Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

missprint - 6 Oct 17

It wasn’t until I lay on the bed with my ten-year-old daughter one evening, rattling through a list of occupations — doctor, archaeologist, astronaut, painter, explorer, politician, dancer, engineer — that the true scale of the problem really dawned on me.

“Which ones are girls, do you think?” I asked innocently. “The dancer”, she replied with confidence. The rest, she was quite certain, would be men.

Understand, I’ve raised my two daughters to be strong-minded, confident girls who are equal to any boy and who played as readily with trains and Lego as they did with dolls and tea sets.

They had feather boas and frilly skirts in the dressing-up box, but they also spent days running around the house in Spiderman and Batman costumes, brandishing wooden swords in made-up games of derring-do.

At an early age, we taught our strong-willed daughter to tell people who called her out for having a determined sense of herself that she was not bossy, but assertive. Admittedly, she had a little trouble with this at first and blithely told everyone that she wasn’t bossy, she was “a servant”, but she got there in the end.

I work and always have done, as a writer and editor, mostly freelance, juggling kids and school runs and deadlines. I like to think I set a good example of a woman who stands as equal to their father at work and at home.

I’ve read Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Girl. I’ve encouraged my daughter to stand on a chair and declare herself a feminist.

So where was she getting these outdated ideas about a woman’s capabilities? The fact is, kids need to “see it to be it”. And my daughter, despite my best efforts, was at an age when the role models she was presented with were just that: models.

I only had to look at the kids’ section in the newsagents to see that the conditioning started young. Princesses, models, fairies were the role models she was encouraged to emulate. Make-up, gossip and celebrities were the fodder she was expected to aspire to. It made me sad. And then it made me mad.

It was the start of an idea, a glint in my eye that first took hold in my heart and quickly lodged itself in my head: what if there was a magazine for girls that wasn’t about being pretty or perfect or pink, but about being strong and resilient and brave? What if my girls could read a magazine that championed female role models in all walks of life, from science and sports to history and hip hop? A magazine that showed them their value lies in who they are and what they can do, not in how they look.

The more I considered the stereotyped images that my girls were offered, the more determined I was to do something about it. If not now, then when? If not me, then who?

Don’t get me wrong. Starting a magazine is a daunting undertaking and this glimmer of an idea remained no more than that for two whole years. In the interim, life got rocky, my father died. Truth is, I sank pretty low, but the idea persisted.

One particular long-distance phone conversation with an old friend who I have known since we were 13 years old, was the catalyst that finally took the idea from dreaming to doing.

“What I’m thinking,” I mused, “is a kind of feminist magazine for tweens, wouldn’t that be great?” There was a pause that stretched across 10,000 miles. “Let’s do it,” she said.

Putting together KOOKIE, our ‘feminist’ magazine for tweens, has brought me rewards far beyond anything I could have imagined.

It’s reconnected me with one of my oldest and dearest friends and it’s reminded me that when things go south, you can always rely on your girlfriends.

It’s introduced me to talented women around the world who are doing amazing work and pushing boundaries every single day, and it’s given me a chance to shine a spotlight on their achievements.

It’s allowed me to create a platform for tween-age girls to express themselves — as writers, photographers and illustrators — in the pages of the magazine.

But most of all, it’s given me the chance to show my own daughters that if you do something you love — and you persist — that is its own reward. (And we all need a little help from our friends.)

KOOKIE magazine is a quarterly print magazine for girls that celebrates ALL a girl can be. Find us on Kickstarter where we are building subscribers, sharing awesome rewards and building a community of SMART KOOKIES, one girl at a time. 

missprint

I’m a parent, editor and co-founder of KOOKIE magazine, a new kind of print magazine for pre-teen girls. Every issue of KOOKIE is packed with content that builds a girl’s confidence, teaches her skills and expands her horizon. Featuring interviews with inspiring women and girls from around the world, profiles of history’s pioneering women, plus lively stories about science and art, nature and technology, community, sport, history and so much more, KOOKIE is surprising, informative and fun. In every issue, we invite our readers to contribute, making KOOKIE a forum for girls’ voices to be heard as writers, artists, photographers and collaborators in a keepsake magazine that tweens will treasure. www.kookiemagazine.com

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