Because women matter, and so do their voices.
For 22 years living as a straight, cis-gendered, white woman in Wisconsin, I experienced varying degrees of pressure to adhere to the dress-code of my employer. At age 16, my first job was as a waitress at a drive-up burger joint. Employees had the choice between a T-shirt or a tank top with the restaurant’s logo. I was encouraged to opt for the tank top because I would “get better tips.” When dressing for professional
Up until the age of nineteen, I navigated the world as a straight tomboy who would not shy away from a dress. Societal influences told me who I should love and how I should dress; and I really came to not only believe it, but also to live in its constrained box. As a young adolescent I witnessed my gay brother struggle with understanding his identity, coming out, and coming to terms with the
Demystified was born a year ago over a couple of glasses of wine. Though we were new-ish friends, we knew immediately that we’d stumbled onto something new and exciting. (Our enthusiastic follow-up emails and texts the next day confirmed it.) But as two extremely busy women, we didn’t think we were quite ready to give the project the energy and time it needed. So the idea kept quietly whispering at us as we carried on
I am a woman who does not want to have children. I describe myself as “childfree,” a concise term that shows I have made an active choice not to reproduce–a choice I feel good about. More and more, women seem to be making this empowering choice not to become mothers despite the constant societal push to reproduce. Some make the choice later in life, after years of weighing the myriad pros and cons of having
