Open-heartedness: influencing the society

Hello everyone,

This blogpost is about more signals, in contrast to the blogposts so far. I’ve found a few signals that I could combine, so I created a blogpost that is worth reading!

What is it about?

Previous week I saw a programme on the Dutch television called ‘Pauw’. One of the guests was Anke Laterveer, whom is a Dutch comedian. She spoke about a moment in her life which she cannot forget, namely that somebody unknown tried to rape her. However, the main concern is that the police didn’t do a thing with the declaration. That’s the main reason she wanted to make raping and sexual assault bookable. She decided to think of a way to get more attention about this problem, and invented the Dutch #zeghet on Twitter (which means #sayit). After this invention the #zeghet was going viral and a large amount of people picked up this hashtag.

Besides, the NOS news programme announced that Essena O’Neil, an Australian Instagram-model with half a million followers, decided to quit with Instagram because it is fake, straight nonsense and absolutely not real life. Essena was too obsessed with her ‘perfect life’ by getting more and more followers. For instance, she was also being paid for wearing a dress she doesn’t even like.

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– Essena O’Neil

Moreover, I was searching for more of these open-hearted stories, and found on Youngworkers.com an article about ‘perfectly imperfect’. This movement is tending to say that young people are done with the advertising about perfection, such as having the smallest size or the prettiest face. One of the innovators of this countermovement is Shaun Ross, an African guy who is an albino and started his own movement called #inmyskiniwin. Ross: ‘Beauty is you and what you make from your confidence in your own perfectly imperfect body. Together, if we encourage others to love what they see when they look at themselves, we can win in our skin’

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The movement #inmyskiniwin by Shaun Ross

The reasons for an overload of awesomeness

But, why is this combination of stories that awesome? First of all, it is about the courage that people have and the risk they take when they tell such personal stories as these. There will always be laggards, people with a conservative view on the world, who don’t give their approval to these sophisticated and ground-breaking announcements. That’s why I find this people incredibly powerful. In addition to this, these stories are related to different subjects of the trend involvement.

Authenticity

The first trend I want to maintain is authenticity. All these personal narrations are about being honest and open-hearted, so that people can (finally) tell the truth and the essence of their background. For instance, Shaun Ross is being bullied in former times, but now found the strength to make his opinion public. It is about transparency, no longer hiding information or forge aspects of life. Just like Essena O’Neil, who fooled the whole world with her falsified pictures on Instagram. Nevertheless, we all like to pretend that we have a great life by posting only images which are often photo shopped, revised and even more importantly: which are fake. Essena had the intention to inspire people by taking them back to reality, which Instagram is absolutely not.

Moreover, even Dutch fashion brand Esprit is trying to make this work. As Esprit is inspired by the ‘perfectly imperfect’ movement, they wanted to think of something cool as well. For that reason the winter campaign of 2015 includes a photo gallery with the hashtag #ImPerfect, where everybody can hand in their picture. This is really innovative and creative at the same time.

#ImPerfect – by E S P R I T

Flawsomeness

Secondly, showing your flaws is turning into something fascinating. In a world where everybody wants to be seen by being beautiful and more outstanding than others, there is now a turning point. Nobody has to be perfect, because showing your imperfections is way cooler nowadays. The movement #inmyskiniwin from Shaun Ross is an example of these imperfections, whereas pictures are showed of albino’s and people with vitiligo (a skin disease).

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– Shaun Ross

The trend which is of longer existence is intensification. This includes a world which is focussing on ‘the bigger, the better’; a world of great acceleration and progress. The trend flawsomeness contains criticism about the intensification, while sometimes the slogan ‘’less is more’’ will clarify this.

Cool Curation

There are a few more trends that I haven’t discussed yet. These trends aren’t all easy to understand for everybody, and there neither is a relation to every signal. The Dutch comedian Anke Laterveer introduced the #zeghet, whereby she was the first woman who posted a Twitter post with this hashtag, with the intention to make this story of big interest. She wanted others to do the same, and accordingly to help each other. This has a correlation with the trend cool curation, whereas Laterveer wishes to interact with people. People to the people is the slogan!

Clearly, the #zeghet was going viral on Twitter. This picture will show you the impact of the #zeghet going viral!

Wonderlust

As the technological developments increase, the world was seem to be influenced by this. Social media is growing incredibly fast, and is becoming a huge part of our lifestyle. The counterpart of this growth is that we now see extremely obsessed people who can be brainwashed by the internet. And I do not exaggerate. Instagram-model Essena O’Neil is a very clear sample of this obsession. She wanted to ‘break free’ and quitted all of a sudden. This is related to Wonderlust, what can be explained as escaping the internet and creating time to appreciate the little things in life. Here’s a video from Essena about the reasons why she deleted her social media accounts:

As you can see, stories may differ, but in the end everybody wants to be loved for who he or she is. People want to be unique in their way to show their flaws, and be extraordinary with their own personal story. Are you in?

Close your eyes and shut your mouth, Nothing is Impossible

– Shaun Ross

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