Hey everyone, so something a little bit different from me today. I've decided to write about this because quite frankly, it's quite a controversial topic but it needs discussing. If you don't know what the no make up selfie is, a lot of people last night and the night before were posting photographs of them with no make up on in order to raise awareness of cancer, perfect I say. Here's what I think about it...
Nasty statuses - I saw some horrible statuses from boys: 'girls who were 10/10 have suddenly just dropped to 5/10', 'I've seen how ugly some girls really are', 'congratulations, you donated £3 to cancer research and posted about it on Facebook, now everyone knows what a great person you are' and then out came the nasty girls saying things like: 'put your ugly, pasty faces away, we don't want to see them'. Firstly, the people who were writing things like this are quite frankly, vile and clearly have issues of their own, we know that boys will be boys and that girls can be extremely nasty, but for a lot of girls, taking make up off in the first place is a hard thing to do. You may laugh at this, but it's the truth, girls don't always like to be seen looking bare, and to put your bare face to the nasty internet is quite scary, so I think this whole no make up selfie thing to begin with,has done a good job of raising girls self esteem, as so many girls look absolutely beautiful without make up on.
'How does taking a selfie raise awareness or money for charity?' - Then comes another debate, how does taking a selfie actually raise awareness or money for charity? A lot of people were saying things like 'go out and do something for charity rather than sitting and taking a selfie' and so many people were tweeting and writing statuses asking how does a selfie raise money? However, what these people failed to realise is that by moaning about it or even by asking the question, they were actually discussing the topic and therefore, making the topic go viral, it's simple PR, talk = publicity and we want this to go viral and it has, the more people that mentioned it, the more people that moaned about it, meant that more people donated and more people went out and did it! Hence why I am writing this post now. I do agree that to begin with, a few girls did just take a selfie and didn't mention donating, however, many girls did say 'check your boobs girls' and I did even see some girls upload photographs of how to check for symptoms of breast cancer, both me and my flat mate checked our breasts last night in the shower, something we would not have done before hand. Here is a great example below from Jamie Hartley, he wouldn't have made the donation had he not seen it all over Facebook all day.
So how has this worked? - To be honest, when I saw all the nasty statuses, I thought that girls would soon stop putting up the selfies, they'd kind of been bullied into a corner by people who didn't understand that it was raising awareness, I saw one person explain that he already knew that cancer was a bad thing, he didn't need a selfie to tell him that, but sometimes we just need things putting back into the forefront of our mind and as Jamie said, this did make him (and many others) who wouldn't have ordinarily, pick up their phones and donate.
So here are a few girls looking absolutely gorgeous, naturally, on my news feed:
Bethany Hopps
Perese Haye
Sinead Flanagan
Hannah Coop
Charlotte Louise Spencer
Grace Johnson
Christie Hutchings and George Wainwright - a personal favourite, Christie wears no make up and George wears make up. Great team effort.
The result? - It was reported today that Cancer Research saw a rise in donations and received 800,000 more donations in just 24 hours, mainly via text. In these 24 hours, a reported 1million pounds has been raised by these selfies/awareness. All I want to say is a massive well done, it is so nice to see girls empowering eachother and helping eachother out and working together (even though they are just sending a quick text and taking a selfie) to raise awareness, it really does show, every little helps and it only takes one tiny gesture, to make such a huge difference. It may seem like a tiny thing, a selfie and one donation, but when you think how many girls have done this, it's clearly worked. It's nice to see guys getting involved now too.
Let's not stop now, upload your no make up selfie and text BEAT to 70099 to donate £3 - I say we aim for another million, in fact, why not start raising money for a charity of your choice - do something great today. Taking our make up off and publishing it to the whole world and texting a number to raise money, is NOTHING compared to what people fighting cancer and other horrible diseases go through every day. Together we can beat cancer and all of the other dreadful diseases in the world! Let's do this. The power of social media!
Ladies, educate yourselves ^
Lots of love, Em
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