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You see, this morning I woke up to an email box absolutely full of emails and comment alerts. My little blog doesn't get that much traffic, so I was a little shocked by the sheer number of messages. I quickly glanced at my stats pages on Blogger, and saw that I was getting a lot of traffic from a Russian Live Journal page (I'm assuming that it was Russian since that's where the bulk of the traffic was coming from). I had to get to work, so I didn't think anything of it. When I took a break, I started to read the emails and comments, and my heart just started breaking. The things that people were saying were so mean... asking me if I knew how to do proper clean-up, why do I bother taking pictures of polishes when my nails are so bad, that I should stop painting my nails (something that I love) because I shouldn't draw attention to them.
I took a look at the Live Journal page, and it was basically an article that crucified my blog. There was picture after picture, taken from my blog, with increasingly disparaging remarks. Worse than the article itself were the comments from their readers... comments saying that they thought my nails were toenails at first... that I must be poor if I can't afford a proper manicure, yet I can afford expensive polish - what a paradox!
I was so hurt; I sat at my desk and cried. I deleted the emails, deleted all the rude comments, and I might have deleted the entire blog if it hadn't for the wonderful ladies in Hobby Polish Bloggers. I vented there, and the comments of support really did make a world of difference (not to mention some very creative ideas of what they can do with their opinions). Over the course of the day, I went from sad to just mad. Didn't anyone teach these people that if they can't say something nice, they shouldn't say anything at all? DIDN'T THEY FREAKING WATCH BAMBI?
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I had enough bullying when I was a kid. I was the shy kid, the smart kid, and worst of all, the fat kid. I heard the comments said behind my back. I acted like they didn't bother me, but God knows that they did. Thank God for my friends is about all I can say about that time. They took the time to see past the shyness and insecurities to get to know the real me. It wasn't until I got to college that I was able to break out of that self-imposed prison of shyness and found my voice.
As bad as it was... we were kids. And let's face it, kids can be dicks sometimes. But we grow up, right? Apparently not. For whatever reason, these women (and maybe men) have nothing better to do with their time than gossip about lil ol' me. You know what, FINE, GO AHEAD! I won't let you hurt me any more.
I'm going to continue to post my nails. I am proud of my nails, even those "terrible" photos from when I first started blogging (and even before that when I was a microblogger on Facebook and Instagram). They show me how far I've come ... with my nails, my photography, even my writing. So...
- If I want to color outside of the lines a little, so be it!
- If I have a rough day when I'm filing at work and break all my nails down, oh well you might be seeing some nubs.
- If the nubs bother me, and I want to pop on some fakies and go with that, that's fine too.
- If my nails are uneven, I'm sorry, but that's freaking life.
And it's my life, and polishing my nails is something that I love, and it's something that I truly love sharing. I love helping people discover a new polish that they fall in love with. I love getting emails asking me for tips to stop biting their nails. I love the interaction with other bloggers.
I just want to see the bullying stopped. It's not just me that gets bullied. I want to stop seeing the "Eeewww" comments on Instagram. I want to stop seeing the "WTF was she thinking?" when a talented nail artist posts creative and outside of the box designs. If I see these comments on my blog, they'll be deleted. If I see them on fellow bloggers Instagram, Facebook pages, or blogs, I'll report them.
Remember.... If you can't say anything nice... just STFU!
