“Femme Voices” Spotlight: Birth Worker, Sunny of “Yoniverse Talks”

Posted on March 25, 2019 by The Glam Femme-inist

Sunny is this week’s “Femme Voices” feature! Founder of “Yoniverse Talks”, Sunny is a birth worker who started her business after realizing how poorly women of color are treated when they seek medical treatment and the skyrocketing mortality rate of Black women during childbirth. Sunny offers many services, teachings, and products to help women through their fertility issues, childbirth journies, and even their trauma. Yoniverse Talks is centered around the idea that women of color must rally together to work towards healing and gaining access to safer and better quality healthcare.

Read on for more about Sunny and Yoniverse Talks!

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“Femme Voices” Fashion Spotlight: Designer, Stephanie Raymond and LezBReaL Fashionz

Posted on March 4, 2019 by The Glam Femme-inist

Credit: *D,Irvin Photography

Stephanie Raymond is a designer and founder of LezBReaL Fashionz and the subject of our next “Femme Voices” feature interview. She is a proud Haitian lesbian woman who puts all of her perspectives into her art. Stephanie is a true hustler, constructing custom designs for her clients while finding time to publically amplify her brand by exhibiting her work in fashion shows and representing her designs at events for various causes. She is extremely goal-oriented and gives some amazing advice on how to have faith in yourself and find your creative passions, even when the dream seems far away.

Read Stephanie’s full interview below!

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“Femme Voices” Writer Spotlight: “Finding Community Far from Home,” by Trae Higgs

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Tracey Higgs

I moved to the Big Apple in August 2014, in a long-term relationship and knowing everything about everything. I had graduated from my university just four months prior and I was ready for new experiences far away from the only place I had ever lived, Florida. For much of my life, I had no issues with Florida. I had beaches at my disposal and warm weather 98.5% of the year. Hell, I’m from the place that rappers and singers mention in songs and where every professional athlete vacations: Miami. What’s not to love?

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“Femme Voices” Artist Spotlight: Interview with Visual Artist, Avery Webster-Hobbs

Posted on February 4, 2019 by The Glam Femme-inist

Credit: Andre Cerezo

Avery Webster-Hobbs is our next “Femme Voices” feature interview. This artist uses bold colors to paint pieces that celebrate the feminine form. She focuses on a more natural aesthetic in her portraits, both with the backdrop and the figures that are the center of her “Femme Fuzze” designs. Avery’s art challenges the status quo on what is acceptable for those who possess a femme identity. As someone who values the support of a community, she uses her artistry to partner with small businesses in Brooklyn and encourages other artists to put their work out there as she has done.

Read below to learn more about Avery!

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“Femme Voices” Writer Spotlight: “Brown Femmes Who U-Haul”, by Beatriz Kaye

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Beatriz Kaye

We’ve all been here before: You meet someone. You immediately feel seen, exposed, and vulnerable in ways that you’ve never been before. You question everything you thought you knew about love. You make space for each other’s emotional traumas. You meet each other’s blood and/or chosen families. You book a Caribbean vacation, have incredible sex, and profess your love for each other under the moonlight.

You make the big leap to move in together and even though your partner has a beautifully renovated pre-war apartment with south-facing windows, you decide to sign a brand new lease together for the sake of fresh starts and equal partnership. And one day, when y’all are doing your joint laundry, commiserating about your cycles (which are now synced, by the way), you look at your beloved and think, “Damn, this has been the best four months of my life.”

Thanks to religion, colonization, sexism, systemic racism, and homophobia (honestly, the list could go on), queer couples — especially black + brown queer couples — historically make it their business to secure safe spaces to express themselves and their glorious love for each other. While its history is rooted in solving seemingly basic logistical issues, U-Hauling is a mainstay in queer relationships.

Whether or not your relationship is doomed, I’m rooting for you, sis. I’m only here to wax optimistic, illuminate some truths you’ve been hiding from, and ask all the hard questions. So based largely on my personal experiences and the stories my femme friends are kind enough to share with me, here is a list of four reasons that brown femmes U-Haul:

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“Femme Voices” Artist Spotlight: Interview with Illustrator, Decolonial Killjoy

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Patricia Martin

Nandi (aka @Decolonial_Killjoy) is a very talented and passionate queer artist in Vienna whose art immediately caught my eye on Instagram. When I saw how she seamlessly infuses her creativity with social justice and empowering others, I knew that I had to share her work and her story with The Glam Femme community. Click below for her full interview!

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“Chill out, it was Just a Joke.” – Is America Getting too Sensitive?

Posted on August 15, 2017 by The Glam Femme-inist

I get so annoyed when people complain that America is “getting too sensitive”. What does that even mean? Is it wrong to respect humanity so much that we get upset if anyone commits mental and emotional violence on others with their words and actions? Is it wrong to be concerned that negative ideologies, beliefs, and stereotypes are being reinforced by the media or people who simply like to hear themselves talk?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy fun and “ratchet” music and TV or a (thoughtful) satire or a sarcastic joke as much as the next person but sometimes humor and entertainment value are used as excuses to continue to cast a blind eye on how marginalized groups are treated and viewed in this country. Sadly, the unwillingness to learn about others takes precedence over understanding others’ experiences in order to simply treat people better. And it doesn’t stop at entertainment and social media. There are many offensive things that take place in our everyday lives that have been so accepted that it is hard to convince people of their harmful nature. Things like work and school micro-aggressions, exclusionary practices, and cultural and ethnic erasure and homogenization are just a few ways we have ingrained ignorance into our existence.

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Black TV: “Unrealistic” Black Excellence vs. The “Relatable” Stereotype (Part II – The Black Woman)

Posted on May 31, 2017 by The Glam Femme-inist

Just like the Black family, Black women have had a similar struggle to be represented positively and accurately on TV. It’s important that Black women are not only given more roles but that these roles are accurate and positive, thereby making them for us, not just about us.

But throughout the years, it has seemed like too much to ask to see TV shows that were both about Black women and also made for Black women. Black women have been awkwardly inserted into TV shows as the token on mostly white shows or as incidental characters on shows with Black ensemble casts (e.g. if the star of the show is a Black man, he will most likely have to have a Black girlfriend, wife, mother, etc.) These characters don’t always necessarily speak to our real experiences as Black women and that is usually not the purpose that they were created for.

I believe that for these shows and characters to be not only about us as Black women, but for us, the shows must be created by Black women, or at least feature our writing or direction so that we can have more control over how we are portrayed. Then we can create characters that exemplify attainable #BlackGirlMagic as well as the relatable girl-next-door persona. We don’t need any more characters who represent the gamut of negative stereotypes; from being fetishized to being the best friend with no love life to being the angry Black woman. In addition, it’s important to note that depending on the era, the face of the Black woman and how we want to be portrayed on television changes.

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Black TV: “Unrealistic” Black Excellence vs. The “Relatable” Stereotype (Part I – The Black Family)

Posted on February 8, 2017 by The Glam Femme-inist

Everyone can agree that representation of Black people in the media is a huge issue, but our reactions to the attempts made to be more inclusive vary depending on each of our own experiences. It’s obvious that there is not enough representation of Black people on TV in general, but the other concern is that the representation that we do have is not always positive or accurate. The argument over what positive and accurate representation looks like is an argument that we have been having for decades, especially when it comes to the portrayal of the Black family and the Black woman.

Often the argument comes down to whether we as Black people disagree with the constant barrage of stories with a slave or house servant narrative or whether we are annoyed by stories featuring characters with almost superhuman qualities or “unrealistic” excellence. Do we feel alienated by upper-middle class Black families on TV or do we feel offended by the stereotype of poor Black families on TV?

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Freedom: The Fight isn’t Over

Posted on January 17, 2017 by The Glam Femme-inist

I have been avoiding writing about this topic ever since November 9th. But in a few days, our nightmarish fate will be sealed. People say not to have a defeatist attitude but it’s hard not to.

After the election results surfaced I was devastated, as many of us were. I couldn’t express my feelings in full sentences but the one word that did come to mind was, “Angry.” I tried so hard to make some sense of what had happened by writing. All I could think of to write were these words, “An open wound, salt, never been more woke, beaten and beaten, we are being tested.” I couldn’t get any farther than that incoherent string of words. As I bring my mind back to that day and weed through the foliage of my thoughts, I think this is what I was trying to say:

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