view. One of the greatest (and most fun) rebellions against the media has to be the ravenous post-gym Tesco run: "Emaciated underwear model on the front of that magazine, your sunken eyes can stare hungrily at my meaty thighs for as long as you like. To add insult to injury, I'm off to buy a pack of reduced doughnuts," goes my internal monologue.
I would be happy to share my doughnuts with Samantha. After all, she seemed such a fan of Polos, and they really don't look that different, when you think about it...]]>'When Are You Getting Married?' and Other Terrifying Questionstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28763712013-03-14T12:26:21-04:002013-05-14T05:12:01-04:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
I have been in a relationship for over two years now, a longer period of time than some betrothed couples I know. Therefore, when discussing the latest engagement with friends, talk turns to my own plans. The most common enquiries are:
(a) "Do you think your boyfriend will propose on your graduation day?"
(b) "You must want to get married, right?"
Before I continue, let me once and for all clear up the answers to those questions:
(a) Not if he knows what is good for him.
(b) I am 21 years old and this isn't a Jane Austen novel. Remaining unwed doesn't condemn me to a life of sobbing on a Regency window seat - I don't 'have' to want anything.
Today marriage isn't the norm it once was, a fact that should be celebrated. No longer does it have to be the camouflage for an unplanned pregnancy, or the 'done thing' that turns into a life sentence with someone you fall out of love with.
Technically, young people now are supposed to have a freedom that means they can choose whether matrimony is right for them or not.
However, when I am asked questions about my love life, I often feel that there is still an implicit certainty that a woman must want to get married at the earliest opportunity, a belief that is confirmed in the whites of people's eyes when I tell them I am not keen on the idea.
It is even worse when the topic moves on to children. If you don't act like your uterus is about to burst forth from your body in a bout of maternal madness and claim the nearest baby as its own, then you are bound to draw a few raised eyebrows.
Women can choose how to live their lives now, yes, it is just a pity that we get no say in how we are judged.]]>Facebook: The Politics of Defriendingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27109802013-02-19T19:00:00-05:002013-04-21T05:12:02-04:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
As I near the end of my undergraduate degree, I have 515 friends on Facebook, but I feel like I only have a handful of real friends. Almost everyone left in my social group has experienced the friendship that we thought would last a lifetime fizzling out, or being left for the fairer shores of better social circles. I won't go into the suspected reasons for my abandonment in detail here, but it is probably because I am a coarse, cackling hag, whose only social aspiration is to become a respected sloth wrangler with an unlimited supply of gin, but I digress. What I want to say is that although I sympathise with my vengeful comrade, I do think there is an etiquette that accompanies the Facebook friendship.
Very rarely have I actually deleted a contact on the website. I did go through a phase of defriending people who I had not spoken to in years, but I was overcome by paralysing guilt, fretting about how hurt the poor souls might feel if they ever realised what I had done.
The other reason that I do not delete people is a selfish act of survival. What if I walk into an interview in five years' time (at the sloth sanctuary, of course), and sitting opposite me is someone with a petty grudge against me, yet to get over the fact I axed them from my Facebook during university? Keeping online relations congenial seems to be the best option in the long term.
Congeniality brings me to my next point. At a recent party, someone who had deleted me from their friend list submitted to the very British desire to be polite and engaged me in a ten minute conversation about how I was doing, what my plans were for next year, etcetera. Pleasantries were flying like Tarantino bullets, even though my acquaintance was probably dying of boredom inside almost as much as I was.
Facebook may orchestrate our lives but it simultaneously fails to have any real impact on the everyday social conventions that we feel compelled to perform, other than adding yet another layer of awkwardness to young adult life. Perhaps we should remember that before we give into the temptation to cull our erstwhile friends from our digital lives.]]>Can We Afford to Dream?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26774512013-02-13T09:44:58-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
It has been an issue discussed in the likes of the Guardian, but I think that living through this predicament myself means that I can bring something new to the table.
Having seen the dreams of a few graduate friends turn into living nightmares, I feel wary about following my heart. Even though they have good degrees and plenty of talent, some have struggled for years to break into the industries that they so dearly want to be a part of. Their youthful fantasies of writing the next bestseller or starting their own businesses have become haunting reminders of what might have been in another time, another place.
Worried students and graduates tell me that they just cannot imagine careers other than the ones they have idolised, despite the financial, educational and social obstacles that could scupper their plans. Each time a new setback arises, they bravely carry on, but only time will tell whether this determination leads to success or disappointment.
Gradually I began to lose some of my more acute symptoms. For instance, my face no longer looked like a tomato at all times and I had no resemblance to the 'Before' segment of an anti-perspirant advert any more, either. Everyone in the office was very nice and accommodating, too. Despite this, I still felt that I was struggling to fully project the confident persona that I have in other areas of my life.
I found the solution on a night out (and no, it wasn't vodka. Turning up to work sloshed wouldn't help with the red-face problem or the whole trying to be professional thing). I was actually at a friend's birthday party when Beyoncé's Crazy in Love came on. My natural reaction was to begin gyrating, even though I knew that I looked more like a child having an energetic tantrum than a sex goddess. I had only had the one drink, so I am afraid that my behaviour cannot even be blamed on inebriation. I am just like this. My friends joined in, despite the glares of some nearby, who were obviously not fans of mindless flailing. With that, I realised that you can't please everyone, but the very least that you can do to make life a little easier is to please yourself. The following Monday, I walked to work with a confident strut Beyoncé would be proud of.]]>Champagning: Don't Tar Us All With the Same Brushtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22925552012-12-13T09:32:52-05:002013-02-12T05:12:01-05:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
Soon the student magazines and the national press hit Fahrenheit 451 in their frenzied disgust. It comes at a particularly bad time for the university's image - in the last week it has weathered accusations of elitism due to its admittance of a low number of under-privileged students. To some, the champagning only reinforces its unfortunate reputation as a playground for those with black credit cards bigger than their brains.
So, I would like to take this opportunity to give you an insight into what it is really like to live in St Andrews, from one non-champagne-chucking pleb to another.
I come from a Scottish state school, which has often been of source of mirth and amazement for some of my contemporaries. Responses have included "You went to a comprehensive... But you still managed to get in here?" and "You have a Scottish accent but are from Edinburgh? You went to a state school? That explains it! I've never met anyone not from a private school in the city here!" This can get quite exasperating after a while, but, I suppose, if my career doesn't take off post-uni, I can set up a circus tent in the town centre and charge a small fee for people to see my exam certificates.
However, it seems unfair for the media to portray us all as over-privileged playboys and bimbettes; most of us have worked very hard to get here. Although I agree that there aren't many students here from the most poverty-stricken areas of the country, it cannot be denied that the university holds very high academic standards, and the solution may not be, as some have suggested, lowering the entry requirements, but focusing on providing an excellent state education that gives everyone an equal chance of achieving the admissions criteria.
What I lament about St Andrews is balanced out by the fact that most of the people I have met here, rich or poor, are not interested in how big your daddy's bank balance is. We live in a place nicknamed 'The Bubble', and one of the best aspects of the town's insulation is that prejudices are usually left at the bus station.
Despite the negative attention that champagning has brought us, I can't help but feel that the prevailing response to it is one in a long line of overreactions to decisions made by St Andrews staff and students. At the end of the day, if somebody with more money than sense (I maintain anybody with an iota of intelligence just would have guzzled all the alcohol) wants to pour Moet over their head, then let them do it.
The video has since been removed from Youtube, but even I couldn't help but giggle at the guy who luxuriated in champagne outside a restaurant window, bemused diners not entirely sure how to react. I am sure my response will be read as some sort of cult-esque brainwashing by the gentry, but that will probably be proposed by the same people who need to lighten up about champagning in general.
One soul I can imagine worrying over such a horror would be Hugh Reilly of The Scotsman, who in a recent article on St Andrews wrote, "The [Union] president is tall, dashingly handsome and frightfully well-spoken, thus we had nothing in common. It crossed my mind to ingratiate myself by commenting that it had been a "spiffing" journey up from Glasgow."
Reilly later back-tracked a little, but perhaps it is not St Andrews that is discouraging the under-privileged from applying, but comments like the ones he made? If the champagning incident has taught us anything, it is that the media has a lot of power to construct barriers in the minds of the public.]]>A Scottish Student on Scottish Independencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22505142012-12-06T11:02:25-05:002013-02-05T05:12:01-05:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
However, most people I know in Scotland seem very ambivalent about the whole movement (and not overweight, either). The general attitude seems to be that it is great that we get to go across the Forth Road Bridge for free now, but a greater commitment to the Scottish National Party (SNP) is to be shied away from.
The problem is that those who are Scottish Nationalists seem to be much more vocal about their cause than the average Unionist. They are the ones in the pub sporadically shouting "BUT THE OIL...THE OIL WILL PAY FOR EVERYTHING" with the blind passion of a caricature of a 1980s sheikh. This is usually followed by "ALL WE NEED IS WINDMILLS", shrieked like a crazed Dutchman reworking 'All You Need is Love'. For those not in the know, Scotland's North Sea oil is believed by some SNP supporters to be bountiful enough help the region function as an independent state, and the wind mills reference is a nod to the current Scottish Government' s flag ship green energy project. These are two very opposing beliefs, in a sense. One problem that springs to mind is how we could ever be really energy efficient while continuing to sell a fuel form that belches holes in the ozone layer?
Just in case you weren't able to tell, I am not enthused by the prospect of Scottish independence. If you examine the above example, you could come to the conclusion that is more ill-considered opinions on the issue that annoy me. The bad thing is that this is all I seem to hear from the cause's noisiest supporters, who appear to be more interested in pretending we are a repressed colony and they are our fire-brand avengers than entering into a considered debate on the topic.
However, when the 'Better Together' campaign came to my university town recently, I was struck by their use of English students as canvassers for their pro-union cause. Surely this just supports the fantasy image of the English as our colonial overlords? Although this was probably far from the campaigners mind, to some Scots it would be reminiscent of the controlling of the 'native' to benefit the Empire (or Westminster, in this case).
Nevertheless, as a Social Anthropology student, I wonder whether the cultural difference between Scotland and England is enough to warrant total separation. There are regional differences, yes, but walking down the street in England or Scotland means you are likely to encounter the same language, culture and mind-sets in both.
The occasional tantrums some of our representatives seem to have in their communications with Westminster do nothing to make me bend to the SNP agenda, either. In fact, sometimes I imagine Scotland as England's temperamental wife, who occasionally has a fit and screams "Right, that's it. I've had enough. You just don't appreciate me [and my North Sea oil and majestic wind mill collection] anymore! It wasn't like this when James I first united us!" Then everything is okay again when the husband brings a bunch of garage flowers home (i.e. token government subsidy).
I suppose this is a plea for all Scottish voices to be heard on the issue- not just those who shout the loudest.]]>Why I Rejected a Grad Schemetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21775122012-11-23T11:09:19-05:002013-01-23T05:12:01-05:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
So why on earth did I say "thanks, but no thanks" to the final round of a graduate scheme? A moment of self-destruction? A full-blown Quarter-Life Crisis? Tourette's Syndrome?
No, it was none of these, but I do believe it was to do with a syndrome- 'Locked-In Syndrome'. Some of my friends lucky enough to have secured a job seemed to have had mini-crises of late that are clear signs of this malady. Like sufferers of its famous namesake, they feel like the world is going on without them, their friends exploring new and exciting opportunities, but they are locked. Unlike sufferers of their famous namesake, they are not trapped in their bodies, they are imprisoned by a contract with a company. Restrained by their golden handcuffs, they watch on helplessly as So-and-So plans their gap year in Peru, or someone else gets the dream job they didn't have the courage to wait it out for.
If I had been selected for the job I applied for, I would have probably had to make a decision about it by mid-December. I felt that going any further in the process at a time when I am trying to finish a dissertation, complete another module and forge a path as a writer was not a wise idea. How could I make a clear decision about my future with so many other stresses and strains clouding my judgement? It would be the professional equivalent of a quickie marriage to a stranger in Vegas, a rush that would probably result in neither person in the partnership being entirely happy. I would always wonder 'what if?', and the company would always ponder, "What's eating Melissa Steel?"
Of course, for those set on a certain career path, early recruitment can be a relief. Indeed, I am sure that many readers are going through this same process now and cannot identify with my feelings at all. I myself will continue to apply for graduate jobs, I just need a company willing to go through a slower courtship. I'm old-fashioned like that.]]>The Student and the Skype Interviewtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21587692012-11-19T10:26:11-05:002013-01-19T05:12:01-05:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
One problem that came into my mind was whether I should wear trousers or not. I admit it, sometimes I am actually put off the idea of leaving the house when I have to put the blasted things on. Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we could all merrily skip to Tesco in our pants without being arrested? Then again, I'm not sure I would want to see the teenage dirtbag (bum pointed skyward) trying to wrestle the last bag of Cheetos from the back of the bottom shelf in his no doubt holey briefs. Judging by my male friend's screech of disgust when I bought a pair of Tom & Jerry pants the other day, my choice of underwear would be equally scarring for the general public. Seriously, he made the shrieking, melting man in Indiana Jones look cool, calm and collected, and he didn't even see me wear them!
So, it was with a heavy heart that I picked out a pair of smart trousers to wear for the interview. After all, I couldn't risk standing up to shut my laptop and accidentally exposing my pants of apparent doom.
Now all I had to do was find a quiet place to speak to my potential employers from. This involved telling my flatmates that no one was allowed to burst through my door between 3 and 4pm, and that I would appreciate if they refrained from playing 'Bat Out of Hell' on the speakers that cause my bedroom floor to pulsate during this time period, too (thanks for your cooperation, guys!).
The interview process itself was a little different to the more traditional face-to-face arrangement. I actually had to do two interviews with the company, and in the first one the audio worked, but the video stream from their office didn't come through. Not that I minded, it was a nice change to have another disembodied voice, other than the ones in my head, questioning my career choices. In fact, one of the first questions in both interviews was along the lines of, "Don't you just want to be a journalist, not an advertiser?" As a graduate-to-be, I readily admit that am still considering my career options, but I would not apply for a job I don't think I would enjoy or be good at. Hopefully I managed to communicate that to them!
Anyway, I have another Skype interview with a different company tomorrow that I must go and prepare for. However, when I take a step back from my research, I realise that students today are confronting a very different interview process than their parents once did. No longer will the interviewer be able to see the beads of nervous perspiration form on your forehead (all hail pixelated images and bad internet connections). As a tech-savvy generation, it also something we should take to very easily. Nevertheless, we are more used to connecting with friends and families through technology such as video calling, so will it actually be a stumbling block? Will the too-casual student expose their underwear, and naiveté, to their interviewer? As Bob Dylan said, "The times, they are a-changin'" (and some think my taste in pants should, too).]]>Where is My Life?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20900042012-11-07T17:07:03-05:002013-01-07T05:12:01-05:00Melissa Steelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-steel/
As a Fourth Year student, I only glimpsed the action as I went to empty our food recycling caddy. I shouldn't really complain because as the mulch hit the bottom of the bin a waft of bright blue mould spores assaulted my respiratory system- no doubt that was more intoxicating than the almost lethal punch doe-eyed Freshers across the town had been guzzling since as early as 7am.
The point is that I don't have a life any more, and neither do most of my fellow Final Year students. Just as our grandparents reminisce about a time when men were men and a loaf of bread only cost fifteen pence, our eyes mist over as we recall staggering home from the Union after taking advantage of their cocktail deals. On Saturday night, I went out to see Skyfall and experienced the elated hysterics I had only ever previously associated with new mothers who have their first night out after months and months of sleepless nights and gaining an intimate knowledge of soiled nappies.
When I think about it, the only real differences are that my sleepless nights are spent planning out schedules for completing essays and job applications, and the soiled nappies have been replaced by the equally messy business of rewriting dissertation drafts. Like a parent of a new-born, I am trying to adapt to the 'push and pull' of all my responsibilities, too. The conundrum of the moment is academic work versus applying for graduate schemes. I feel that by honing my CV and completing verbal and numerical reasoning tests, I am neglecting my degree. Then again, concentrating solely on my modules means that I risk missing the perfect job opportunity. It is like Catch-22, but I don't even have the good fortune of any of this happening on a Mediterranean island. At least when I did finally leave the library I would get a suntan there.
It is hard to be the all-singing, all-dancing, volunteering, enterprising, over achieving candidate that recruiters wake up in hot sweats fantasising about. In fact, part of me will be glad when the first round of graduate schemes close their doors in several days. It will herald my new found devotion to learning all about the slave trade in colonial Amazonia for my course in ethnohistories, but it will also signal that start of a new project for me: Operation Melissa Gets Her Life Back. All I need is a pitcher of 'Jamaican Me Crazy' and some good friends- who I will fireman's lift out of the library if need be. I'll call it a rescue mission!]]>