Purple Lipstick

We made it! If you're reading this post you are probably someone that has managed to stick it out with Purple Lipstick for an entire year :D Looking back at the past couple of months I feel like there's so much good that this blog, you and everyone else who's helped out along the way has brought to Zimbabwe and to the world in general! We started this blog with the intention of creating a safe space for girls to share their thoughts and also get solid advice (well I think its solid, it could just be me rambling haha!) Today we've been able to connect some of you with resources to get you where you want to be, we've taught a couple of you how to code and to end the year we managed to get a bunch of you together to give gifts to over 300 children! I'm so amazed by how giving and caring us humans actually are and how something so small has effected so much change.

Hi I'm Matifadza Chaza,
Nice to meet you :).

Sooo I'm a bit of an oddball, I've always been. I enjoy doing things most people would think are nerdy or weird for example watching Korean dramas or watching anime or dressing like the 80s called and they want their fashion back.

 Soooo I'm a bit radical in my fight against the conventions set up by society telling us to be one way and learn one way and think one way. Who is society though? We are! We're the ones who make the rules!! 'You know what they say....' Who is they?! 'They' is actually not a bunch of guys sitting behind desks coming up with more ways to ruin our lives. 'They' is us, therefore WE must stop blaming society for everything and complaining about how oppressed we are by these conventions and get up and actually breach the confines we have set up for ourselves. Breaching those confines, for example, would be giving more girls an opportunity to learn how to code and hack (the good type of hacking not the one you see in the movies because that's illegal) and program, because many years ago girls in tech were unicorns, almost non-existent; but now it's no longer just a guy thing. Purple Lipstick sets up the platform. I guess that's why you could say I joined the team, because our initiative is different and I believe that different is ok. It's great actually. Different is the little bit of sugar, spice, and everything nice in order to make society great again 👌.
Nice to meet you,
I'm Matifadza Chaza :)

The title “everything and nothing” is totally open to interpretation. You can give it whatever meaning you want to. Just as the title is ambiguous, so is this short article. Maybe, this is me being very “artsy” but maybe this is me being uncreative (insert emoji that is thinking). I would like to believe this article is the former.
So, if you will notice the title is not in uppercase. It is literally a reflection of my feelings and my life right now. I feel ambiguous, I feel like I have everything and nothing. Confusing, right? Let me confuse you even more.
The real purpose of this article is to talk about nothing and everything. I am out of high school now and have been thinking about it a lot of late. High school was a little bubble. It prepared me for everything and nothing.  I think whoever is reading this (hopefully someone will read this LoL) may still be in high school or is just fresh out of it.
I placed myself out of the university situation and out of the high school situation. I was a floating body watching the young teens come to my university for open day. Here is what I realised.
Because of the bubble that is high school you feel like you are everything. But really you come to university (which is not even the Big Bad World I tell you) and you see a real glimpse of life and realise that you are kind of nothing and that you are this little fish. No one even cares about your leadership positions or the little high school dramas. You feel everything and nothing. (Can I just say you are NOT nothing. Everyone is priceless and should have some self-worth but I am just feeling what uni has me all up in my feels about.) Maybe it is the fact that I submitted my first assignment and there are 534 of us on that particular course which is shocking for someone who is coming from  Upper 6 at Arundel with 15 people in a class. I’m just a human and I am sharing, not my “culture shock” but my “academic shock” with you. That is all this article is about really. I lied to you when I was trying to sound “artsy” at the beginning. The confusion with this article reflects my university career thus far. My life is the sinking titanic at the present moment. And kids I just have one thing to say about university:



 PS.  regarding advising you “not to do university”. It’s just a joke. Get your degree please. Not all of us are Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. And even if you think you are Bill gates…he dropped out of Harvard. So please go get that degree.

Life will always go against the current , that's why when we are born the world smiles and celebrates and we wail out.Those who surround us, with smiles as if smiles are all the armor and ammunition we need to make it in life .Life promises to be accessorized  with so much brightness like a day in spring. We all start off with so much self assurance it, borders on to arrogance.At some point in our lives we believe with so much vindication we can be anything.Along the way the whirlwind that can be summarised as Inadequacy catches up with us.With each day we feel just a little more unworthy, some days better than others but eventually we reach a destiny known as self loathe.

We become so blinded that we forget beauty goes deeper than the surface . It becomes defined by the concentration of melanin in our skin, on many occasions we wish we can sink in a pool of bleach and become "purified". Beauty becomes the hair you wear because beautiful girls don't comb out kink ,they don't do curly , they do wavy.Beauty becomes how many inches shorter you are willing to wear your dress.How many of your values you are willing to cross out on your list. Battles between thin and thick , we begin to believe beauty is pain -so what's a little bit of hunger? We give our being, our substance as a living sacrifice. Put aside how intelligent we are- how  our personality likens a comic character ! We want to satisfy this idealistic definition of beauty we lose ourselves.We make attempts to make deals with the angel of death, allow him take us so we may be reincarnated as something "better , thinner , lighter, shorter "- whatever noun fits the insecurity we want to scrub off like a stubborn stain.

When the overwhelming burden of depression hits us some days and we do nothing but watch ourselves slowly disappear.We should always remember we are of high priesthood each created in HIS likeness.All travelers in the journey called life and we are well advanced in the journey to go back and make changes , but we can change how we progress in our journey.Simply remember who we were when we were young and we said " I am rubber and you are glue whatever you say to me bounces off me and sticks to you" because sadly the one thing the world dishes out apologetically is opinion. What is outside will capture attention but that which is inside determines the quality of attention and exactly how long we will have it for .like Alessia Cara said there's scars to your beautiful, but you don't need to change a single thing rather embrace, it put our chins up else that tiara will fall.

What is Africa Youth Day?

Purple Lipstick is so excited to be joining the rest of Africa in celebrating Africa Youth Day 2016! The day is officially set for the 1st of November.  This year the African Union is encouraging young people to commemorate Africa Youth Day in their communities under the theme, ‘Promoting Youth Mainstreaming as a Catalyst towards Harnessing the Demographic Dividend’. This may seem a bit hard to understand so I'll try explain it as best I can :D

 The demographic dividend can be defined as the benefit that can arise when a country has a relatively large proportion of working-age population due to declining fertility. Africa, Zimbabwe included can be categorized as having a demographic dividend that results in a large number of youth. The importance of the demographic Dividend has been repeatedly acknowledged by African and global leaders. Investing in the young people produced by the demographic dividend is super important in order for Africa to achieve our economic, social and sustainable development goals!  The African Union is thus encouraging its partners throughout Africa to accelerate the youth agenda, with youth, under four key pillars that are part of what they are calling "the Demographic
Dividend Road-map."

Helping raise awareness for this is one of the reasons the Africa Youth Day has been put into place. The purpose of the celebrations is to promote an increased recognition of youth as key agents for social change and economic growth in all aspects of the African society, to contribute and channel the youth motivation, energy and idealism, and to reinforce the efforts towards the achievement of a sustainable development in the Africa.

 

 This Thursday our team will be celebrating by sharing a video focusing mainly on the 4th pillar of the road map, Rights, Governance and Youth Empowerment.  We will also be posting about African women who we think have been changing the trajectory of Africa. Make sure you keep an eye out for our video and posts by going over to our Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages.

How Can You Get Involved?

Love Always,
Marlene

You may be reading this and may recognise the title as being   J. Cole’s song “Love Yourz”. This article will indeed be about the wise words J. Cole dropped in this song. If you don’t know this song…please go listen to it. It may be worth your while if you are ever feeling insecure about where you are in life.

So basically J. Cole opens with the lyrics “No such thing as a life that’s better than yours.”, and everyone has those days when they look at the girl/guy next to them and think, “I wish I could look like her/him”. Or if you are a student like me, you have probably thought “I wish I was as clever as student X”.

Well I have been having quite a few thoughts like this of late, and listening to J. Cole helped me. So, I just decided to share my insecure thoughts that I had lately because I feel a lot better when I know that I am not alone, like when Ashley Graham said that she had cellulite too! (LOL)
So, in one of my tutorial classes there is a guy who makes everyone feel inadequate by showing his knowledge. I do not think he knows it though (or maybe he does)! He just says stuff like “I did all the required reading and the additional reading” (by the way the required reading itself is quite a lot). Anyway, so I then shared with him that I had barely managed to finish the core reading and he straight up called me lazy! Obviously, I caught feelings at first but then I realised that his path is his to walk and I am on mine. I am certainly not an over achiever but I know I am doing the best that I could possibly do. So why would I want to be him when I am just outchea doing me. (well we probably all want to be like him but who knows maybe he is lying)!

The second issue is an issue that is very touchy for most women. Me included! And writing this is so hard for me. But here goes…I have continued with my love for rowing, something that makes me very happy and helps me a lot when I am stressed. When I rowed at Arundel, I was never self-aware cause well the meaning of “fat” and “thin” in Africa is very different than in the first world. When I rowed back home (and to be fair I have gained a little bit of weight) I was not fat. I was not thin but it wasn’t a situation where standing among people smaller than me would make me feel out of place. But here, the rowing girls are literally all size 2’s, maybe, if you are lucky, you’ll get a size 8 every now and then. Since, I am not a size 2 or 8, some people may consider me to be “fat”. I have put quotation marks because I love my body (sometimes- except when I’m having one of those days where it’s like the apocalypse in my life!)

I am not fat; I prefer the term “thick”. Yes, I wish there were parts of me that were not on me. But this is me. Take it or leave it. How I hate that I get cleavage, even when I am not trying to get it (because I am a 34E/F) is some other woman’s dream. Even though it is my nightmare it is still me and who I am. There is certainly no such thing as a life that’s better than yours.

Its been a while since I've written on here ( i'm sorry, the team and I have been prepping for some exciting changes that you'll get to know about soon!) I honestly can't believe the year is almost over :'( I saw an advert for a musical about the Grinch on T.V. the other day and nearly fell out of my chair! Prompted by this sudden realization and a string of other events, I've decided to share a bit about a personal journey I've been on this past year and where I'm at right now.

Last week someone told me that they had been looking at old pictures of me on Facebook and that they, and surprisingly their kids too, could barely recognize me! ( side note: even though you may be tempted to think...mmmmh, that's kinda odd... its important to note that we are all secretly cyber stalkers and given a chance, I'm sure I would stalk people with my kids too if I had some!)
Anyhow this lady was so confused as to why I had changed my look so much. She thought I looked a lot prettier with longer, darker hair, and you guessed it, her children thought the same thing too! The minute she said that to me I felt a knot in my stomach. Her words echoed my own thoughts from earlier this year and awakened a fear I thought I had already overcome. Let me explain what I mean.

At the beginning of this year I undid my braids. After they were out of my hair I stood in front of the mirror and had a thought... "why do I keep hiding my own hair?" For many of you reading this who have been woke for a while, that might not seem like an epiphany at all, but for me it was the first time I'd really had that kind of thought. At the time I hadn't had my hair out for an extended period of time since early high school, and even then only because it was against school rules to have hair extensions or braids. Even when I was in the United States, where getting your hair braided costs an arm and a leg, I'd somehow found a way to always have something covering (only barely though, haha!) my natural hair.

Growing up one of my secret vanities was the fact that I hardly wore any make up. I think it gave me some sort of strange, unbelievably unfounded pride to think that I was secure enough to only wear mascara while other girls were piling on the makeup and doing THE MOST. Removing my hair extensions showed me just how shallow my self perception was and left my insecurities exposed and bleeding out. Without all the hair to cover me I could see every single pimple glaring straight at me! My forehead seemed larger and shinier than ever before and my ears didn't look quite right. I sat in front of that mirror for a very long time pulling, patting and twisting the fluffy mass on my head until finally my arms grew too tired to lift. I really want to tell you that suddenly in that moment I realized that I was beautiful just like that and I loved my hair in all its fluffiness and bells started to ring praises! However, the truth of the matter is, I placed the mirror on the opposite side of the room, switched off the lights and went to sleep.

Whatever your insecurities are whether its starting that organization you've been thinking about, or posting that piece you've been wanting to share, or maybe something seemingly superficial like me, leaving your natural hair out, you have power to subdue it! Every time you overcome your fears and liberate yourself you liberate others around you to do the same. After that evening I decided that regardless of how I felt I was going to face my insecurities head on and allow myself the freedom to choose how I saw myself. Something I found was that as soon as i became self-accepting not only did I begin to like the way I looked but other people started wanting to do the same!
I've always hated that kinky haired, dark skinned women can never be the love interest in t.v shows or movies. I hate that we grow up seeing silky straight hair as the norm and try to reconcile that to our every day lives by burning our hair with straighteners or fixing it with relaxers. I hate that I live in Africa where most people look like me but its easier to find makeup and hair products that cater for my fairer skinned counter parts than for the majority of African girls I know. One thing I've learnt is that if you want to see a change in the world you must become that change yourself. I might not be doing a whole lot but I am changing the narrative of my own life and possibly (if I ever get a boyfriend, who then turns in to a husband) even my future children's lives too!

We're coming to the end of the year and I'm happy to report that the fro is still around! I haven't completely gotten over all my insecurities, the Facebook lady made that really clear to me. However I feel more comfortable in my own skin, now than ever, pimples and all! If you're reading this I hope you can see through to what I'm trying to get at. I talk about natural hair a lot only because it was a really big insecurity of my own, not because its super important... it really isn't (depending on the context ;)) What I really mean to get across is that if you have an insecurity you're not alone! The cool thing is that when you face your insecurities head on sometimes you can affect the world around you in a positive way! This week try to identify an insecurity of yours and figure out a way you can take the power back. If you do or need help with it please let me know either in the comments or email me at wearepurplelipstick@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you so we can conquer the world together! As usual if you've gotten this far you're a legend! Thanks for listening, I genuinely appreciate it  <3

In Love Always,
Marly