The One With The Selfie For Sophie

Today has been a day of realisation for me, seriously. The past two days I have been cooped up at home with a bad chest and no voice. For me, having no voice is a tragedy. For those around me, it is a blessing I'm sure. Being stuck at home with the inability to check Facebook left me feeling sorry for myself. As a distraction I decided to read up on local news online. I would never actually read a newspaper; I get terribly anxious about the dirt they leave on your hands so I couldn't possibly, but I settled for the Echo website instead.

On there, I saw an article about a girl named Sophie Jones who recently passed away. She had been refused a smear test that could have picked up her symptoms of cervical cancer. There's me, huffing and puffing and stomping my feet over a sore throat, when someone nearby had suffered so greatly. Sometimes, a little bit of perspective works wonders for your attitude.

I then started seeing a lot about a petition that is going around to get the age for smear tests lowered. Alongside this was the concept of a 'no make up selfie' for women and a 'make up selfie' for men, to help raise awareness, with the hash tag #sophieschoice. One of my obsessions in life, maybe my main obsession, is make up. I have so many make up bags that I don't know what is in them. Proof of that came earlier when I was lovingly painting my good old dad's face for his selfie - I kept finding things I never knew I had. Even when I am at summer camp, in the boiling heat, working every day to teach my beautiful girls all about empowerment and confidence as a woman I still sneak a bit of mascara on.

The thought of a 'no make up selfie' really made me nervous. Could I deliberately post a photo of myself without make up, careful angles and good lighting? I am shameless when it comes to selfies, I really am. Coincidentally I was not wearing make up today, as I didn't leave my bed for the most part, so I decided to go for it. I took a photo along with my poor dad who was looking a little worse for wear after my attempts ("I'm not using any of my good stuff on you!") and then sat while he and my mum scrolled through some other uploads commenting how nice people looked in their photos.

This caused my second realisation of the day. Like many women, when anyone asks me to leave the house my reaction is often "Sorry, I haven't got any make up on". The response I normally get from my dad or long-suffering boyfriend is that they can't tell, I don't look any different, no one will notice and so on. I normally take this as a huge insult - essentially just an excuse to shout a lot, wave my arms around and refuse point blank to go anywhere with them. The reason behind this is that I spend so much money on buying make up, so much time on applying it, so much energy worrying about how it looks half way through the day that telling me I look fine without it really takes away from the efforts I have gone to. Vain, I know but if a woman feels confident and pretty with her make up on, being told she looks no different without it can be a real blow. So anyway, hearing my parents make such positive comments about the other posters made me realise that actually they are not insulting me. They are just telling the truth. If I decided to go up the shop without my face on, would anybody take a second look? No, because people are so busy going about their own day, worrying about their own face, shopping list, real life stresses, that they don't care if I have lippy and blusher on. I think one of the most amazing things about these selfies is that it encourages us to stop hiding ourselves. We can be confident with what we have got. As my lovely mum always says "you may as well love your body, because you aren't getting another one". She's very wise, I know.

Of course, as with anything, there is a minority of people who believe that these photos won't make a difference and people should be donating instead. My argument to that is that raising awareness is an amazing thing, instilling confidence in others is an amazing thing, showing Sophie's family what an impact she has had is an amazing thing. Besides, if people were simply talking about how much they had donated to charity this same minority of people would be complaining about how much people brag, boast and think they're awesome for having spare change. A lot of people are doing both the photo and giving money, what is the harm in that?

Whilst all this was going on, we came across a video that really hammered home everything I was already thinking. Obviously, it made me cry, because everything does. One of my afflictions in life is over-active tear ducts (self-diagnosed). If you can't see the video below, I have kindly linked you here ...yeah I'm awesome like that.

This video influenced my final realisation of the day. I need to be thankful for what I get in life, and what I have been given. If this little child can be so grateful for the fact that he was given a gift, I can be grateful for the fact that my biggest struggle today was a husky voice. I can be grateful for the fact that my biggest concern was about what people would think of me without foundation on.

I hope that I can learn to be more like Sophie, fighting for what she knew was right, and more like the little boy in the video; happy with what he has been given.

Safely rest, sweet girl.

As ever,

Becca Biscuit

If you would like to make a donation you can text Beat to 70007. If you want to add your name to the Sophie's Choice e-petition to lower the age of smear testing, click here