You don't have to be a kid to be bullied

I'm going to take a break from my regular schedule, my pretties, to have a bit of a rant on a subject I feel very strongly about: bullying. I was terribly bullied as a child, right through till when I left high school, and I even wrote about it on my long neglected other blog manikpixi. My favourite blogger Forever Amber recently wrote about a poor girl who received death threats because of her red hair, and if you scroll through the comments you'll see I put in my two cents worth on that too.

Bullying is horrible and it says more about the person doing the bullying than about the person being bullied. It says they're insecure and get off on hurting other people and generally not the sort of person you'd want to be friends with. But you know what really scares me? That the bullying doesn't stop when you leave school. You step out into the big wide world and realise that outside the confines of school (where hopefully there are rules and counsellors and ramifications) the bullying continues in every facet of life. Your colleague, your neighbour, your in-law - those insecure mean little people are still out there. And sometimes it's not individual people throwing their weight around but big firms, who not only don't have rules and counsellors to put them in their place, but actually have big budgets and lawyers which allow, nay encourage, their behaviour.

And it's this situation exactly that New Zealand company Oasis find themselves in. Oasis are a small company selling a range of natural skin care solutions, and they're on the receiving end of a trademark lawsuit from big New Zealand natural skin care company Living Nature who say that Oasis' logo is too close to that of Living Nature. Now I'll let you visit Oasis and Living Nature (I'm not going to link to them sorry, I'm too cross) to judge for yourself how similar the logos are. My opinion, in case you're interested, is: BULLS**T. In fact, if such tenuous similarities can be the basis for a lawsuit I would suggest perhaps the legal department of The Body Shop might want to look into suing Living Nature, because gosh-darn it if their logos aren't both, you know, circles.

I'll let you read the news article for more about the lawsuit, but the upshot of the situation for this consumer at least is that Living Nature have lost my business. I used to be a big supporter of their products, gift bags to overseas friends almost always included a Living Nature product or two but no more. In fact after reading the article I went straight to the Oasis website (who I'd previously never heard of), and ordered myself all four of these Synergy Fragrances, which are currently on sale for only NZ$7.50 a bottle.

TAKE THAT Living Nature - I'm voting with my credit card!

Peace out!