The Plagiarism Paranoia

I’m not sure how many of my readers are aware of who AmySchumer is and that she was recently accused of stealing jokes, because let’s be honest, you don’t all have my Buzzfeed addiction. For the purpose of this post it actually doesn’t really matter if you know the whole spiel or not except that this was the catalyst for bringing up yet again one of my semi-constant paranoia’s. I live in very frequent terror that I am going to be accused of stealing creative content.

Not jokes, because I am not a funny, joke-telling person. This really applies to two of my creative outlets: writing and nail art.

Since I started posting fanfiction back in the day (which speaking of, I super need to finish that story I added three years ago and never finished the last chapter. Oops. Any fanfiction readers will know what a bitch move that is) I have been dreading the possibility that someone is going to scream PLAGIARISM. To be clear, I have not plagiarized. I do not steal ideas from people. AS FAR AS I KNOW.

Because in my opinion, sometimes people have very similar ideas, maybe even stemming from the same source. It is near impossible to prove whose idea happened first. This became even clearer when I started getting into nail art. I have a few Youtube personalities I follow, and they often have very similar design. There are SO MANY COMMENTS from fans going back and forth claiming Person A made the video first and Person B is stealing and yada yada that it gives me nightmares about posting something of my own.

But for example, a month or two ago (or maybe longer, time perception is not one of my strong suits) everyone suddenly heard of the glass nail trend. Within like a day, both of my favorite nail people had a video showing how to do glass nails. Do I think they stole from each other? No! I think they saw the trend and created their own version, just like WE ALL DO. How many ideas are wholly and completely original, with no basis whatsoever on any other existing content out in the world? NOT THAT MANY. THAT’S WHY THERE ARE A MILLION MOVIES WITH THE SAME PLOT OVER AND OVER.

One of my designs

I have been debating whether or not to enter a nail art contest recently, and honestly, half of my hesitation is that I don’t know how “original” any of my designs are. They wouldn’t be deliberately copying anyone, but most of my techniques were learned from watching other nail art videos. There would be similarities, obviously. What if there already exists a design that DOES match mine that I don’t know about because I clearly haven’t seen every nail art design out in the world!?!  WHAT THEN?!

Actually, on a smaller level I already worry about this with my instagram account. I’ve been posting some nail pictures and while I tag the artist if I followed a tutorial, again, some of my “original” ideas are loosely based on things they’ve done that I then changed up.

Another set of my nails!

Is that copying? Is that plagiarism? Am I an idea thief? If I don’t even remember a video but then a year later the design re-emerges in my subconscious, am I a bad human being? Is there a magic ratio where if 40% (or more, or less) of the creative content is new, it’s okay?

In case you’re curious, the other half of my hesitation on entering the nail art contest is that it has to be a video entry and I’ve never made a video before other than work stuff. This is despite the fact that several of my coworkers want me to start a video channel for my rage-baking, nail art, and/or retelling of movies as they claim it is hysterical. I will neither confirm nor deny my level of entertainment value. 

Weight For It. No, Don't

I struggled over whether to make resolutions this year. Last year I didn’t, I just tried to cook more at home and eat healthier. I figured since this was more of a general life change and less of a random “I’m going to lose 10 pounds!” resolution I’d stick to it better. Guess what? It’s now 2016, and I am yet again planning to work on cooking more because I totally stopped doing it for the last few months of 2015. So my theory may have been flawed.

But I don’t want to make resolutions that are negative. Thinking things like “I won’t eat out” or “I’ll stop drinking diet pepsi all the time” aren’t particularly healthy mindsets either. After much debate, I decided I am making resolutions for January. At the end of January I am going to see how I’m doing with them and evaluate for the next month, and so on, and so forth. My resolutions are simple:

1.     Cook at least two recipes a week.

2.     Workout at least two times a week.

These resolutions will come in handy since my family’s weight loss competition is starting once again. My goal with this competition actually is rarely to lose weight, but rather to stay accountable to myself for making healthier choices, because I know for example that staying in all weekend and eating nothing but leftover Chinese food tends to show up on the scale. More importantly, it’s also doing horrible things to my body and organs, but that’s not so easily visible. The scale is.

Which brings me to my real topic of the day. Weight.

I normally avoid talking about anything I know people have strong opinions on, because I like to avoid conflict. But I am getting FUCKING SICK AND TIRED of weight shaming.

Notice, I did not say fat shaming, although that’s deplorable too. I said weight shaming. Because here’s the thing boys and girls. Pay attention, and you’ll notice it’s going BOTH WAYS.

The entire idea of body weight in general is an interesting concept. I say interesting, because basically we’re taking one measurement of a human being and using it to define them. What’s even more interesting about this concept is the fact that weight can only tell you so much. The composition of each person’s body is unique. 140 pounds on me can look completely different than 140 pounds on another girl, even if we’re the same height.

Using a cooking example (since by god I’m going to cook more, just you watch), let’s say a recipe calls for 1 pound of squash. You’re hardly ever going to see that, because, spoiler, THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SQUASH. If I use a pound of butternut that’s going to be a very different recipe than if I used a pound of spaghetti squash. Does that pound include the original squash, skin and seeds and all? Is it just the cubed portion? What does that even mean?

So when I’m reading a book and it’s says “she was about 100 pounds soaking wet” as some kind of compliment, I get angry. What does that tell me? Is she short and taunt, with a lot of that weight coming from muscle? Is she taller and looking rather unhealthy? Why does one characteristic mean so much?

I understand that weight IN COMBINATION with other factors can be used to get a general idea of a person’s health. It’s an easy measurement to get, so a lot of times it becomes the defining factor. That’s wrong. Now if you’re over or underweight and have OTHER UNHEALTHY WARNING SIGNS or live a GENERALLY UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE, that’s something to worry about. However I do believe it’s entirely possible to not fall exactly in the category that stupid ass chart says your weight should be, and still be healthy. So suck it.

 Sadly, people take it a step further and use weight to judge

people in general. This is wrong. Fucking duh this is wrong. What people to seem to get that’s even more wrong is to combat this by DISPARAGING THE OTHER WEIGHT GROUPS.

The thing is, we are so used to judging ourselves in comparison with others, and we see things in black and white. Either being skinny is good, or being curvy is good. So in order to feel good about being curvy, we put down the “skinny bitches.” In order to feel good about being thin, we put down the “fat hoes.” What the flying fuck?

I understand this feeling. I get it too. I’m working on it. It’s all tied in to the problem with women accepting their beauty, which we’ve already discussed. With weight, it can be even harder, because while there is no firm definition of beauty, weight is definable. Being a size two versus ten is definable. And if we’re being told that one of those sizes is better, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing it.

Please don’t. Please don’t for one second think that your weight makes you who you are. If you are using 2016 to make weight-loss related goals, do it as a general part of BEING HEALTHY and for the love of whatever god you believe in, be careful. It is so easy to start with good intentions and become too focused on that scale, so that you’re now easy prey for unhealthy ways of losing weight, body dysmorphia, or an eating disorder.  

It can be a struggle to change this mindset. Watch out for yourself. Watch for how certain media forms or people in your life make you feel. If it’s negative, get away from it. Make 2016 the year you really start to care about and take care of you.