This Magazine Wants Both Girls AND Boys To Be Inspired By Badass Female Role Models

We’re all about promoting media, literature and various creative projects and campaigns that seek to increase the visibility of female role models to help inspire the younger generation of women to know what they can aspire to in life. It’s one thing to empower half the population, but it’s also just as important to immerse young men with images and stories about badass women who are and have been changing the world.

That is exactly what a new magazine aims to do. Bravery Magazine is the brainchild of two friends and mothers Ashley Aikele and Elyse Beard, born from a frustration at the lack of kid-friendly and interesting tools to help them teach their kids about bravery and strong female role models. Rather than waiting around for a solution, they decided to create one for themselves, as well as for other kids to know they can “be their own kind of brave”.

They launched a Kickstarter campaign, aiming to raise $27,000 in order to print their first issue to deliver to backers and subscribers by October 2017. Within 3 days of launching their page, they had already reached their goal, and by the time the 30 days of the campaign ended, they had raised over $46,000! Clearly this project struck a chord with backers who are eager to see more media like this for girls and boys.

“As parents living in a society of princess culture and male-dominated children’s books, we were frustrated by the lack of resources available to teach our children about brave, smart women who did hard things. We wanted to provide other options for our kids besides princess dresses and fairy wands. We wanted to introduce them to strong female role models—REAL women who have done real, brave things,” said the creators about their mission for Bravery.

Aimed primarily at ages 4-9, they say that anyone can enjoy and be inspired by the content they plan to create, which will include illustrations and stories of women and their work, DIY activities for parents and children to do together, educational activities for all ages, and a parent section that includes essays, artwork, and a little bit of humor. Ashley and Elyse hope the content found in Bravery Mag will spark meaningful conversations about what it means to be brave.

The creators emphasized the need to immerse boys, as well as girls, with stories and images of pioneer, trailblazing women as they grow up, the same way girls by default are already raised learning about important male figures throughout history.

“We have specifically designed the magazine with girls and boys in mind. We believe that it’s important for girls to learn from experiences of inspiring women, but we also know it’s equally important for boys to learn from the experiences of inspiring women too. Bravery features strong female role models that both your boys and girls can look up to, learn from, and emulate as they navigate childhood and learn how be their own kind of brave,” says the campaign.

The images on the Kickstarter campaign show illustrations of Jane Goodall, the British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist whose pioneer work with chimpanzees have inspired generations of scientists. Aside from the magazine, Bravery is designed to be movement highlighting many different women in a variety of fields and backgrounds so our children can see real, brave women doing real, brave things.

“We know that introducing strong role models to our boys and girls will empower them to do brave things,” said the description.

As Huffington Post contributor Meg Conley writes in her article about Bravery Mag, the impact of raising girls and boys to know about role models of all genders is already noticeable.

A few weeks ago, my daughters and I were looking for a movie to stream for a bunch of little girls and boys at our house. We’d been scrolling for about ten minutes when my eight year old got that look on her face, you know the one kids get when they’ve stumbled into some truth that shifts.

“Mom, it’s like the boy movies are for boys and girls but the girl movies are just for girls, you know?”

We talked about it for a long time. We covered all the familiar ground – there’s no such thing as a girl movie or a boy movie, stories are just stories, boys love stories featuring girls as much as stories featuring boys. You know, the works. But at the end of the conversation I couldn’t help feeling like what she’d said, ultimately, was right.

There is a plethora of female empowerment content and messages available in the world today (about time!) whether it be in advertising, film, or fashion. But to really see gender equality become a reality, the movement must include everyone. Sexist attitudes being dismantled means creating allies and cultivating a general understanding of the importance of giving voice and visibility to women.

“The cultural idea that stories of women are only interesting to girls is wrong, and we want to change that. We expect girls to learn from stories and experiences of men, but for some reason, our society doesn’t think it’s valuable for boys to learn from stories and experiences of women. We disagree with this cultural norm, so we made it a point to make Bravery magazine geared towards girls and boys,” Elyse told Meg.

If this sounds like the kind of publication you want to have in your child’s life, be sure to follow Bravery Magazine on Facebook. Take a look through what’s inside issue one in the video below:


 

 

 

 

 

One thought on “This Magazine Wants Both Girls AND Boys To Be Inspired By Badass Female Role Models

  1. Thank you so much for the awesome article! It was so thorough and kind. Loved stumbling on it today, and love what you’re doing. Thanks again

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