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See the pictures below? I didn’t know it was gyaru, which sounds so incredibly silly, doesn’t it? I’ve been gyaru for nearly 10 years – how can I not know if it was gyaru or not? It all boils down to one reason: I just don’t know what substyle it fits into.
It’s crazy how much Instagram has changed our lives and you know what? I’m not even mad. Yes, I do have my bad days where I’m comparing myself to others, but it’s also had such a positive impact on my life. I’ve never connected with more people from all corners of the internet than I have done on instagram and it’s the first place I look at when searching for beautiful places to go to. So don’t worry Instagram – I still love you. Here are more reasons why I love the ‘gram!
And in that moment I felt so alive.
I turned my face to check if my blusher was visible enough and of even vibrancy on both sides (it definitely was – I might as well have emptied the whole block of colour onto my face) and my eyes occasionally flickered up towards the beautiful lashes that framed them. Gosh, yes, it felt good. With one last slick of lipgloss my war paint was complete, and I was ready to tackle the world.
It was 8pm on a Monday evening (well, yesterday, in fact), and I was trawling through my blog archives, going back to my first year of blogging in 2011. Gosh, it was embarrassing to look at; my posts were filled with emojis, with cringey language like “lawls” instead of lol, and were sometimes no longer than a paragraph. My photos were awful (as were the blog watermarks that were plastered over them) but I was excited to be on this little corner of the internet, and it was evident in my writing. With a twang I realised that I really, really missed those carefree days where I wasn’t serious about blogging. Over the years my blog posts – although mostly cheerful – have become more carefully planned and filled with relevant jargon in order to be noticed in the online world. But back then I really didn’t care about my reach or engagement.
So what happened? Why did blogging become so serious?
Some days my relationship with myself is a good one. Sometimes I love how my eyes aren’t quite that shade of blue but neither are they green; that my legs look as if they are never-ending; and that my ability to pull the most stupid faces brings a smile to my husband’s face (or maybe it’s a oh-god-she’s-doing-it-again-grimace).
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