THE MODERN SUFFRAGETTES
TAVI GEVINSON
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Founded in 2011, her online magazine Rookie ushered in a new era of female focused sites with a difference, ones that were smart and encouraging of girls thinking differently; and instead of following the media status quo, celebrated young girls being themselves. It had a knock-on effect, five years on we are saturated by Instagram collectives and hand-stapled zines that challenge what it means to be young and female. Tavi comments, “I’m thrilled that more and more people feel confident to self-publish and find their community! Rookie can’t be everything for everyone, but if it encourages someone to start something new, that’s what I wanted all along.”
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Adwoa Adboah
The 24-year-old model and actress has struggled through the darkest and toughest days of her life in the past two years, battling depression and addiction - an almost lethal combination which climaxed at the end of 2014, with a suicide attempt. It is her personal turmoil and experience from which her unique point of view is born, alongside her determination to create a safe space for girls to voice their issues. Out of her battle comes triumph in the form of ‘Gurls Talk’. “Gurls Talk is for every girl who’s growing up and needs someone to talk to,” states Adwoa. It is a movement that strives to create a platform where girls can openly share their experiences and feelings in a safe and trusting environment.
After only beginning in 2016, the success of GT has snowballed - their Instagram page has upwards of 62 thousand followers and continues to rise as the word spreads, and the movement has just held its first gathering of supporters. Hosting performances from Lykke Li, the event of late 2016 heard speeches from both Adwoa herself and others to an intimate but rapt audience. Images and footage from the event were shared with followers on the Gurls Talk site.
Despite gaining increasingly open support recently, the topic of mental health is still somewhat a taboo subject, and one that requires just as much attention as physical health, which it seldom receives. “I had no idea what depression was, I had only seen it in films. I had no idea what addiction was - I thought it was someone lying in the street with a needle in their arm - but there are so many definitions of both,” Adwoa explains. In terms of statistics, women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders in comparison to men, meaning support for females is imperative. After attending a support meeting compromised solely of female addicts, Adwoa herself reaped the benefits of honest female-to-female conversation. “All these women were sharing the most intimate details of their lives…From their relationships with their husbands, to their exhaustion with their children, their sex lives… All the things one might feel too ashamed to talk about in front of men, or even in front of each other. But there was no competition, no judgment, no shame,” she said. “I suddenly realised that I wasn’t on my own,” she reveals, “it made me think how beneficial it would be to just get
girls talking.”
She believes she will achieve her goal through utilising relatable and inspiring female role models. “My goal with Gurls Talk is to give girls the chance to spend time with women they relate to - artists, writers, CEOs - women who inspire them and who can introduce them to new worlds and new professions after school,” she stated.
“As a society we need to concentrate more on the emotional stuff,” she says. “Why is that not as important as the academic? We must learn to talk, share and be honest about how we are feeling, because it’s only when we share our innermost thoughts and feelings that we regain our power.”
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lina esco
A passionate anarchist, founder of the Free the Nipple movement, Lina Esco, has never been one to bow down to authority. Running away from her strict Catholic home for Europe at the tender age of 15, before becoming involved with The Cove, the 2009 documentary about dolphin hunting in Japan; Lina found a passion for defying social, and political, boundaries. During adolescence, her attention soon turned to gender inequality as she experienced its sting first hand, as every woman undoubtably does. This set the wheels in motion for Free the Nipple.
Free the Nipple is a movement founded on the fierce opposition to the legal and social inequality of men and women, finding its ground in targeting the criminalisation of women’s nipples in America. Currently illegal in 35 states, a woman can be arrested for going topless, regardless of circumstance or weather temperature, the exposure of nipples even in carrying out their purpose, their most natural use - breastfeeding - is punishable by law.
Unsurprisingly incensed, Lina set out to make a film to launch a movement. Free the Nipple follows a group of young women who take to the streets of New York City topless, to protest the archaic censorship laws in the United States. Activist Liv and With set out to start a movement and change the system through publicity stunts and graffiti installations while armed with First Amendment lawyers. The film explores the contradictions in our media-dominated society, where acts of violence and killing are glorified, while images of a woman’s body are censored by the FCC and the MPAA.
What was originally intended to be just a film has now spawned into a fully fledged social media movement. The process was set in motion when Lina contacted friend Miley Cyrus, who tweeted the now commonplace #FreeTheNipple, and it went viral. The movement has since been endorsed by many high-profile figures including Cara Delevingne and Lena Dunham, and inspired many protests. The subsequent social media explosion actually superseded the film in galvanising women, with Instagram alone boasting over 3 million #FreeTheNipple hits.
But Lina isn’t about to stop at winning over the Internet; she wants to conquer the final, and most important, hurdle by taking the battle to Congress. “All of this has been leading up to one thing,” she says, excitedly, “and that’s going to be to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in America. Not many people know this, but America doesn’t have it in its constitution that men and women are equal. I’ve already aligned myself with some very powerful women in DC, I’m shooting a docu-series about it, and I’ve teamed up with change.org to create a petition. It will solve everything from breastfeeding in public to making sure you get paid as much as your male co-workers.”
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Watch the video below which follows Adwoa Adboah as she meets Lina to explore the #FreeTheNipple movement
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PETRA COLLINS
“My main thing is to create images that aren’t being seen,” said photographer Petra Collins, discussing her decision to depict female body hair and menstruation in her images. As part of Style Like U’s ‘What’s Underneath’ series, she discussed how she came to the decision to stop shaving her body hair and her struggles growing up with her own self-confidence and experiences of gender inequality (below). As an artist, and feminist frustrated with the overwhelming onslaught of sexualised images of females out there, she is driven to photograph from the female gaze - showing the beautiful reality of women’s bodies in place of the sexualised, false images we are so accustomed to seeing. Her attitude is very sorry-not-sorry when it comes to the images she produces - we’re just sorry she wasn’t around sooner to help further the feminist conversation.
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Who would you class as ‘the modern suffragettes’?
REBECCA: ​"Oh gosh! Can I say the ‘ordinary’ woman? The women ALL around us that are making choices every minute of every day based on what they want."
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NUALA: "Activists of today like the people who run ‘Free the Nipple’, ‘The Homeless Period’ (I’m involved in the Belfast branch of this!), and the ‘Everyday Sexism’ campaign. People who are shouting about tampon tax, abortion rights, genital mutilation, the gender pay gap, sexual harassment…the list goes on. "
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ANNA:​ "Just any girl, or boy, who continues to fight for gender equality. Girls that don’t back down. My advice for young women in the music industry would be to not take control of your art just because it’s ‘a boy’s job’. Just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you just have to look pretty and sing. Don’t let people put you into a category."
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This article was written for FEMMEHOOD magazine, view the full publication here​