By: Jemma Dooreleyers
While I was chatting to my father about my career prospects and who I want to be when I grow up, my dad asked a very interesting question that, really, weirdly enough I had never thought about.
“Well Jemma, what do YOU like to write about?”
I kind of skirted around the question and answered something along the lines of “I don’t know… all I know is I don’t want to be writing hard news.” But that question continued to bother me.
Since the beginning of journalism school, professors and guest speakers have been emphasizing the importance and impact, of developing your own brand early and how it affects the rest of your career as a journalist. Make sure your work is recognizable as your own, find your own style and you are good to go. Needless to say this scared the shit out of me and like the panicky over achiever I am, I started forcing myself to absorb as much media as I possibly could. I needed to see what journalism I identified most with in order to begin my journey of finding my own brand, otherwise I would fall into an existential crisis.
Honestly, I would love to say that the stuff I identified most with was the foreign correspondence stuff that one can see on Al Jazeera and AJ+, because let’s be real, a life full of adventure and travel and unveiling the truth of corrupt governments and wars would be a very rewarding one indeed. And one that would be very fun to brag about in old age. But, one has to be very brave to do that and I just cannot see myself coping well being surrounded with suffering children and people (I feel too deeply to find that bearable and something I could live through without being traumatized for the rest of my days).
That branded content that Buzzfeed and places like that do seem like a lot of fun, but also something that feels very inauthentic to me, which would be unfulfilling. And I’m sorry but the more local, hard news I read- and write for that matter- the less I want to do it (if you are someone who works for the Toronto Star, looking at my portfolio, about to offer me a job, please ignore that last statement. It was a joke… haha.) After absorbing all of this and still not finding where I would like to fit myself in, I was beginning to lose hope. I started questioning my credibility as journalism student and whether or not I would be able to make a career for myself after this degree.
That was until, I started following the Refinery 29 Snapchat story.
I can’t say that all the articles that were on the Snapchat story were what inspired me but they are really what opened the door to my feminist media consumption. That is when I started finding more and more publications. Strong Opinions Loosely Held and Unstyled, feminist podcasts by Refinery 29, articles from We are Sophomore such as “I am Telling You Stories”, a thesis by Elizabeth Polanco, the whole Teen Vogue issue on Hillary Clinton, and Easy Period to name a few. Even video series such as “Try Living With Lucie” and “LadyLike”, I was finding inspiration.
Suddenly, everywhere I looked, upper year girls that I had looked up to since Frosh Week were sharing their feminist publications and the beginnings of their feminist columns.
Needless to say, I was inspired, enthralled and finally had found something I identified with. These stories were explaining how women were loving themselves, how and why we should love our sisters and become the best feminists we can be, which was really very helpful and beautiful during everything that is the #MeToo Movement. However, when it came down to it and down to how I was trying to write it, I became intimidated.
The more feminist media I tried to write, the more I started to feel inadequate and under experienced. I know and have faith in these publications and I know deep down in my heart that they did not intend for me to feel this way. However, the women that were writing for these publications and women that were being interviewed had been through real things and they had done real stuff. They were isolated, sexually assaulted, had abortions, discriminated against for their body, their race, their class, their gender and just about everything else. They were educated. They were entrepreneurs, fashion designers, travellers, writers and politicians. As I read these pieces, it was hard not to think to myself: “who the heck am I?” “Where the heck have I been?” “what the heck have I done?” but most prominently “what the heck am I supposed to write about and do I deserve to write about it?”
I am a white, middle class, 18-year-old girl in a stable, supportive relationship, and parents who were smart and able enough to save for my expensive education. I have never experienced a life-threatening illness, discrimination because of my race or class and only the average amount of money anxiety and sexual harassment. I have never done anything extraordinary and I have not made a name for myself in anything. Ever. Other girls deserve to tell these stories much more than I do. I should not be paid for monetizing something that I have never been unlucky enough to experience first hand. A white girl can not be nearly as authentic as anyone else and I feel like any struggle I have experienced is not nearly as important or profound as things other people have experienced.
But when it really comes down to it, I must remember that I am only 18 years old and have only just finished my first semester of journalism school. I do not need to be changing the world with every word I write and I certainly do not need to know exactly who I am at the moment. However, it is my duty and the duty of other women and feminists to pay attention to what isn’t being said so that if there is a voice that is not being heard and something that is not being taught, I have the honour and the obligation to write about it. And all I can hope for is that people will read it.