The Blue Girl With Pink Hair Who Refuses To Stop Asking Questions
Branding | Web Design | Keto - For Coaches, Nutritionists and Business owners
To explain this properly, I have to go back a wee bit and tell you about my recent holiday.
As a family, we had not been on a proper holiday for almost 4 years. A long time I know. I have been studying, starting a new career, turning 50 (well, that was over 3 years ago now, haha). But yeah, studying, work, and business just took precedence for quite a long time.
So we got our beautiful and very quiet and relaxing time away in Spain last week. It really is pretty f**king amazing what happens when you slow down and stop for a wee while. I read 3 whole books that were proper stories, like beach reads where my mind was in make believe mode. I deffo have to do this much more often because I tell ya, it has worked wonders for me.
I borrowed a friend's padded sun lounger. And it seriously made my week. It was just perfect. And there were so many moments I just sat still and thought of how grateful I was to be there and to just be chillaxin.
Days spent at the pool, followed by sunshine on our balcony until around 9 pm ish. We went to my brother's for a BBQ one afternoon, out for dinner with my Dad and Fiona (my Dad's wife) another evening, it was really wonderful to spend some quality time with my family. I do not get to see them often as they all live over there.
Right so now I got that explained, because it is actually important as to why I ended up now doing what I have done these past few days.
I did not allow myself to think about work or home whilst I was away, because I so seriously needed a break; it was just becoming ridiculous. I am a workaholic, and it had really started affecting my health again, and I was just knackered.
But as our week was coming to an end their was teeny thoughts creeping in to my head. What am I gonna do next with my business, how will I advertise? Because I really do fucking hate social media and all the shite that goes with it. I hate the typical things we are told about how to be busy and whatnot. I just do not like how the health and well-being world has been hijacked by a corporate type business structure. Anyhoo, this is all part of the story.
I had been following this woman on Facebook for a wee while, I will link her page here its called Passive Rebel and she had been advertising this Anti-Branding workshop for a wee while. I have to say I have a total “I want her to be my new bestie type thing going on” because her posts reflected everything I have been standing for for so long. Plus I had chosen my Cut the Bullshit tagline and UnBranded by Bullshit thing over a year ago. So everything she was saying was what I had been quietly thinking for ages, but I felt lost in a sea of sameness and also FEAR. Fear of truly showing myself out there. I had completely lost my confidence.
I bought her workshop and got to work on watching the recordings and writing everything in my workbook. What struck me was the little things that I had been hiding from, but stood for the most. The naming my enemies and creating an atmosphere and vibe for my business. I had done it a bit, but I was playing it safe on a huge level.
I started a new Pinterest board too and began picking all the images that I loved. Of course it was like a multicoloured swap shop in there. But one image I chose that I loved was a pop art figure. I fell a bit in love there and then. But it was too bubble gum for me, and I honestly didn’t know what was coming next.
I did some market research on websites I liked. And so many of them were bold and abstract, because that is what I love.
I love others who are not afraid to be bold and break the rules. To be complete Rebels in the world. I do this in person, but I have struggled online for reasons I am not really sure of. I think it is because it so often feels unauthentic.
So I used all my inspo, and the next thing, a blue girl with pink hair was being developed on my screen. Lots of different ideas in my head of what I am passionate about, and that was what I began creating. Like a make-believe, mythical, younger and slim, pop art version of my inner me!
This was my very first image of her that I created, and it was love at first sight 😂
At first, she was just an image, a bit of fun. Something colourful and creative, but as I developed it further, she came alive to me. And this might sound like a bit of a cop-out, but I mentioned earlier how much I hate social media and how it has gone these last few years. This was like an escape for me. I realised I could use her and create the stories and fight the systems I do not like.
YES, I could easily just do this myself, as me, but I have always hated the stuff online because it's so serious. This is not, it is so much fun, but with it I can still say and do the things I want to but in a much more fun way and actually make it part of my Brand.
I made her show up, calling out the systems I dislike.
She started questioning nutrition advice. Challenging branding rules. Rolling her eyes at marketing nonsense. Sitting on beaches thinking about life. Following clues. Looking for patterns.
Before long, she had a name.
Rebel Nova.
The funny thing is, I never set out to create a character.
But the more I worked on her, the more I realised she represented something I care deeply about. And she also represents ME.
Deep Curiosity.
Independent thinking.
Creativity.
The courage to question things that everyone else seems happy to accept without a second thought.
Because whether we're talking about health, business, branding or life, I've never been particularly interested in following rules just because somebody told me I should.
I want to know why. And I will never stop questioning, just because I am told to.
I want to know the deeper reasons for stuff.
The wisdom underneath it.
The WHYDOM.
Rebel Nova became the visual expression of that part of me. The part that asks awkward questions. The part that loves colour, stories and possibilities. And most of all, the part of me that loves to believe that anything is possible. To question the norms of life yet still live with hope and wonder in my heart.
So if you've spotted a turquoise woman with pink hair wandering around my website recently, allow me to introduce you properly.
This is Rebel Nova.
She’s my new bestie ha-ha I love her so much even if she is just a blue pop art character in my world. I created her and she is part of me.
Why She Exists
The more I worked on Rebel Nova, the more I realised she wasn't just a fun character I had created. She represented a lot of the things I had been quietly thinking, feeling and fighting against for years.
I've always been a bit of a rebel. Not the shouty type standing on a soapbox, although I have done that too. But I have been more the person sitting quietly in the corner thinking, "That doesn't sound right to me." "None of this feels right or has helped me get well when I thought I was dying".
Take nutrition, for example.
For years we have been told to eat healthy whole grains. To eat 5-a-day. To avoid saturated fat. To snack regularly. To never skip breakfast because apparently it is the most important meal of the day.
Yet here we are with record levels of obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, autoimmune conditions and poor metabolic health.
Now before anyone starts clutching their pearls, I am not saying everything we have ever been told is wrong. I am saying I think we should be allowed to question it.
Who decided these things?
Where did the advice come from?
Does the evidence still support it? And more than that, who funds that evidence in the first place.
I get it, there is a shit ton of research to support all of what I am fighting against. But who funds this research, and is it really telling us the true facts of what is going on in the world these days? Because whenever I look deeper, which is often, because I teach this stuff. It more often than not leads back to money, and also the actual studies being done on people whose true health does not represent the reality of the situation of how bad health has become across the world. I am a true living example of this. It was only when I began eating meat again and saturated fats that I began getting well. But they say this is wrong!!! Ok then!
There is also so many independent studies now that show how therapeutic carb restriction and keto can truly help heal the body.
So why are we still repeating all of the fricking stuff that has made us all ill in the first place? It just stopped making sense to me a long time ago.
That same frustration shows up in business too.
One of the biggest struggles I have had over the last few years has been feeling like I had to choose.
Was I a nutritional therapist?
A teacher?
A web designer?
A branding person?
A business mentor?
Apparently, the rules said I had to pick one. But the problem was I didn't want to. I am all of those titles, every single one of them are ME..
Because none of those things feel separate to me.
Health affects confidence.
Confidence affects business.
Business affects stress.
Stress affects health.
People are not neat little boxes, so why should I be?
The internet loves labels though. Pick a niche. Pick a lane. Stay in your lane. Become known for one thing.
Honestly, I think a lot of us have spent years trying to squeeze ourselves into boxes that never fitted in the first place.
Then there are the websites. You know the ones.
The same stock photos, the same holistic icons with some cross legged image looking all Zen!
The same soft beige or pastel backgrounds.
The internet has become obsessed with making everything "skimmable", which is useful to a point, but somewhere along the line, people forgot that readers are perfectly capable of reading more than one sentence at a time.
Now don't get me wrong, if beige and pastel colours genuinely make your heart sing, crack on. I am not against beige. I am against pretending to be beige when you are actually neon pink with turquoise hair. Because that was me. I tried it the safe way for years, and for me it did not work, because I was not being myself, or saying the things I wanted to say for the fear of being judged. And where did it get me? Nowhere in particular, other than constantly changing my brand, my copy writing etc etc. Because nothing before that had ever felt authentic to me.
What really gets me though is how easy it has become to sound like everyone else.
Especially now!
Social media is flooded with AI-generated content that all sounds vaguely inspirational but somehow manages to say absolutely bugger all.
"You are not broken, you are becoming." OMFG,, this one I think I hate most of all.
"You were made for more."
Honestly, it does my head in. Humans do not talk, or write like that. Or at least they never used to. To me it is poetic fucking nonsense written up like it is supposed to mean something. And it doesn't. Not anymore. People can spot it a mile away now.
Somewhere along the line, people stopped trusting themselves.
They started following formulas, trends, experts, the ones that have no f**king idea of what the holistic health world is all about,
And they started ignoring their own instincts.
That little voice that says:
"This doesn't feel right."
Or:
"There has to be another way."
Asking the questions I have always asked in my head
Who told us that?
Is it actually true?
What happens if we think for ourselves?
Because curiosity is where every interesting discovery begins. And if there is one thing my new bestie Rebel Nova refuses to do, it is stop asking questions. You might now be saying why does she need to exist at all. Why can’t you just be that yourself?
The other part of what I have realised lately is that everything lately had stopped being fun. So when I created her, it has given me all of what was missing. From my brand and from me.
I get to write my message to the world, create a brand that, let's face it, will not be forgotten even if you do not like it. It also makes it fun, for me anyway. I love using imagery, colours and words. And this does all 3 and still allows me to get the message across that I want to say.
What Rebel Nova Believes (what I believe and stand for)
One of the things I realised while creating Rebel Nova was that she wasn't just questioning things. She was standing for things too. As I said earlier, I did not start out with the idea of creating a character, that part just kinda happened. What I truly wanted was to lower the word count on my website, because people get bored and can’t be arsed reading stuff. I wanted to create the things I was saying into images. So that the image said pretty much what would normally take 4 or 5 paragraphs to explain.
This then just grew. And it excited me so much because I could be totally me in the message and still make it really colourful, noticeable and hopefully so different that it shocks a wee bit and becomes unforgettable. Because that is what Branding is to me. It should be unforgettable!
What I see it all the time in branding. People worrying about logos, colours, websites, social media strategies and what font they should use before they have any real understanding of who they are, what they stand for, or who they actually want to help. To me, that is completely backwards.
When I work with somebody, I am far more interested in their story than I am their logo. I want to know what makes them laugh, what makes them angry, what breaks their heart, what music they listen to in the car, what they believe that other people don't, and what hill they would die on if they had to. I want to know who they are underneath all the noise. That is where the good stuff lives.
The same thing applies to health. I am interested in symptoms and test results, of course I am. But I am also interested in the person sitting in front of me. Their life. Their stress levels. Their relationships. Their sleep. Their story. Human beings are not spreadsheets and they are not statistics. Real life is always messier than that.
I am again such a perfect example to use in this. My weight loss has stalled for quite a long time, and by god it does my head in, and to be honest, makes me feel like a failure. But when I took a step back there for a wee while and looked at the bigger picture. I have been working and studying like a maniac for the last 6 years. I do not move enough because I am always sitting at my desk. My food is pretty good, but the rest of the pillars of health that I have in the way I work with others were just not great. High cortisol for example, does not help weight loss!
I also believe curiosity is one of the most important things we have. Most discoveries start because somebody asked a question. Most breakthroughs happen because somebody was willing to challenge an assumption. Somewhere along the way a lot of people stop asking questions because they think they should already know the answers. I think that is a mistake. The older I get, the more comfortable I am saying, "I don't know, let's find out." And I am loving bringing this in, in a fun and colourful way with Rebel Nova character. Because I actually think people might pay more attention lol. She looks way more fun and cooler than me!
Another thing I believe is that stories matter. We remember stories. We connect with stories. Nobody remembers a list of features or a marketing framework they read three years ago. They remember the story of the woman who rebuilt her life after hitting rock bottom. They remember the teacher who changed their life. They remember the moment everything finally clicked. Stories are how humans make sense of the world and they always will be.
For me creativity matters. Not because everybody needs to be an artist, but because creativity is part of being human. Colour matters. Music matters. Imagination matters. The books we read, the films we watch and the things that inspire us all tell us something about who we are. I spent years trying to make everything look professional and sensible. What I really mean is safe. The funny thing is that nothing started feeling right until I stopped trying so hard to fit in.
I did all of this as a hairdresser too. So it is not some new thing to me. My best hair creations always came from asking the person who they were. Getting them to create me a Pinterest board or similar with everything they liked. Not just a hairstyle they liked. But lots of things. Long hair, short hair, the different styles and colours they liked. Because that is what showed me who they were. Not just one image, of a long-haired female who looked nothing like them and had completely different hair from them.
And perhaps more than anything else, I believe we should never stop questioning things. Not because we need to be cynical about everything, but because blind acceptance helps nobody. If somebody tells you something is true, ask why. If a rule no longer makes sense, ask where it came from. If everybody is heading in one direction, it is perfectly reasonable to stop for a minute and ask whether they are actually going the right way.
This is why I created Rebel Nova, or actually, why I decided to keep her and develop it further and use her on my website and make her part of my own brand. She reminds me of the part of myself that was always there. The curious wee girl asking awkward questions and refusing to accept "because I said so" as a satisfactory answer. 😆
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
—"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64” ― Albert Einstein
Every Story needs a good enemy!
One of the exercises in the Anti-Brand workshop was naming your enemies. Not actual people of course, but the ideas, beliefs and nonsense that drive you absolutely round the bend. The things that make you stop scrolling and mutter, "Oh for f**k sake, not this again."
And believe me, I have many enemies haha, even more than I first thought.
One of the biggest is what I have decided to call The Niche Police. These are the people who insist that everybody must fit neatly into one category. You can be this or that, but certainly not both.
Looking back, I think this belief caused me more frustration than almost anything else in business. I constantly felt as though I had to choose between being a nutritional therapist, a teacher, a website designer, a branding consultant, a business mentor or a creative person. The problem was that none of those things ever felt separate to me. They still don't. They are simply different parts of who I am and how I help people. And I will use my new Rebel Nova as my branding to stop apologising for that.
Another enemy is what I call The Copycat Curse. You know exactly what I mean. The internet is full of websites that all look remarkably similar. The same stock photography. The same safe colours. The same carefully chosen words. The same promises. The same formulas. Somewhere along the line, individuality became a risk instead of an asset. The strange thing is that most people don't want to buy from a clone. They want to connect with a real human being. Yet so many businesses end up hiding the very things that make them memorable because they are afraid of standing out.
Then we have The AI Poet. This one is a relatively new arrival and I suspect many of you know exactly what I am talking about. Social media is now overflowing with content that sounds vaguely profound but means absolutely nothing. Every second post seems determined to tell us that we are becoming, evolving, aligning or stepping into something. Half the time I have no idea what any of it is supposed to mean. Real people do not generally speak this way. They tell stories. They share experiences. They say what happened, what they learned and what they think about it. Somewhere along the line, saying something simple and honest became less fashionable than sounding deep. I love messy and real, over the ChatGpt poetry any day.
But don’t get me wrong, I use AI daily for work. I use it to help me create images and I absolutely love it. It helps me keep my projects together and for teaching it makes researching quicker because I can store all my studies, research, notes etc in a place where it is like having a colleague to collab with and chat through all that is in my brain. I also use it to tidy up my writing etc. But I do write myself. And the more I do this work, the more I write. It was something that was the missing piece of my life for so long. I wrote as a younger me, but I lost my way a long time ago and writing was something I let go of as my heart was broken, and it was too deep for me. Anyhoo that is another story for another time.
Nutrition has its own collection of enemies too. There are ideas that have been repeated for so long that questioning them almost feels rebellious, and often, if you are one that questions, you get labelled and judged for having these ideas. No-one realises that it is actual science you are following. It is not the easiest of hills to stand on, I have lost people in life due to it and its not pleasant. So I find having a Pop Art creation helps in this.
Eat your healthy whole grains. Never skip breakfast. Eat little and often. Avoid saturated fat. Count your calories. I have spent years studying nutrition, teaching nutrition and experimenting with my own health, and what I have learned is that human beings are far more complicated than simplistic headlines and blanket advice. Some things we have been told are useful. Some deserve far more scrutiny than they currently receive. The problem is that questioning accepted wisdom often makes people uncomfortable, particularly when money, industry and decades of public messaging are involved.
Perhaps the biggest enemy of all, though, is blind acceptance. The idea that we should simply trust whatever we are told without looking any deeper. Whether it is health advice, business advice, branding advice or life advice, I think we have lost some of our willingness to ask questions. We hand our thinking over to experts, influencers, marketers and algorithms and assume they know better than we do.
That is probably why Rebel Nova appeared when she did. She is curious. Sometimes annoyingly so. She asks questions that don't always have easy answers. She follows rabbit holes. She changes her mind when new information appears. Most importantly, she refuses to believe something simply because everybody else does. She is me in the form of a colourful character.
And to be honest, I think the world could do with a bit more of that. I stand for truth and freedom in every sense of this world. In Health – In Business – In Life. That is my hill and I stand on it proudly.
The Many Faces of Rebel Nova
I have already explained where she came from. Originally, she was simply a colourful pop-art character that reflected my personality and some of the things I care about. But as I started creating more images, she began showing up in different ways depending on the story I was trying to tell.
Sometimes she appears as The Story Weaver.
This is probably my favourite version of all because it reflects how I work with people. Whether I am helping someone improve their health, build a business, create a website or develop a brand, I am always looking for clues. I want to understand the person first. Their experiences, values, interests, frustrations, strengths and beliefs. Long before I think about colours, logos or websites, I want to understand who they are underneath all the noise. The Story Weaver is the part of Rebel Nova that sits quietly connecting dots and finding patterns.
Other times she becomes The Myth Challenger.
This is the version that questions nutrition dogma, business advice and accepted wisdom. She is not anti-science and she is not anti-expert. Quite the opposite. She simply believes that ideas should be examined rather than accepted blindly. If something is true, it should stand up to questioning. If something no longer makes sense, it deserves another look. Plus real science to me, IS questioning and experimenting. It is NOT just follow it and do what you are told because some person said so!
Then there is Beach Nova, who may actually be responsible for this entire thing in the first place. She spends her time staring out at the ocean, writing in journals, thinking about life and generally asking questions that probably don't need answered. She reminds me how important it is to slow down sometimes. Some of my best ideas have never appeared when I was working flat out. They have appeared when I finally stopped. This is where this whole idea developed from. When I stopped working for 2 weeks, went on holiday and read some books and allowed my mind to be in a make believe world for hours on end.
There is also the version of Rebel Nova that cares deeply about healing. Not just food and nutrition, but the bigger picture. Sleep. Stress. Relationships. Movement. Joy. Creativity. Time outdoors. Human beings are wonderfully complicated creatures and health is rarely about a single thing. This version reminds me that healing is often much bigger than whatever symptom brought somebody through the door in the first place.
And then there is the colourful creative rebel. The one covered in paint splashes and bright ideas. The one that refuses to believe every website needs to look the same. The one that reminds me that business can be enjoyable, creativity matters and standing out is not something to apologise for.
The funny thing is that all of these versions are really the same person. They are simply different parts of the things I care about most. Curiosity. Creativity. Learning. Health. Stories. People. Possibility. The whole character is just different parts of me, except with blue skin and a bit of a cartoon.
At this point you might be wondering whether I have finally lost the plot.
The answer is probably debatable.
What I do know is that Rebel Nova is not disappearing any time soon.
She has become part of my website, my business and, if I am being honest, part of how I want to communicate going forward. And it isn’t because I need a mascot, but because she has made everything fun again. She has given me a way to talk about serious subjects without taking myself too seriously. This was the part that really popped out at me when I started creating more. I cannot remember the last time I felt this excited about work. It has everything that was missing. And most of all, the images just make me smile. It can be quite difficult to share the seriousness of the health picture in this world. Now I will use her to do it in a memorable and colourful way.
Over the coming months you will see her popping up all over the place.
Sometimes she will be questioning nutrition myths and exploring the science behind metabolic health, therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, keto and carnivore nutrition. Other times she will be diving into branding, websites and business, asking why so many businesses end up looking and sounding exactly the same.
She will probably spend a fair bit of time talking about creativity too. The role of colour, stories, identity and self-expression in both life and business. I have a feeling she may also end up wandering off into conversations about mindset, curiosity, confidence, personal growth and whatever random rabbit hole I happen to disappear down that week.
The truth is, Rebel Nova gives me permission to bring all the different parts of myself together in one place. The nutritionist, the teacher, the designer, the storyteller, the business owner, the artist and the eternal student who is still learning new things every single day.
Most importantly, she reminds me that life does not need to be quite so serious all the time.
There is enough doom and gloom in the world already.
There are enough people telling us what we should think, how we should look, what we should buy and who we should become.
I would rather spend my time asking questions, exploring ideas, challenging assumptions and occasionally laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
So if a blue Pop Art woman with pink hair suddenly appears in all of my work, I hope you like her. And to be honest I don’t much care if you don’t. This is one of the biggest reasons it works for me. Because people will either love it or hate it and that is the way it is meant to be.
If you've made it this far, firstly, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read the ramblings of a woman who accidentally created a blue pop art alter ego after a week of switching off her mind in Spain.
You can subscribe to my blog and be notified when I share something new, or if you are interested in learning more about my work pop over to my home page to learn more and from there you can have a wee nosy around the site, read my story and how I work.
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.- Pablo Picasso
Linda McClure
