Month: June 2018

Announcements and changes and updates, oh my

I haven’t posted this week yet because there has been a lot of decision making with GAF’s amazing tiny team to reach our full potential. These decisions will eventually lead to some major changes.

I’m just going to list them out because then they’re less scary and easier to swallow:

Girls Aren’t Funny is transitioning to an online magazine

I started this as a blog a little over two months ago while I was traveling. It was my dream for it to become a submission-based blog, but I soon recognized this won’t work. As a personal blog, it makes it difficult for those who want to submit to fit into a brand that is literally all about me. It is important to me this becomes a platform for funny women and am so excited for this shift in format.

Think The New Yorker’s Humor section meets The Onion meets feminists meets my parents for their blessing meets something new and sparkly (but with fewer sparkles)

We are still brainstorming how Girls Aren’t Funny will look and feel, but I guarantee if you’ve been following along with me on here you will enjoy the relaunch of GAF. It’ll be a whole lot more of this from many other women.

We are currently crafting submission guidelines but reach out anyways

As always, if you are interested in showcasing your work on a platform dedicated to hilarious ladies then please use our email gaf.submissions@gmail.com or reach out through our contact form. We are looking for personal essays, satirical articles, fiction, nonfiction, cartoons, however you want to express your sense of humor. Write about the female experience, don’t write about it. Write about politics, or don’t. Write about sexual escapades, write about your long wait til marriage, write about being asexual. I literally wrote an essay about a door at Starbucks that created a coffee traffic jam.

If you are an illustrator please reach out to us

We have a great photographer on our team, but we’d like to explore the possibility of adding an illustrator to our mix to create creative featured images for the essay and articles. If you are interested in the position, the contact page is your friend.

If you are interested at all in joining GAF’s master team

We are a small team trying to birth a major project. If our work interests you and you think you have some special skill or superpower we NEED you. If you do not identify as a woman that is more than OK. We already have a boy on our team that ripped up the metaphorical ‘no boys allowed’ sign so that’s the end of that. Contact page, contact page, contact page!

News on the podcast

For those of you who have been following my random updates about this illusive podcast. Big news! As a team, we decided to grow the podcast as a separate project. We are now officially the ‘Not Your Typical Feminist Podcast’ podcast. Our web developer is busy at work building the new website as well as recreating Girls Aren’t Funny. This was decided because the goal of GAF and NYTFP overlap, but are still different. NYTFP will focus on inclusion in the feminist space. GAF still holds the mission of dismantling the stigma that girls aren’t funny. So many acronyms!

Lots of love to all of you who are here

I’m so grateful for every single person who took the time to read my blog. Of course, I will still be contributing to Girls Aren’t Funny in its future form, but it will obviously be different. No more casual posts about my itchy nipples (we’ll see). I will continue to post in this blog until we are ready to roll over officially. There will be a warning before things launch.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! 

 That is all.

Itchy titty

My featured image couldn’t be a picture of my nipple. It just couldn’t. I’m sorry. So I give you a picture of kitties instead, because it rhymes with titties.

This week has been a week of growth. I went to a networking event for Girls Aren’t Funny and confirmed a cohost for our podcast.

But I don’t want to talk to you about growth. I want to talk to you about my damn mosquito bites.

I don’t know what kind of hell I’m living in where it is both 110 degrees AND there’s mosquitos. Are these mosquitos hyped up on post-apocalyptic fever? (I recognize that sentence made no sense, I am just too damn itchy to care).

Today is different. Today, one mosquito went too far.

I have a giant bug bite on my nipple. Yes, I’m about to go into detail about my nipple because I need your sympathy, not your judgement.

No bug should be anywhere near my nipple. Only lovers, handsy doctors and babies should have access to my nipples.

Well, not all babies. Just a few. Like my future babies if I was to have babies.

That is a whole other conversation that I don’t have to dive into, Mom!

#defensive #freethenipples

This morning, my lover, Nicholas, walked in on me in the bathroom slapping my boob around in the attempt to numb it.

#sexy #donttrythisathome

I then started to worry about cancer because in elementary school there was this myth that if you get hit in the boob too hard it gives you cancer.

So I started to research cancer.

Then I started yelling, “I need cream!”. For no apparent reason.

Then I thought, “What if this isn’t a bug bite and I’m growing a third nipple?”

I went back to researching and found an article titled, 18 Surprising Third Nipple Statistics. This intrigued me as I didn’t know there were that many nipple statistics, let alone 18 unpredictable ones.

Here are a couple ones that stood out to me:

  1. 27.2 million Americans are believed to have an extra nipple somewhere on their body – so get looking!
  2. There are no specific guidelines for taking care of extra nipples – we’ll have to make our own, starting with cream.
  3. No two nipples look alike – so that third nipple will be just as special
  4. A third nipple will naturally secrete oils that help to fight bacteria – I read this as “secret” oils which made me excited with the possibilities for my possibly very special third nipple that has a community of people who could overrun the essential oils industry with our secret secreting

So there you have it. Excuse me while I go roll around the bathroom floor.

Xoxo,

Funny Girl

Just call me bossassbitch

Thanks to Jennifer Lawrence, I have a job! Hence why I tried to recreate an image of her on the red carpet. #tribute (Woah, I accidentally made a Hunger Games reference. Wouldn’t be the first time. )

Soon I will be taking my fancy writing skills to work with small business owners to create their content. My best friend’s older sister owns an agency and one of her clients requested a writer who is both professional but also has some spunk. The client literally asked for a Jennifer Lawrence (a tall order) and she thought of me! Oh, the honor!

Thanks, Jen! You’ll never know your part in me landing this great job. Or your part in inspiring many of my haircuts. I’m still iffy on the bangs though. Don’t worry, Jen, we’ll talk about that later.

The best part: It’s all online. That reminds me, I need to go buy some new PJs for work. (Get it? Because I would normally need to buy business clothes?) Oh my gosh, I am too pumped. #digitalnative (Another Hunger Games reference if you squint).

Also, I wish I was a love child between Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone. Except it would be too weird because I’m incredibly attracted to both of them.

love child

Also, I have way too much time on my hands and decided to put together proof that I may be the love child of these beloved actresses. I don’t think I’ve done anything so creepy in my life. Thank god I have a job now, amirite?

Triple Threat.png

Side note: While I research for the Girls Aren’t Funny podcast I have been reading a lot of feminist literature. A lot of badass women out there covering some rage-inducing social phenomenon. Fun stuff!

I think I may start a GAF book club soon. At the very least I’ll be posting what I’ve been reading and the thoughts/emotions/bodily fluids that come with it.

I just finished Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, a collection of essays edited and introduced by Roxane Gay, and let me tell you it was an emotional rollercoaster making my way to the last page.

More on that soon.

Xoxo,

Funny Girl

My brain is a bad landlord

When I was nine I moved to Texas. At school I was immediately embraced by everyone and the popularity was overwhelming.

I’m kidding. I was bullied. Relatable right?

Mistakenly I had befriended a very popular girl with very loyal/territorial friends who weren’t happy that we were spending so much time together.

At recess, each of her friends (single file) approached me and told me they hated me. Kids are so sweet.

Out of all the mean girls, there was, of course, the leader. Her name was Talon, as in a claw, especially one belonging to a bird of prey. Suitable, huh?

Well, one day as my dad and I passed the ol’ pigskin around (a football for those who don’t know… or at least I think that’s what it means… what if I’ve been wrong all these years and ol’ pigskin actually meant something horrid and not very vegan). He asked me how school was going and I told him about The Claw.

To this day I remember what he said. He said, “Don’t let anyone rent space in your head. You’re only giving them power over you”.

I remember this because it was so damn annoying. What bullied nine-year-old wants to hear that she is part of the problem?

But I took the advice and moved on. I made friends and learned a few jokes to distract bullies with, similar to throwing meat in the opposite direction and running. With less running. And not enough meat, frankly.

I’m still struggling with this though. Not bullies. That would be uncomfortable for two reasons.

  1. Why am I still attending recess as a grown woman?
  2. I recently took a self-defense class and I’m way too eager to use the moves

I’m struggling with not letting people rent space in my head. People say something harmless or purposely mean and I chew it over for days!

I’ve held grudges for years. Then I think about how that can’t be good for my skin long term, or my digestive system short term and then it makes me even angrier. The cycle is vicious.

I realized, my brain has just been a terrible landlord. It’s letting the tenants paint the walls a horrendous yellow and bringing in oversized dogs without a pet deposit.

This metaphor is getting lengthy.

I guess what I’m trying to say is enough is enough. Get the hell out of my head!

I figured I’d start where I always have when I’m facing anything scary. (Besides burying myself in rom-coms). Logic my way back.

Does it make sense that the librarian hates you because you’re a repeat offender of overdue books?

Possibly, librarians aren’t portrayed in movies as having a positive attitude. They like to shush people.

Has a real librarian ever shushed you?

No, they’ve asked me nicely to not walk them through the plot of the entire Twilight Saga.

You need to let that go.

Deal.

Hey, it’s a start.

Xoxo,

Funny Girl

Oh, public school…

After graduating with my BA, I have thought about the possibility of going back to school, but something has always held me back.

I have a weird history with teachers. Maybe if I put them down on paper you will see what I mean. I will not highlight all of them. That would take an entire book and crush my soul.

The first teacher I had when I moved to Texas was my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Barret, who I referred to as the Evil Carrot because I was nine and only had rhyming skills to hurt people’s feelings with. She would threaten to beat us with planks of wood she kept in her supply cabinet. That is all.

My attempt to learn Spanish was soon crushed with my freshmen year teacher. When I walked into class the first day I tried to explain that my schedule had been moved around and I was new to her class. She stared back and said, “It’s assigned seating”.

I again explained how my name wasn’t on the list and she told me to sit in a corner. I sat criss-cross-applesauce until she noticed me during her lecture and yelled at me to take an assigned seat based on the chart. I would then start the explanation all over again. By the next class, I knew well enough to just pick a seat.

Throughout the year she would randomly teach us French as if she had forgotten what class we were taking. She would also scream and hide under her desk while playing Shakira music videos. There was also the problem of her counting backward from ten to make the voices go away.

The next year we were told she had left teaching. Part of me worried for her, either way, it definitely made second-year Spanish quite difficult.

My sophomore World History teacher used a walking cane and threatened to beat anyone with it who referred to it as a “pimp stick”. Apparently, this was a touchy subject for him as he was incredibly worried someone would assume he enslaved young women for sex. A lot of his lectures had nothing to do with world history and everything to do with the life of a pimp.

A boy I had a crush on told me I had beautiful eyes, but the moment was ruined when my history teacher interrupted the moment to explain to him that a woman would prefer to be told, “You have cow eyes”. Have you seen the eyes of the cow? Beautiful. At 15 I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about my self-esteem that day.

My sophomore year I had two Chemistry teachers. The first semester the teacher decided to start the class by proving something about having a decent amount of budget for the STEM department. He demonstrated this by throwing glass test tubes across the classroom and watching them shatter.

A boy with a glass eye (from a similar incident) cringed with each toss, worried he would lose his other eye. We covered him with our textbooks and cardigans like good peers.

He continued to walk us through the procedures in case any of us spilled toxic chemicals on ourselves during a lab experiment.

“Take off all of your clothes and stand under this showerhead,” he said. “Don’t worry I will be here to hold up this blanket so no one will see you naked.”

He unrolled the blanket to reveal a giant hole cut from the middle.

“I’ll fix that! We have the budget for it!”

The second semester was a woman who was very insecure about her relationship with her girlfriend. I don’t blame her. Texas is a harsh place. However one day she came in with brownies and exclaimed that if we didn’t eat them then we hate bisexual people. The brownies felt hostile but tasted pretty damn good. That’s when I became a fan of bisexual brownies.

My physics teacher in Texas claimed to be Commanche but was just a white guy who grew out his hair. He told us how his dad used to beat him and never taught us physics because it was too important to teach us about life. I still don’t know what I learned from him, except the concept of cultural appropriation.

My second semester of junior year I was living in Arizona and had an equally interesting physics teacher. He was clearly on steroids and threw stools across the classroom in rage when he wasn’t participating in Iron Mans.

My government class was only one semester and our teacher made us draw our notes and then graded us on our artistic abilities rather than the content itself. You would think he was a very calm soul, but once made a girl with diabetes scrub each desk after class because she had to eat a snack. Great guy.

The other semester was economics, the teacher of which made us invest in stocks, and encouraged us to cheat on our tests. He would turn his chair around to face the whiteboard and tell us to take out our individual internets (our cell phones). There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

My senior year of high school I took a dual credit English class taught within the high school. I clarify this because my teacher forced us to refer to him as a professor when he clearly was not. On the first day of class, he made us watch him slowly eat a grape and described it as orgasmic. I learned so much.

When I finally started college my first year I took a political science class. On the first day, there was a slideshow playing photos of a teenage girl. The professor started class explaining that the girl in the photos was his daughter. And she was murdered two months prior. We then spent the rest of the class watching news clips.

I fell in love with creative writing and had a wonderful creative writing professor. When I googled her name I found out she was a disgraced journalist because she made up people for her columns. I guess you could say she found her place in fiction. I still love her.

As part of my degree, I had to take an internship class. As part of the curriculum, we had to attend a lecture held by a self-published author. He was the Boom-Boom guy, some form of an inspirational speaker. All I remember is someone in the audience answering one of his questions and then screaming as a t-shirt was thrown at her face while he yelled, “YOU’VE JUST GRADUATED FROM BOOM-BOOM UNIVERSITY!”. Poor girl.

And last, but not least, I received a mentor as part of a school organization I was a part of. He was a nice guy, but completely and totally sexist. Almost all of his sentences started with “You girls always…”. You know, the way people liked to be lumped together?

Anyways I had to invite a guest speaker to my professional program and I thought he’d be good to invite. He was an odd guy, but he worked in the industry. Bad mistake.

Immediately he started yelling at my peers to stand up and give him their elevator speech. No one knew what he wanted and one girl started panicking. After we calmed her down I escorted him out.

AND THESE WERE JUST THE HIGHLIGHTS! Every year my whole life I have had the strangest people teach me the basics. I wish I could say I wouldn’t change it for the world… but a shiny private school might’ve been nice.

Maybe fewer threats and more learning. That should be their tagline! Did anyone else have weird teachers? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I let strangers practice strangling me

I just want you all to know how much time and creative effort went into this featured image. Look at this collage! Let me break it down for you because I know it’s a lot to take in all at once.

So you know how in basketball games people hold up a sign that has the letter ‘D’ on it and then a sign with a fence painted on it when they’re encouraging defense? Or a real fence if you’re that die-hard about your imagery.

Well because I went to a self-defense class I made a pictogram of myself, the letter ‘D’ with a bunch of ‘D’s’ in it (get it? D, as in dick? But I wasn’t going to be crass and use real dicks so I used images of classy dildos, then I went down a rabbit hole of paying for stock photo images of dildos and I thought to myself this can’t be a good use of my time) and then a picture of a fence. 

You’re so welcome. 

“OK, are you the bad guy or am I the bad guy this time?” I asked the 38-year-old man breathing heavily in front of me.

“I don’t mind fighting you off,” he said with a shrug.

“Personally, I prefer being the strangler,” I said.

This all sounds very sexual. Let me explain.

This past Saturday I went to my first self-defense class and it was awesome. I have now perfected my ability to strangle people. My throat is sore and my wrist is bruised from being dragged up and down the mat, but I think I can successfully whoop some ass if needed.

Well, we didn’t really learn how to whoop ass, just protect ours. Hence, the self-defense.

This is when I left the story to go make a collage of myself and dildos. This was explained earlier so stop judging me, Samantha! She’s my imaginary frenemy who plays the mean cheerleader in my dreams. She’s very effective at motivating myself.

I am really good at staying on track with this post.

ANYWAYS (she says with a heavy sigh and an eye roll) I had wanted to take a self-defense class for years but never got around to it.

I had this small fear (that was actually a very large fear fueled by Law & Order SVU) that I would be attacked and all I would think about while it was happening was “if only I had taken that self-defense class before this”.

Kinda like how I keep carrying this fear that I’ll suddenly need health insurance really badly and I’ll wish that I had it like right now. Like right now. *cough, cough* Literally, cough, cough. Someone give me drugs.

So I finally signed up and went. I already feel immensely better having some go-to techniques in case someone lunges at me.

I have had my own experiences with aggressive men in the past ranging from frustrating to scary to traumatic so it is a great relief to have that small amount of knowledge.

Unfortunately, today while I was at the gym I had an uncomfortable experience with a man who thought it would be funny to follow me around and get as close as possible to me while making eye contact.

Eventually, he cornered me in a less populated area of the gym and I darted around him while he was momentarily distracted. I immediately left the gym.

My initial feeling was shame and then guilt for feeling ashamed. I spend so much of my free time researching women’s issues and the moment I am confronted with a bully I ran away.

I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. Maybe I shouldn’t have left and confronted him or gone to the front desk. I was torn between the feminist and traditional lessons I’ve been taught.

Do I stand up for myself because I am a strong and independent woman?

Or do I ask for help because the person behind the front desk happens to be a man and maybe this man will listen to another man?

Do I leave because I know whatever I say to this creep will not change him?

Do I stay to make a point that he can’t intimidate me?

Because he did intimidate me. He made me feel small and aware of my body in a place where I was trying to take care of it.

The self-defense class taught me how to get out of a stranglehold and how to remove my arm from various tight grips, but it did not teach me how to defend myself from people like him.

The cat-callers, the wolf-whistlers, the gawkers, the ones who don’t touch but want to.

It is disappointing. And yes, I make dildo-based collages, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to feel safe at my local gym.

Xoxo,

Funny Girl

 

Fear can go suck balls & other eloquent epiphanies

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway was one of the many, many self-help books I would stare down in my mother’s bookcase when I was a kid. This book eventually came with me to my college dorm where it would continue to torment me as a fresh adult.

Instead of accepting that books like this were not torture machines in the form of paper but in fact, actually were self-help books, I took them each as a personal challenge.

I was crippled by the fear of starting anything in case I failed. It wasn’t until a few months ago where my ego finally agreed that I fail all the time. Almost every day. So failure wasn’t even that special.

Miss my mouth while drinking = Fail

Follow the five-second rule = Fail (You are eating off the ground! You can do better.)

Ignore important email until it was way too late to respond = Fail

Tell myself today is going to be productive then watch hours of Netflix (and I mean hours) = Fail

These tiny failures did not lead to my imminent death. Neither did slightly bigger failures.

Receive a rejection letter from a magazine = Fail

Didn’t tell my mom happy mother’s day = Fail

Forgot my best friend’s birthday = Fail

Missed the deadline for a dream job application = Fail

I survived that too. Of course, there is guilt and possibly tears, over way larger failures but unless your failure was smoking 6 packs of cigarettes a day for 20 years or that you refused to wear your seatbelt because it wrinkled your freshly dry cleaned dress then most likely you won’t die from it.

But if you do die at least your dress was wrinkle-free and you looked like Snow White in your coffin. It’s the little things that truly matter.

I am terrified right now as I type this but I think I’m finally understanding some of those self-help books that used to haunt me. I am literally experiencing fear right now and doing it anyway.

The idea of starting this website and publishing very intimate details about myself onto the internet was both ill-advised by many (including that public speaker who would come to your high school and warn you that everything you post will come back and bite you in the ass and no one will hire you and you’ll live in your parent’s basement forever and no one will love you so don’t even think of updating your MySpace account, Jessica) and frightening to me but for some reason I did it anyway.

I am only two months into Girls Aren’t Funny and each month individually had over 100 unique visitors and close to 500 views of people possibly refreshing the page. Honestly, whether you think that is good news or not, personally that way exceeded my expectation. I legit assumed even my mom wouldn’t read it. So thank you, thank you so much.

Right now I am researching for Girls Aren’t Funny’s Modern Feminist Project podcast and it is just another layer of scary. My stomach lurches when I see famous women get trolled on Twitter and I want to hide under the covers. Why would I want to join the conversation if that’s literally the best thing that can happen to me?

Literally, the best thing would be if I became successful in my endeavor to answer some of life’s goddamn stupid questions as a woman who wants to do good by other women and then some loser named Trevor69 calls me fat.

And you know what? I’m excited. I’m fucking stoked. Bring it on, Trevor69!

Again, if you have any interest being interviewed on the podcast or have anything you’d like to share about your experience as a ladyfolk (oh god I regretted that immediately) please reach out through the comments, the contact form or via our gaf.submissions@gmail.com.

All this overcoming fear is making me hungry. I’m going to go eat Mexican food, bye.

 

Would you like a clown nose?

“Do you have any kids?”

The cashier waited patiently for my answer.

I scanned my body. I still get ID’d at restaurants and bars. I don’t look old, do I? I mean I guess I could’ve had kids by now. I technically have had the capability for years.

“How about cats? Do you have any cats?”

I scanned myself again. Am I already at the point of no return? Where my option is either kid or cat? How do I explain to this woman I have neither and I still have a hard time taking care of just myself.

“No, just me,” I said but with a peppy voice to ensure I was not sad/lonely/pathetic because I’m not but it still made me strangely defensive.

“Oh okay, I just have a box of clown noses I’m trying to get rid of.”

She didn’t explain herself any further. I assumed it was originally a fundraiser. For clowns.

I said I’d take one for myself so she gave me two as if I have two noses or I was lying the whole time about the kid/cat I may or may not have.

I sat in the car with the clown nose but it made it hard to see while driving. And even worse than that it forced me to become a mouth-breather and no wants that. Especially my possible kid/cat.

On an unrelated note that I will forcefully mesh together: I had a flashback to when I was in kindergarten. Birthday kids had to lay down on a long roll of construction paper and then the teacher drew a line around the current birthday kid’s body. Like a crime scene.

Maybe it was to teach us about our own mortality. Maybe it was a therapy tool for our teacher.

Then the rest of the class would write nice things about the birthday kid inside the lines of the body. Because that’s what I wanted on my birthday. A bunch of sticky kindergartners writing adjectives all over a symbol of my body. Maybe this is how Jesus feels when people take communion. I probably just offended somebody.

Moving on.

I volunteered to cut the construction paper above the kid’s head. The last kid in charge of the scissors cut some hair in the process so I was watched intently.

My teacher spoke gently about how to hold the scissors and I rolled my eyes internally.

How old did she think I was? Four? Well, I was five, lady, and I was familiar with arts and crafts.

Right before the ceremony was to begin (I promise my mother assures me we weren’t in a cult and this wasn’t a school in a Lifetime movie) the child lay down on the crinkly paper and the teacher methodically drew around his body.

As the ink dried in between his fingers my arch nemesis (not really but it makes it more dramatic) chucked a marker at me. I was outraged. I was the scissor-carrier, the cutter, the one-that-released-the-paper-from-the-rest-of-the-paper. How dare he?!

So I threw the scissors at his head.

Ok, I threw a wooden block but the scissors would have been more thematic.

The block hit our teacher in the back of the head and the sound of marker against paper squiggled to a stop.

“Who did this?” she seethed with the block in her hand.

I stepped forward to apologize and be forgiven quickly because I was such a big person for admitting my mistake.

The scissors were taken away and I was sent to a corner to think about what I’d done.

I thought to myself, “I will never forgive any of them and I will remember for years the shame they have caused me. My children will one day know this story.”

Here I am almost two decades later with no kid or cat to share this tragic tale too.

So I offer to you my woes and an extra clown nose. You’re welcome.

Discussion questions:

  1. Why are clown noses funny?
  2. What happened in your childhood that you could turn into a Lifetime movie?
  3. Don’t answer that second question unless you were in a cult. Lifetime only wants cults. Give up now.

 

 

 

Modern Feminist Project: How to make decisions without destroying progress and other challenges of womanhood

This picture is a representation of the lightbulb moment I had when I thought of the idea for this project, except instead of it going off above my head I kinda had to slam myself into it. METAPHORSSSS!

Whether you believe me or not, every day when I make a decision I anxiously go through a checklist of whether this will affect my fellow woman.

“I really like these shorts but they’re a little short and I don’t want people to think I’m slutting it up.”

“Wear these shorts so little girls can too!”

“That makes me uncomfortable.” 

“Forget the haters! They have no right to comment on how you dress!

“Then again you are walking into a stereotype about college girls.”

“You’re not even a college student anymore!” 

“Do you even want these shorts anymore?”

“No, but not because society talked me out of it!”

“Yeah! Tell yourself that!”

And that’s just a conversation I have in my head about shorts! That doesn’t even begin to cover big decisions like career moves, marriage, motherhood, etc.

Then I looked up the book The Feminine Mystique and guess what, it’s over 50 years old! I need something a little more updated that can help me navigate the challenges of womanhood.

This lead to the realization that I have no idea what I’m doing (big shock) but that I have skills I paid a lot of money to fine tune in the form of a journalism degree. Therefore I plan on interviewing and researching as much as I can about making the common and not-so-common decisions that ping-pong you back and forth between traditional and feminist values.

After reading an inspirational book by Elizabeth Gilbert (no, it wasn’t Eat, Pray, Love! She’s written other books! Leave me alone) I gathered the courage to jump into this project.

Let’s call it, “The Modern Feminist Project” or “How to be a feminist in modern society” or even “What the fuck does feminism mean to me, I just want a cheeseburger”. The last one is a little long so we can use an acronym (WTFDFMTMIJWAC). Ah, that’s better.

Basically, I am young and scared but ready to answer the big questions in life. But I’d like a little help. I’m needy like that. So here I turn to all the women I know and don’t know for advice.

As a woman, I want to make decisions, not necessarily as a woman, but as an individual. Sometimes I can feel trapped in the borders of feminism when by definition there should be no borders to our equality.

A woman should be allowed to stay at home with her child or work full time based on her decision without being held accountable for traditional or feminism values.

A woman should not have to cover herself nor be shamed for covering herself. She should dress based on her mood in the morning, her religion, the weather, the trend of the day. Whatever way she comes to these decisions they are hers and hers alone.

Let’s reframe the idea of feminism to what it was originally intended for. The freedom to make decisions based on individual needs and wants, not whoever is yelling at us the loudest. 

All that to say, I am hopefully starting a podcast soon. I am trying to interview as many women as people about topics ranging from liking the color pink to rape culture. Anything from the frivolous to the incredibly serious.

Please reach out to me via comments or through the contact form if you would like to participate in the project. You have something valuable to add. It is common to experience some form of imposter syndrome but I guarantee you I find your opinion important. Your experience is of value to all of us.

Be brave and share it publically or contribute anonymously and we’ll come up with a sexy pseudonym like, “Anonymous Anteater” or “Jenna Jingles” or “Tipsy Tina”. Just message me with your mild amount of interest and we’ll determine a way that works best for you to participate in the conversation.

I am only one woman, with one voice, and I want it to get loud in here.

Also, (and this is the most important thing ever) if you have any brilliant ideas on what to call this podcast please leave your suggestion in the comments. Otherwise, it will be WTFDFMTMIJWAC and no one wants that.

I’ll be posting more information soon.