Girl, Boy and Life from Mars

Skirt, necklace and shoes are thrifted. Cardigan is from Forever 21 and top is c/o Choies. I was trying to pose next to a lemon tree in some of these photos to accentuate both the yellows and "spring-ness" of my outfit (it being the beginning of Spring in the southern hemisphere), buuuut you totally can't see the lemons, so that whole idea kind of failed. Still, isn't this thrifted necklace the cutest thing ever? My 2-year-old niece absolutely loves the necklace as well, and as she has just learnt how to talk, she kept pointing at it and saying "Agga!" (her name for me) "Look! Two girls!" I almost went to correct her and say "No, it's actually a boy and a girl", but then I paused. It almost made me feel like I was telling her that only boys and girls should kiss, which is obviously stupid and not something you should tell to any child. Even though this necklace was most likely made to be a stylised cartoon boy and girl, I was shocked that it took a 2-year-old's perspective to make me realise how ingrained gender roles and stereotypes are in my own brain, that I would immediately assume that this necklace could only be of a boy and a girl. Why not a girl with short hair and a boy with a ponytail? Or two girls? Or two boys? So now I like to think of it as my "two people kissing" necklace. So I have been really excited to mention this for a couple of weeks, and now I finally can! I'm on the writing team for the Australian online magazine Birdee! It's quite like Rookie magazine, but for Australian readers the articles may seem a lot more relevant. It covers style, science, art, politics (both Australian and world), love, sex - and a bunch of other diverse topics. The articles written by my fellow writers are incredible and I hope that mine come even close to their standards! You can read my first article here. Image source Did life on Earth originate on Mars? This theory (which you might have learnt about in school as panspermia), while taken somewhat seriously as a possibility for the origins of life, has never really had too much evidence behind it. However, two separate studies very recently emerged suggesting that the conditions of Mars would have been much more suitable than Earth for "getting the ball rolling" on creating organic molecules (this includes carbon binding with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and is essentially what all living things are composed of). A meteorite from Mars would then have had to travel to Earth (which we know has happened at least once - it's how we know that Mars contains the element boron). In fact, it's boron that probably would have been needed to be around to allow RNA (similar to DNA, but not as stable) to form in the first place. It's certainly not conclusive proof that we're all technically martians, however it does make this possibility a lot more likely. Read more about the two separate discoveries here and here. I hope you're all having a great day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr