FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER

From the photographer

Every year I invite athletes, and their families and friends, to vote for their favourite image to be the cover of our magazine.

What I love about this year’s chosen portrait (featuring clay target shooter and ballroom dancer Aimee Norris) is that it embodies how girlhood is not limited to one stereotype. Girls can choose to compete in maledominated sports and be described as fierce and bold while also thriving wearing dresses and heels and training in a graceful dance style. Most importantly, they can feel confident about themselves doing both because there is nothing more powerful than being able to stand proud and say, ‘This is who I am.’

One of the strongest memories of my own teenage years is feeling as if I needed to choose between being accepted or being me.

As a girl, I had short hair, a knack for sports, and loved showing my male peers how much stronger I was than them. (You’re looking at the arm wrestling champion of second grade — booyah!)

But my transition to adolescence was abrupt. The qualities I had freely expressed for years suddenly — and I truly mean in a matter of months — were looked down upon.

Between the ages of 13 and 19, I was shamed for looking masculine because of my muscles, but also for being fat when my training stopped. And when I lost the weight, I was slut-shamed.

I went from thinking the best of myself to always being uncomfortable in my own skin, feeling my voice was disregarded, and deeply worrying about not being able to fulfil the dreams I had for myself.

But this was not a capability problem, it was a self-image problem. And it is a problem today’s girls still face.

Self-image is everything. It is the tale we tell ourselves of who we are, what we can achieve, the relationships we can have and the life we can build.

I am running this campaign for a second year in a row to help girls build a strong and positive self-image — based not on the stereotypes that society imposes on them, but on what they love about themselves.

These portraits are not all the same because these girls are not all the same. And with each image, you are going to find a snippet of their experience in this world today. Because there is no one who will understand the complexities of being a young woman today better than young women themselves. This is why I am incredibly pleased to share Issue #2 of the Strong Girls magazine, a project that aims to explore, understand and celebrate girls.