Hello Everybody! Firstly I want to say
how very sorry I am that I have not uploaded
in two weeks.
I think that's the longest I've gone on this channel
for a really long time
without uploading.
I do have a good reason for it..
I have been so busy.
The reason I'm out of breath is I've just run to the top of the stairs..
ow, I've got a blister..
Always wear socks with trainers!
And the reason I'm out of breath is because I've run up all the stairs
and this room is like a sauna!
So I'm a sweaty mess.
I'm just gunna be a bit of a mess in this video I think.
I've had the same make-up on all day..
I'm just not really sure what this looks like.
But we're here! We're making a video!
And yeah, as I said, really sorry I have been so busy
it's actually unreal, and I didn't feel very well last week
so, here I am! Up in my attic!
Uh! Listen to the seagulls!
Aww it's like being back in my old flat on the sea front,
who remembers that?
I've got my legs open, this is not a good look, it's a good job you can't see!
I know you guys really like my more kinda chilled,
chatty videos or Q&As,
whether that's just me or with a friend.. umh..
and so I thought I would do one today! Do another little
chatty Q&A. Have I got lipstick on my teeth?
Nah. So the biggest portion of my viewership or
audience on YouTube are people over the age of
eighteen, but
there are still a huge, huge amount of you
who are under eighteen, and I always
notice a lot of you have a lot of questions about
what it was like for me being a teenager and how I
dealt with certain situations growing up
and I don't feel like I've ever done a video like this..
umh.. so, I asked you
all on Twitter if you had any.. oh and on Instagram actually!
I said on Instagram story, if you've got any questions
then, come Tweet me. I feel like the first thing
I should point out though is how different
it must be, being a teenager
to when I was a teenager, because funnily enough,
as much as I hate to admit it, that was actually quite a long
time ago for me, so I was
seventeen, ten years ago, so my early teens
was a wee while, I'll let you do the maths
and I get asked the same question quite a lot
which is, if you were a teenager now
how would you find it, and honestly
I don't know, I think you all deserve a medal
because things like social media
and Instagram, and likes and like this whole kind of
popularity thing
wasn't around when I was in school, we had MSN
messenger
and there was like AOL chat-rooms, and we
could text if we had credit, and
there is a huge part of me that is so thankful
that
things like MySpace,
Beebo, and Facebook, only really
happened, towards
the end of my teens. Which was the first one we had?
We had.. I feel like I had MySpace first, and then
Beebo, and I must have been fifteen, sixteen
And I feel like, no one really knew how to use
it, and it was all very new,
and it wasn't the same. Although I would say for any of
you nineties kids out there
who may have also use Beebo and MySpace, the only thing we
ever really had arguments about, was
in what order your friends were
In your top 8 friends. *laughs*
I used to hate doing that!
I think I used to shuffle mine, or put them on random, because it was like
That was, the only thing that caused rows in our friendship group
Or did it? I don't know; maybe I just secretly got really sad if i wasn't like at least someones top 5 *laughs*
The most interactions I ever had with people would be on MSN messenger
and in those days, you only had your friends - that was it.
and the only thing you really had to think about was which song lyrics you were gonna put in your MSM messenger like tagline
what was it called? bio? tagline? I can't remember
but hey! if we didnt have twitter you wouldnt have been able to ask me these questions
so...
theres that i guess!
Julia did actually ask "How do you think
being a teenager in present day differs from when you were a teen?
and I guess I sort of answered that. There's
more pressure now outside of your friendship group, which
I didn't have back then. The only
interaction with people who we were really friends with was
actual face to face conversation,
and then by the time we were sort of friends, that's when you'd get
their MSN and that's when you'd get their number, but
there wasn't that same
kinda of image to portrait on social media
I guess. I don't know, I would love to chat to
like a room of teenagers to find out how they really feel about it.
That would just be so great. Please let me know in the comments!
Let's have like a discussion about this. How do you feel
being a teen with things like Twitter,
Facebook.. things like Ask.fm. Honestly.. just sounds like a nightmare to me!
When I was at school someone created the like "Rate my teacher"
or something and that was about as like savage as it got.
"How do you control your hormones as a teenager?" and that is
by Shannon.
You can't!
Is the answer to that. You can't, really.
And actually when I think back to when
I was a teenager. Tean-ager? Teen-ager...
my hormones were quite
extreme, but it's only as I look
back at some of my behaviour..
I wasn't terrible, don't get me wrong, but my mood swings
and I remember I used to have arguments
with my mum and dad and I
definitely
struggled
with the hormones.
I wouldn't have ever admitted it at the time, but looking back I can
see that I did. Being a teenager is such a..
weird time, because
you've gone up to secondary school, you're
sort of trying to figure out who you are,
who your friends are, you're getting put with people
who
you might not necessarily have a lot in common with
but feel you need to be friends with and
you see these people every day
five days a week.. like for
a massive portion of your life.
No wonder you're gonna struggle with it
sometimes. So it's only natural again
when hormones are included within
that
that you are gonna struggle sometimes and also
you start to feel all the feels. You start to feel
sad, you start to feel jealous, you start to feel bitter,
you start to feel angry, you start to feel over
emotional, you start to feel overly
excited, overly happy. It's like all the
feels, all the emotions and all the feels
and I definitely had that.
Emh.. but
it made some of the best moments
and the best memories and some that I'd look
back on and be like, "wow, I was a beatch!"
to my parents and my brother probably. You need to remember
everyone else around you is also experiencing
that and it kinda varies
person by person and you know..
hormones affects people so differently,
but essentially you're all on the same boat and it's happening to everyone,
so don't feel weird or feel like
you have to control them in any way. I think hormones are something that's
very difficult to control but I do think
trying to find a bit of kinda you-time
and chill and have like a space that you like
to be in and to be able to go
and have a moment.. I think it's really important, so obviously
like.. your bedroom, like maybe ligh a candle, put some fairylights
on.. like it's about making yourself feel
at ease if everything is getting a little too much.
I feel like this video is gonna be really long cause I'm such a rambler.
Faith Dorsen said "Pressured to smoke/vape?"
I did not have a group of friends that ever
pressured me into anything, actually.
Umh.. but I have seen
where other people have felt pressured to do it.
And I guess I.. when I was a teen I did think..
See the thing is I never felt pressured by anyone else
and my parents weren't very like.. strict in that sense,
like they would never lecture me about don't drink,
don't smoke and..
They sorta left me and my brother to make decisions
ourselves, which I think was kind of clever,
because neither of us are very wild.
Uhm..
And.. I think the only pressure
I ever had was myself. Like I had friends
who smoked, who drank, I had..
I hung out with groups of people who were much, much
older than me doing worst things at house parties.
Some of those memories still haunt me to this day.
Some of the things I saw in house parties just..
I don't think you should see it as like a fifteen or sixteen years old to be quite honest, but
I never felt like I needed to do that.
I didn't feel like I needed to..
smoke or drink or do drugs.
I just.. I kind of..
watched everyone else do it and I was like, "that doesn't really look fun,
I think he just looks stupid"! Like I just used to look
at people and just be like, "you just look stupid"! I don't know,
like.. it..
for me it was like.. it was actually quite like a.. turn off?
I was just a bit like.. "ugh, no.. that's not for me!"
Umh.. and the only sort of like pressure I had really
was me at the back of my head thinking
"but I am a teen, like.. should I be trying these things? Like..
shoud I be.." It was almost like it was me
pressurizing myself? It was weird! It was like.. well I guess
everyone should try something once in their life!
Turns out.. you don't really have to because
I can see what everyone else is doing and I really don't feel like I was
missing out and luckly I wasn't
within a group of friends where I felt pressured.
Umh.. but
I know I would've stood
my ground and just said "no, I'm okay, thanks" and I do think
if you ever feel that pressured within a group of friends
you have to put your foot down because you'll never look
back on that memory of trying something for the first time
and feel confortable about it because
you'll never be too sure if you really wanted to or not
and I'm just not sure that that's a nice
way to ever do anything. I think everything
you do and everything you experience should ultimately be down
to you because it's your life. If anyone
is making you feel pressured to have sex, to smoke,
to drink, to do anything you are not hundred percent
confortable with
say no
and if they are your friends they will understand that
and if they don't understand that they are not your friends. "Did
you ever question your body or feel insicure about your figure?
How did you overcome it?"
Yes! I feel like I've touched on this a little bit
in my Question I've Never Answered.
I went through a stage where
I had grown in height and
I was super skinny
and all my friends were getting like hips and boobs
and a bum and I was still a bit like.. ugh,
when's mine coming?
And then
they happened and they happened very quickly
so my boob.. it's like I almost woke up one day and my boobs were there and my bum was there.
So now I've got like stretchmarks , umh..
and
for a while I didn't like it
because it almost made me look skinnier?
Because it was like.. ugh, these boobs don't like..
go with my body and like.. I don't look
like my friends. Why can't I put weight
on and I struggled with the fact that I just
felt like I looked so skinny, umh..
and I was quite self conscious at like PE and I hated
putting shorts on but what's so interesting is
people assume you
can't feel insicure about your body when you're skinnier.
Like I would put shorts on and people were just kinda of assumed
that I'm confident because I've got my shorts on
and I've got my legs out and
I'm sure there were people around me who would
have wanted to have had my legs, yet
in my head I was like "I hate my legs!"
Hated swimming.. oh my God, that for me
was the worst! That's like.. you know when you remember swimming and you get
like
a wave of like *mumbles*. I hated swimming
and I honestly belive ninety eight
percent of the girls in my swimming group hated
swimming for this very reason. If
you're gonna put like twenty girls who were
all like
growing and changing at very different rates
and getting used to their bodies and trying to learn
why things are, how they are or why you're
not like Sally next to you or why
you've got one boob that seems to be growing faster than
another boob or why you've got like a wobbly bit
or why you feel so skinny.. you're never gonna
have a great lesson!
Like it's never gonna be a great lisson.. lesson. We.. we
all
hated swimming so much. Like
no one enjoy.. who enjoyed swimming apart from that one
girl that was there in her like blister sock and swim hat
and goggles and nose clip? Like she's the one that loves swimming, but
everyone else
did not love swimming. And.. I just felt like
everyone stared at me in a swimming costume because I was
so skinny and I hated it
so much. I still did it,
I still put the swimming costume on, I still.. and I
hated swimming anyway. Like.. I.. I'm just.. I
hate swimming.
Umh..
But.. I don't know. It was kinda like
a phase that came and went. I remember feeling quite
insicure between the ages of about twelve and fourteen
and then past that I think I stopped caring because
I sort of settled with the fact that
everyone's bodies were growing and changing at different rates
and everyone had something about them that they weren't happy with
or something that they felt they wanted to change
and that was very reassuring to me because
I felt like I was the only one who
was the odd one out, but actually everyone feels like
they're the odd one out at some point, which I'm very
lucky for, because there's a lot of people who can't do that,
which I feel really sad about. Eve said, "How to
tell friends you can't or don't want to go to parties because they don't
understand? I love you!" I love you too!
That's hard because there were a lot of things I
never wanted to go to because of my anxiety.
Umh.. but I feel like I just said, "I don't wanna go!" *laughs"
The worst part of it for me
was
that I couldn't go, not that I didn't want to
go.. if that makes sense. Is that I felt like I couldn't,
not that I didn't want to. So
I would be at home knowing they were
all on a night out and they were all like having a fab time
and I wished more than anything I could be
there but I knew I couldn't
be and it was.. that was quite
a hard time for me actually. That was probably in my later teens.
That's something I knew I had to deal with.. like that's not
something my friends have to deal with. That's
me and what I should've done
was spoken to someone earlier,
got help earlier and kind of
then lived my kind of late teens,
early twenties anxiety free rather than trying to sort that
out a little bit further down the line, but
umh.. yeah, I feel like
you just tell them and again, if they're your friends
they'll understand and if they don't
understand that's
okay, because it means that
it's not something they experience
but at the end of the day if you don't wanna go out
or you feel like you can't
then
don't.
And you might get FOMO but
that's a choice you've made and if they love you
then they'll still say they miss ya. Abby said,
"What were your favourite things to do with friends etc. during
highschool?" Oh my God, okay. So this probably
was my favourite thing. We would like go to each other's
houses and we would make..
uhm.. with photographs
and Window's Movie Maker.. we would make umh..
little films and I still have them, that's what's..
and
now.. nowdays I would be uploading them to YouTube
and back then YouTube didn't exsist, so I was just like making them
and like saving them and we would like reenact
things so we.. we did Mean Girls, we
did.. oh my God.. we did like
weird.. me and my friends did The Ring..
like.. we would reenact a whole
film in photos with slides
and like texts
and music and it was
great fun. So that's what we did. As I got a
bit older it was like house parties,
umh.. umh, we used to.. there was a park
next to our school so we used to hang out in the park quite a lot.
Yeah.. there was a lot of great times, actually.
A lot of great friend times. We used to go shopping
on the weekends, we would all get the bus in
and we would get disposable cameras and like take pictures
and lots of sleepovers. We would always trying to do all ,
nighters
and.. funnily enough you'd all think I would
suck at that but I was actually not that bad.
"What to do when you're in a friendship group that fall out because
of nothing? How do you deal with it?"
Oh.. we had a fair amount of these, we really did.
Umh..
as I said at the beginning of this, when you're
put into a..
situation for the majority
of your life for five years with the same people
you're.. you're never gonna always get on.
Like you're just not. There's gonna be something
that brushes one person up the wrong way
and there's tension and then it's awkward
and then the group divides and then some people are on that side,
some people on that side, then there's a whole division
and they don't speak to these people and it.. and it'll
be over something that you don't even remember what it's over.
And I think what's different today
that is so different from back then is when that used to
happen with our friends a lot of them making up
and the sorting out had to happen face to face
which I feel like probably wouldn't happen as much now
because there's things like Facebook
and like Messangers and Twitter and..
there's loads of different places that you can see like..
snidey indirects and things like that, but
in the olden days..
in the olden days.. that makes me sound so ancient, but
back when I was a teenager it would've been something like
it would've.. there would've been something
said at school and someone would've taken it the wrong way, or someone would've been having a
bad day and someone else would've cared as much as they should
have.. umh..
and then there would be like little tiffs..
I wouldn't say we have all like fell out big time,
but there were certainly like..
little arguments here and there.
Hello!
Hello Buzzy!
We've got Buzzy at the moment.
Wanna jump on that?
Are you gonna sit down or are you just gonna breathe heavily behind me?
Hello!
Uh! You're in.. you're all in my hair! You're all..
Buzz!
Oh!
Alright, you're like a parrot!
Buzz!
Right, sit!
Good boy. Good boy. I feel
like at the time arguments feel so
huge and so
like.. like it's the end of the world and that you'll
never be friends again and that is gonna be so awkward
but
eventually you make up because what's
the alternative? Like you see eachother everyday.
When you're so close to someone, like a sibiling
or like a relative
and you're spending so much time with them you do
just rub each other up the wrong way, and sometimes you are gonna have
an argument, but then you make up and then you are stronger than you were before
because you've had to like talk through your diffrences and you're kind of..
growing up together and actually
I think it would be weirder if
growing up you never had arguments with your friends because..
because there's so much going on and
so much is changing and it's a
crazy time, so of course you're gonna argue,
but you just have to know that those
arguments don't have to be the
be-all and end-all and I think talking
and communicating rather than being snidey
and indirect online is the way forward.
Faith said, "I'm not a teenager anymore, but when I was
I would like to know how important love really is at that
age."
What's so funny is
I thought I was in love
at that age
but actually being an adult it's not the same
kind of love
and.. I don't know, I think that's all I could really say on that.
I do think it exists in teenagers, like
I do belive if you truly love someone.. kinda like the
people that meet when they're young and then they stay together forever.. that is true love
and I think that can happen and if it happens to you
then you're really lucky, but I thought
it had happened but it hadn't
and it's only as I got older and met new people
that I can see that I hadn't
been, if that makes sense. So in ask to your question,
it's not that important. I think
what is important at that age is learning to love yourself
and learning to love
other human beings, whether that's friends or like family.
I think that's important, but
being in love with someone I don't
think is so important at that
age personally. "How do you cope with toxic
friends and how can I get out of a toxic friendship?"
If you are with a group of friends in school
who are toxic and
you are.. you just aren't happy
then you need to step
away from that group of friends and I know
it can feel so hard, but
I just feel like if.. if.. if you're.. if you're
with friends who aren't making you happy, if they're
bulling you, if they're making you feel unconfortable, they're pressurising you..
they're not the sort of people you'll ever gonna grow up and be
thankful that you're friends with, they're not the sort of people
that you're gonna invite to your like wedding in ten years
then.. there.. there's not point, do you know what I mean?
It's such a waist of you as a human being because
there are people out there who will appreciate you,
who will treat you with nothing but kindness and love
and you may feel like
there is no one else, but there is.
If you flip that and if you think you see
someone who is being bullied or
who is part of a very toxic friendship then
you should extend an arm.. like
ask them how they are, like check they're
okay, even if they're not part of your friendship group,
because there's nothing worse than feeling like
you're alone in something and
whether that's you feeling that way or you know
someone who feels that way or you've seen someone who looks unhappy
in their group of friends or is getting picked on or
who has no friends.. I think is just as important for
you to reach out to them. Just ask them how they are, ask them
how their day's been, ask them what they're doing later..
like..
message them anything because that can
make someone feel so much happier.
Cause as much as I can say, "oh, like, you'll find new friends.."
I think it's just as important for other people to open their eyes
and realize that there might be people that feel like they have no
one and when I was in school
I don't think I did that enough. I don't think I
extended an invite
or smiled at the people who probably needed
it more than I thought they did, if that makes
sense, and
it makes you feel good, it makes them feel good.
I really like the saying, "some friends are
for a reason, some are for a season and some are for a
lifetime" and that's okay.
If some are for a season, fine. They were great
for that season and it was fab and sometimes it's not meant
to last beyond that. Some are for a reason, so they might come
into your life for a purpose. Lifetime
is so rare. That was another thing..
in school I feel like it's such a big deal to have
a lot of friends and it isn't. Have your
select friend, whether that's one, whether that's two, whether that's three, whether that's
ten.. if you have those
cool people who make you happy, who bring something to your life,
who influence you in a positive way that's all you
need, and anyone who doesn't do that..
don't waste your time. Ella said, "if you could be
a teenager again, which teenage year would you go back to
and why?"
I would say..
uh, that's so hard.
Maybe like fifteen, like
start of GCSE's.. fourteen/fifteen..
what year is that? Year 9? I would go
back to Year 9 because I felt quite confident in myself..
although I didn't know what I wanted to do.. I felt
confident in the subjects I was doing
for GCSE.. I settled with like.. yeah I'm happy with these,
umh.. I had my like..
cool group of friends,
umh.. I had a social life
and I had a lot of fun
and I felt more confortable in myself, I
think.
Yeah.
Fourteen/fifteen and like no responsabilities
cause I hadn't started exams yet. *exults* Abby said,
"What was it like when you first got your period?" I actually
got my period in school.
It was in tutor time, right before last lesson
and I just.. I was one of the last ones out of
my friends and I was really excited about it.
I remember that we had someone come to our school who did like
a talk. She talked about like periods
and things you could use when you're on your period
and they gave you like the goodie bag when you left
and in it it had like two night time pads,
umh.. some tiny little tampons
and some like day time pads and then like a
leaflet and like..
it was just like a little information pack, and it made me
so excited to start my period and then
like a year later I did
in a lesson and I was a little bit embarassed by that actually.
I had to do the old tide the jumper around the waist cause I had nothing
on me and then I went home and I told my mum
and then I realized that
I uhm.. was gonna bleed like every month
for like the majority of my life, so I wasn't
that excited after that. *laughs*
*exults*
Jennifer said, "When did you start shaving?"
I thought this was quite a good one because
I had to really think about this and I had to think about
what the first thing was I shaved. I feel like it might
have been my armpits..
or maybe it was my legs? I feel like my
armpits took a really long time
to get hair.
I remember I had like a couple of hair there and I was like, "ugh,
that's weird.." Uhm.. and I had..
and I always used my dad's
razor that he would leave on like the side of the bath. I
must've been about fourteen..
thirteen or fourteen. Umh..
and the amout of times I sliced
my legs on my dad's blunt razors
was
a lot. *laughs* What I will say though is if you are
planning on starting shaving.. if you haven't yet gotten to
that point.. leave it as long as you can
because
again is something you get so excited to do
and then you just realize it is a chore
and a ball ache and the hair just grows back thicker..
I do remember though.. umh.. my
mum.. I remember
the first time I shaved down there..
I must've been like..
sixteen.. fifteen/sixteen.. because I thought
that that's what you have to do.. I wasn't sure, I don't know..
umh.. and I must have left the hair in the bath..
This is quite an embarassing story, I don't know if I really wanna tell this.. oh well.. I didn't was it
away..
and the next day my mum was like, "If you ever want
to shave your bikini line
you just.. you need to be very careful because
umh.. it grows back longer and
thicker
and I've heard it can start growing
down your legs." And I remember her telling me that
obviously to try and scare me umh..
and after that I was
actually really terrified to ever shave down there
again. Turns out..
it hasn't grown down my legs so thanks for that, mum.
I mean it might.. she might not have been lying, but.. I mean..
She could've just said, "Hey, I noticed you shaved you bits,
just be careful and umh..
let me buy you a nice razor so you don't have to use your dad's
manky old one. So I think I'm gonna stop there because
I have been rambling on for quite a long time now.
Thank you so much for watching this video, it's gotten dark
as I've been filming this and Buzz has gone
and the dogs are barking and Alfie's going crazy
so I should probably go, but thank you for being so patience with me
and waiting for this video. Umh.. I really hope it helps some of
you. Umh..
Being a teen is difficult, it doesn't matter what anyone
says. Everyone will have their troubles and tribulations, just remember
you're probably not the only one feeling a certain way.
Umh.. offer a hand or a smile
to someone who might need it because
umh.. that can make a lot of
difference and it may seem overwhelming at times, but look,
I've got through it, you can too.
And I look back at my teenage years and
reember some of the best
times
so I really feel like you will too, but please don't
hesitate to tweet me or leave comments..
umh.. everyone have a little chit chat, send your
reassurances, ask your questions.. there will be a
lot of people watching this video that can offer advice
so don't be scared to leave a comment and..
yeah, I love you very much and I will see you again very soon, bye!
captions by Laura Ross Russell