My favourite poem by Maya Angelou, makes me feel strong and proud to be a woman. Be you tall or short, thin or well built, blonde or brunette, black or white, believe in yourself and who you are and be a phenomenal woman. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies; I’m not cute or built [...]
Do you sometimes feel that it’s just you out there, a team of one trying hard to achieve all you wish to do, and oh, if only you could get a little help? Sometimes we get so stressed that we don’t see the support we’re actually getting from those who are already part of our [...]
It’s a rare thing to come across Paula Hemmings, a British photographer who happens to be a black woman. According to stereotypes, black British women don’t do photography. And that’s a function of stereotypes; they iron out complexity by simplifying yet distorting our expectations of certain groups, so that when we meet someone who defies [...]
Are you striving for something you really, really want – promotion, your own business, weight loss, quitting smoking? How’s it going? Are you dancing around with joy at your progress, your glittering prize clearly in sight? Or are you feeling dejected and as worn out as a pair of holey tights, stressed by the effort, [...]
What do you think ‘colour coaching’ means? A multi-coloured bus speeding up the motorway? A one-to-one on the delights of the rainbow? Or coaching on your skin colour? Well, it’s none of these. Colour coaching is simply a way of assessing you for your best colours – those that emphasise the beauty in your appearance, [...]
When Arabella Weir’s Insecure Woman character in the ‘Fast Show’ said her ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ catchphrase it worked because it was a meaningful trope which many women ask themselves. It’s that nagging daily background music orchestrated by a misogynistic media continually propelling the ‘perfect’ woman as a flawless beauty in a [...]
Have you ever wanted a ‘wow picture!’ of yourself looking more than your very best? Winifred Whitfield, USA based award winning digital photo artist, offers this distinctive service. Specialising in the creation of personal art, she captures the unique inner and outer beauty of her female subjects regardless of their age, size or shape – [...]
That’s the trouble with male dominance -it creates a mindset. Take the conventional response to ‘name some great artists’, – out come Picasso, Da Vinci, Hockney, Michelangelo, Van Gogh etc. Why are we so hard pushed to think of women artists beyond say Frida Kahlo or Tracey Emin? Why aren’t there more women artists as [...]
Experiencing racial abuse at the age of 8, from a teacher you should be able to trust, might send any child off the rails. And seeing your mother publicly reduced to tears by her inability to get justice for you, the abused daughter, might paralyse you with rage. But not Cordell Pillay! This painful experience [...]
Have you ever met a woman who’s driven to succeed, with her eyes clearly on her vision and her goals? Who makes a business out of what most businesses need but hate doing – cold-calling? Well, that’s Joanne Gordon, founder and managing director of ‘Elite Telesales’. Brought up in the Midlands, Joanne quit the [...]