Hot feet

​Have you ever been out three days in a row after not leaving your house for weeks?

Let me tell you, not for the faint of heart.

This past week I’ve been to a sleepover, a day party, a (partial :( ) solar eclipse viewing and now the beach. Consider my energy source depleted 🪫

Elizabeth Bennet/Swann

​If I had a nickel for every time I obsessed over movies in which Keira Knightley plays a woman called Elizabeth, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but, weirdly, it happens twice, right?

I could watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice every single day till the day I died, and I’d die happy. It’s the perfect movie; I love the musical score and the romance. Sure, it’s not a word-for-word perfect replica of the books, but there’s no mistaking the tension and the romance. The scene of Mr Bingley’s ball where the camera doesn’t cut and it just shows everybody interacting with each other is something that I always find little details about when I rewatch it (Bingley reaching for the hem of Jane’s dress>>>). I’ll have to do a proper review once I rewatch it again for the umpteenth time. 

As for Pirates of the Caribbean, it is perhaps one of the best movie trilogies ever; every movie is better than the last. And the plot is actually interesting; it’s not just fighting, like what do you mean Calypso and Davy Johns were lovers, and he literally cut out his heart when she betrayed him??? Don’t even get me started on the score; Hans Zimmerman really did his big one on this. Every time I hear Will and Elizabeth’s theme, especially in the last movie where that part ways, I literally ascend. I’ll definitely do an in-depth review of these movies later, too.

I think it’s safe to say that if a movie comes out about a woman called Elizabeth and Keira Knightley’s playing her, it will make my Top 4 on Letterboxd.

Which of these movies do you guys prefer?

-Liz <3

New Beginnings

Okay, so good news guys, I finally took down my braids after almost two months, HUZZAH!!! The bad news is a 1/4 of my natural hair decided to come down with it :( (That huzzah bit was a Horrible Histories reference; if you don't know, get to know. It's on BBC iPlayer).

Those boho French curls will definitely be missed; I took some great pictures with them. But I wasn't sure what to do with them. I've been so used to changing up my hair every week once I washed it, but with these extensions, while I didn't have to focus too much on my actual hair, I felt trapped in this one hairstyle.

It's definitely a little disheartening to see that the progress I've made for over a year on my hair disappear like this. I almost feel like I'm back to square one. But on the other hand, I've really missed my natural hair and experimenting with new styles. 

Instead of grieving my lost progress, I'm going to try and look at this as a chance to start over. There's this superstition that hair holds memories, and while I'm not shaving my head bald to match my dad (lol), this loss can mean I can now make new memories with my hair. Do you get what I mean, or am I being a pretentious twat?

Let me know

-Liz <3

The Joys of Black Girlhood

  *read till the end for collage*

Recently I've been feeling a sense of nostalgia for the good ole' days; looking back now, hair was a core aspect of my girlhood growing up. I think it's come on because my braids desperately need to be taken out, but I've been postponing this because I've missed having braids sooo much.

For context, last March, I decided to go natural for a whole year because all I have ever known to do with my hair is put it in braids. So I went natural cold turkey. It was a bit of a shock how little I knew about my own hair, but I adapted and grew to love it. I experimented with afros, flat twists, and mini twists - which is what I kept my hair in most of the time.

Anyways, I say this has made me nostalgic because I remember the days my mum would take me all the way to Ripley Road market to get my hair done, and I would try - and fail - to get the expressions cut into one and not three. And during those long 7-9 hours when my neck was being bent every which way, my bum aching from being sat for so long, and some auntie was chewing gum and yelling on the phone, my anchor would be those posters of different elaborate hairstyles. I'd pick one and try to imagine an outfit that would suit it to pass the time. This might have been a coping mechanism from getting bob-length braids every two months lol.

Once I got to secondary school, a whole new world of hair came into view. I went a bit wild; by the time I was 18, I had gotten blonde, red, pink, blue and purple extensions. I was not a fan of the blonde and the blue, but you live, and you learn, I guess. Strangely enough, I had never gotten in trouble for them, hmm. I went to a predominantly black secondary school (thank God), but I was really the only one who liked experimenting with different hairstyles and colours. I've made friends who decided to go natural much earlier than me and others who picked an expression colour and stayed with it. In the girls' bathrooms and during break time, I would chit-chat with them, swapping hair care tips and tricks, asking for advice on future hairstyles, and teaching each other how to do our edges; I never got the hang of it, myself.

This definitely won't be the last time I get braids. I've got a wedding to go to soon, and I've got to decide what hairstyle to do then, but I think that year and 4 months I went with my hair out was a good learning experience, and it taught me not to be ashamed of what my hair naturally looks like.

-Liz <3

Love, theoretically Review 🩷🎓

Love, theoretically 

Author: Ali Hazelwood 

Time read: 22nd July - 1st August 

Rating: ★★★★

DISCLAIMER: This book review contains SPOILERS!!!!!

Quick blurb:

This serial people-pleaser girl has a second job on a fake-dating website and works as a physicist. She's up for a job interview because she’s unfortunately poor, and one of the people deciding on her application is the brother of one of her fake-dating clients.

Review:

Everybody give this book a round of applause; Ali Hazelwood has successfully brought me out of my 6-month reading slump 😝. Now this is actually my first review on this page, and the details of this book are already fading fast, but you know what? It did the trick. Let me put my thoughts down before the memory of it completely loses my grasp.

I am also learning a lot of new words because I’m reading this on my Kindle; God bless the search feature. Now, can I remember any of these words right now? No. Could I tell you what any of them mean when I see them? Probably not. Isn't one of the main points of reading to actually learn new things instead of immediately discarding the information presented to you? Okay enough questions, mind your beeswax.

The FMC is called Elise, and the MMC is Jack. Elise is a people pleaser who shapeshifts into the ideal version of her each person would like; Jack sees past all that bull and can see her for who she is. I'm really enjoying their banter, but it seems like everybody in this book has banter with each other, so it might just be the author's writing style.

Besides the main characters, I'm obsessed with the banter between Jack and his grandmother Margaret. Margarate is such an icon; she keeps telling Jack to come over because of 'emergencies', but really it's to get him to gossip with her. And she immediately says what everyone is thinking; upon meeting Elsie for the second time, she asks her and Jack how long they've been 'doing it'. I love when a character gets straight to the point.

Also, this hasn't happened yet at the point that I'm at right now, but mark my words: that mentor of Elise’s, Dr Laurendeu or whatever, is purposely not telling other professors about her for job opportunities, so that she can continue being his bitch. She just hasn’t realised this yet because she feels like she owes him for the horrible career she has now. 

Actually, I need to go on a little rant about this guy typing all this is getting me mad all over again. A little context: Dr Laurendeu used to be like the head or the editor or something of this physics journal article, but years ago he published an article written by Jack where he's bashing theoretical physics (Dr Laurendeu and Elise's particular brand of physicist). Now, because of this, Dr Larendeu was disgraced and forced to leave his job because he made such a devastating fuck up that tarnished the reputations of theoretical physicists. Fast forward to the present day, he's going on about Elise (or should I say Elsie because he keeps saying her name wrong 🙄) using her potential new job to torment Jack. But here's my thing: as a professional editor of a journal article, why wouldn't you do your job and read the article??? Better yet, why wouldn't you do a background check on the author? If he did, he would have noticed that Jack was SEVENTEEN at the time, and wouldn't have published it. He's basically holding a grudge on this dude because he felt his career was tarnished by a teenager.

Okay rant over, I really don't like this dude.

One more thing, that whole MIT interview process being done when everybody, including JACK, knew that she wouldn’t get the job was extremely inconsiderate. She was far too calm about that imo, i would've crashed the fuck out on everybody in that little nerd school.