Join my birthday celebrations!

Today is my birthday. However, due to a general lack of enthusiasm at this time of year*, I rarely celebrate on the day itself and have even written about the perils of an early January birthday before. Last year, I celebrated my birthday 6 months late and had a great time with balloons and fantastic friends in July. This year, I’ve got something slightly different planned. I’m going to celebrate my blog’s 10th birthday instead!

I bought my first domain on 12th July 2001, but my updates to that initial website were all hand-coded HTML and therefore rather infrequent. After I worked out what I actually wanted to do with the site, Topper installed Movable Type for me and my first ‘proper’ blog post was published on 19th March 2003. To celebrate my 10 years of blogging, I am launching the Rarely Wears Lipstick Awards to reward the fantastic, the fabulous, the inspirational and the downright awesome. Tell me who you think deserves an award for doing what they do in any or all of the following 8 categories:

• Best Fashion Blogger – Who writes brilliantly about something sartorial? Nominate your favourite fashion blogger here. They don’t have to write solely about fashion either, so the definition of ‘fashion blogger’ is up to you.
• Best Feminist Blog – Same as above, it doesn’t have to be a blog exclusively about feminism. The gender and number of writers is irrelevant. I know there are some awesome feminists out there who share their opinions with the world. Help me find them.
• Best Independent Fashion Brand – Forget the big names! Who are the little guys you love to support? Clothing, footwear, accessories, lingerie, jewellery… anything fashion-related counts. Nominate a brand you adore for this award and share the love.
• Best Burlesque Performer – If you’ve seen a burlesque performance that you really loved, nominate the performer here. There are some fabulous individual and group acts out there, and some of them don’t get enough glory. Share those inspiring, creative and subversive names.
• Creativity Inspiration Award – Who or what inspires you creatively? They might paint, draw, sew, bake, perform, dance, sing, design, code, write, plan events or even entertain kids. Remember that there are more ways to be creative than you could possibly imagine.
• LGBT Inspiration Award – Nominate a person, group or website which aims to inspire lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, unsure, curious, intersex, pansexual, asexual, or “other” folk… and, most importantly, succeeds!
• Body Image Inspiration Award – Who or what has helped to make you feel better about your body and the way you look? It could be a website, magazine, project, class or a dear friend. If they’ve inspired you, that deserves recognition.
• SRE Inspiration Award – Nominate someone or something that has educated and inspired you on the subject of sex and relationships. Smut counts, as long as there’s some educational content. Just make sure you warn before including NSFW links!

The nomination form has more space than you’d think so, although including a name is the bare minimum, feel free to add links and/or reasons too. If your nomination is obscure, make sure you include enough information for me to find them online. Please only put one nomination in each box, and don’t feel you need to nominate in all of the categories. The form will be available until Tues 19th February, when I will work out who/what has the most nominations and will publish a shortlist. Can’t wait to see who/what you choose!

*UPDATE 07/01/13: I retract this statement. Amanda organised a surprise party for me yesterday and there were lots of people there! Thanks so much to everyone who attended.

Image via Phae‘s Flickr Photostream.