Women routinely have our lives described to us, our identities handed to us in a package topped with a bow that is strangling our sense of self. brassy is a project that seeks to unpack what womanhood means for female identifying folks and empower women to claim our agency and care for our true selves.
brassy was created to be a platform for women to hear each other’s stories, explore our identity as a woman, to reflect on the role of women in society, and celebrate our strength and collective power. brassy is dedicated to the care and keeping of all women, regardless of race, anatomy, sexuality, class, geography, or any other factors used to divide us. However we recognize that the issues one woman faces is an issue for all women to tackle together and believe that women’s work is intersectional work. brassy is a community to create powerful collaboration, support, and celebration.
Together we choose to reject standardization and instead reclaim womanhood, molding it in our own image and defining it individually for ourselves. There are no qualifications, no checklists, no opportunities to get kicked out of the club. brassy is dedicated to the care and keeping of all women.
Brassy women are women who work to live unapologetically. Brassy women try to live boldly in their choices, styles, thoughts, friendships, sexualities, love, and everything in between. We acknowledge the whole self, always allowing for growth and change, embracing womanhood but also leaning into the complexity of our human condition. Finally and most importantly, brassy women embrace other women, embrace self-love and compassion, and work to change the world every day.
Co-opted by various ideologies and movements, "womanhood" has very rarely ever felt empowering. In fact, it often feels isolating—you have to be the right kind of woman, a real woman, a respectable woman, a sexy woman, a career woman, a motherly woman, a pure woman, a responsible woman, a white woman, a nice woman. Very rarely are women invited to be our whole selves and hardly ever are we given a space to explore what that means together. For the purposes of brassy, womanhood is defined as the lived experience of all female-identifying individuals regardless of gender expression, sexuality, race, or societal status or expectations.
My own journey unpacking womanhood in my life started in 2015 with my post-baccalaureate certificate final project at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). I filled an “exhibit catalogue” with illustrations, essays, poems, photography, and mixed media pieces as if they were part of a real exhibition of my life on display. For two years I asked hard questions, recognized truths that were not always kind, and learned self-compassion beyond anything an inspirational quote could provide. Perhaps most importantly, I gave myself a language for talking about my experiences as a woman and as a human being. It is this original project that became the framework for this digital experience. I wanted to empower other women to explore themselves and to create a community ready to support each other through that journey and beyond.
Thanks to the generous support and inspiration of numerous women, brassy includes essays, illustrations, and other powerful narratives from women living out their truths. These voices help create an online space that allows women to explore their own thoughts, find commonalities, and support one another. Want to contribute to this open forum? Contact us with this form!
Want to get updates, have a suggestion for a topic to cover, or just want to say hi? Drop us a note using the form below! If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please check out submission information here.
