Jan/Feb 2020

#themeeyesee Self-Awareness for 2019 and Beyond

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ers magazine wants to remind women: “What you think of yourself is more important than what others think of you.” using #themeeyesee hashtag to promote greater self-awareness, the magazine wants women to begin to visualize, declare and pursue the person they can rightfully become.

We believe that the way we see ourselves propels us on the path to who we will ultimately become, driving our thoughts, actions, habits, and lifestyles. Thus, declaring an intention of our ideal selves can motivate us to achieve our goals.

Ask Yourself: Am I living up to my core values and personal mission?

Am I being a person others can respect?

Am I respecting my body the way I should?

#themeeyesee is a movement with the purpose of encouraging and challenging women to become the people they want to be in the new year and beyond. This is not a New Year’s resolution, but a public pact and declaration.

We will feature the posts on the Hers magazine website, #themeeyesee website and Hers magazine social media platforms: www.themeeyesee.com www.facebook.com/hersmagazine www.twitter.com/hersmagazine www.instagram.com/HersMagazine www.google.com/+HersMagazineOnline

Am I meeting the expectations I set for others?

Am I using my talents fully?

Am I performing at my peak capacity?

Am I giving my family and friends my most and my best?

Am I engaging in worthy activity?

Am I making a positive impact on the world?

Am I on the path to my preferred future?

Readers and others should post a short video or a selfie online with the hashtag to declare their unique vision for the future. They should then also challenge 5-7 friends in the post to make their own #themeeyesee declaration and agree to be accountability partners for 2016 to ensure their success.

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Volume 6, Issue 5 Editor-in-Chief, Annette Johnson Managing/Online Editor, Gabby Dance Associate Editor, Grace Kelley Fashion Editor, Courtney A. Hammonds Creative Director, Michelle Lynch Senior Editor, Brittany Maher Social Media Manager, Katiee McKinstry Design Director, Joey Shepard Layout Artist, Kiryl Lysenka Sales Associate, Alexus Smith Sales Associate, Lina Papatsie Staff Writers: Njeri Dean Len Knitter Melissa Lawrence Elle Stovall Piera Van de Wiel Wendy Phan Contributors: Lisa Collum Alexa Curtis Merliee Kern Jennifer Marcenelle Autumn Morris Emilia Tavena Madison Ogletree

Customer Service For subscription service or change of address, including email, contact editorial@hers-magazine.come or write to: P.O. Box 1071 Atlanta, GA 30301 Hers (ISSN 2372-3785) is published six times per year by Allwrite Communications, 3300 Buckeye Road, Suite 264, Atlanta, GA 30341 770-284-8983

CONTENTS

January/February 82

F E AT U R E S 20 Documenting the Future

Makeup that Multi-Tasks

“Sharknado” star ignites change through film

36 A Healthy Dose of Reality

“Pretty Wild” star Alexis Haines shares struggles with addiction

75 Kiss Me Through the Phone 36 Questions that Might Turn Your Tinder Date into the Love of Your Life

The Women Powered Brand Simplifying the Way We Approach Beauty

12 Mimi G Makes Style Her Business

The style influencer has created and empire with her threads

10 Size Inclusivity

Brands that are doing it right

22 Elli

Paris Haute Couture Line Dares to be Different.

26 Maria Aristidou

Greek and Cypriot Fashion Designer’s Elegant and Luxurious Winter Collection

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‘This is Us’ Series’ Newest Star How fleeing war led Bahara Golestani to her dream role

19 Feminist Isn’t Just Femme

Why We Need Male Allies to Reach Gender Equality

48 Forgotten Pets

This Shelter Houses Animals of Domestic Violence Victims

72 Comfort v. Destiny

How to Reach Your Definition of Success

40 Film Fatales

Director Works Against Pay Disparity in the Industry

42 Broadway Review: Slave Play

A History Lesson and National Therapy Session

46 The Female Gaze

Women-Directed Movies We Loved This Decade

16 Miss Universe Zozibini Tunzi The South African winner has become a voice against genderbased violence

56 The Vintage Vixens

It’s Never too Late to Start a Female Rock Band

60 The Decade in Music 45 Should You Work Out Like a Model?

This YouTuber Tests Out Celebrity Fitness Routines So You Don’t Have To

63 New Year, No Meat

How to Stick to Your New Vegan Lifestyle

66 Feeling Post-Holiday Burnout?

How to Rejuvenate Your Health in the New Year

76 Reach Your Goals

3 Steps to Manifest Anything You Want this Year

78 Tapping Into the Subconscious

This Psychic Uses Her Power for Good hers-magazine.com

Our Playlist of the Best Songs by Women from the 2010s.

67 Book Review: Grabbing Lightning The Messy Quest for an Extraordinary Love

68 Cinema’s Best Role Models

5 Female Characters Who Inspired Us This Decade

70 Music with a Message

Syleena Johnson Navigates the Ups and Downs of the Music Industry

81 Book Review: Being Mostly Cat

This Illustrated Book Will Help You Cope With Anxiety

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8 ISSUES FOR

JUST $12.99

F E AT U R E S • H E A R T • F L AV O R • H E A LT H L E S S O N S • WO R K • P L AY W W W. H E R S - M A G A Z I N E . C O M

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Editor’s Letter

appy new year, ladies!

We come into a new year with 2020 vision — cliché already — hoping for and expecting new or better outcomes.

On the cover, we highlight the recent win of Miss Universe, who was quite unconventional in her approach at competing in a beauty pageant, refusing to wear a wig to cover her short natural hair. Without having long, cascading hair (real or faux), fair skin, and simple name, Zozibini Tunzi emerged as the winner from amongst 100 countries throughout the world. Her historic win has given hope to unconventional women in other career fields and industries around the world that anything can be achieved once there is faith and excellence.

As we look to those women we have featured in this issue, you may notice a pattern. Each of them had rough starts

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from addiction (Alexis Haines) to homelessness (Mimi G), but they overcame these obstacles through perseverance.

If there is a word I would champion for you, our readers, in 2020, it would, in fact, be “perseverance.” This word encompasses most every element one needs to be successful: an unshakable willingness to pursue a passion no matter how severe the situation.

Similarly, let’s start the year off with a declaration of our vision for the future (career, family, leisure, etc.) and decision to persevere in order to achieve these goals. That’s why Hers promotes #TheMeEyeSee every January, just so you can develop and make your a public declaration about the future you imagine for yourself. Check out the promo video on our YouTube channel or Facebook page.

While you’re at it, make sure to join our Facebook group called HustleHers. We will post exclusive content there along

with daily topics and opportunities to promote your successes and even your business.

While we look to the future, we also celebrate and commemorate the past, specifically 2019. In this regard, we have highlighted some of the best from the decade, including Best Songs by Women, Film Characters Who Inspired Us, and Women-Directed Movies. Take a look at our selections and tell us if you agree or not. Maybe there is someone noteworthy we overlooked, tell us that too. Either way, remember to read the issue for inspiration and information, and then share it!

Enjoy,

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+ CONTRIBUTORS

A L E X A CU RT I S Alexa Curtis is a non-profit founder, Disney Radio alum and entrepreneur who works to combat mental health stigmas. She began her career at just 12 years old when she started a fashion blog — a direct result of rebuilding her confidence after being bullied. Her podcast “This Is Life Unfiltered with Alexa Curtis” gained a tremendous amount of attention, which then launched a radio show on Radio Disney. The show was the first of its kind for Radio Disney as Alexa tackled important topics like mental health and bullying.

MERILEE KERN As the executive editor and producer of “The Luxe List,” Merilee Kern is an internationally regarded consumer product trends expert and hospitality industry voice of authority. She is a travel, dining, leisure and lifestyle expert who spotlights marketplace innovations, change-makers, movers and shakers. She reports on travel destinations and experiences, special events and newsworthy products and services across all categories.

AU T U M N M O R R I S Autumn Morris is a sex educator, the founder of intimacy education company Speaking of Sex and a sex education ambassador for Sweet Vibrations. Through her work, she seeks to disrupt stigma and create a safe space for all to learn about sexuality for happier, healthier, juicier connections

J E N N I F E R M A RC E N E L L E Jennifer Marcenelle MBA, BSN, RN, HNBBC is a Board-Certified Holistic Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience in the medical industry. She currently holds degrees in nursing and business, with a specialization in Holistic Healing for burnout. As an energy medicine practitioner and the Founder and CEO of Burn Bright Today, she helps people improve mental wellness and recover from burnout and other challenges. A

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E M I L I A TA N EVA Emilia Taneva is a Board-Certified Orthodontist, creative photographer, travel blogger, and digital influencer. She is ranked as one of the top influencers in North America, with a focus on travel, fashion, and lifestyle. Taneva was born in the medieval city of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, where civilizations and cultures have collided throughout its history. At a young age, she was captivated by history and tour books and would daydream about seeing the world one day. Today, Taneva runs the popular travel blog, Bubbly Moments. The Bubbly Moments is focused on the world’s most luxurious destinations and exclusive places.

L I SA CO L LU M Lisa Collum is the founder of the “Top Score Writing Curriculum,” which is used in schools nation-wide. Collum began her teaching career at one of the lowest performing Title I schools in Florida. When she realized that there wasn’t a writing curriculum in place, she went into action and created one herself. And in just two years, her students went from less than 50 percent reading and writing proficiency to 100 percent. She travels to many cities to check in on how the students using her curriculum are progressing, and she is always on the lookout for educational vacation experiences for her children as a working mom of four.

M A D I SO N O G L E T R E E Madison Ogletree is a history Ph.D. student at Columbia University in New York City. In her research, she examines race and identity in the 19th century American South with a specific focus on people of mixed ancestry. Her work foregrounds the intersection of black, white and Native American communities in the Southern Black Belt region through a legal perspective. Born and raised in small-town Alabama, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature at Auburn University. During her time at Auburn, she worked as photo editor for The Auburn Plainsman and as a freelance photojournalist for AL.com covering sports as well as local and national news.

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SUBMISSIONS www.hers-magazine.com submissions@hers-magazine.com

Five Size-Inclusive Brands that

Love Us Back

BY BRITTANY MAHER

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he problem with fashion as a plus-size shopper is that no matter how much you love fashion; fashion doesn’t always love you back.

It’s a truth plus-size shoppers have come to know all too well. For decades, the world of fashion has systematically turned its head away from people with larger bodies. When it comes to size availability, fashion is often exclusionary.

Plus-size fashion blogger Sydney Grace Scott of @ohhhhhhhhhoney, which she describes as “an honest, imperfect journey towards radical self-love and a more sustainable closet,” hones in on the frustrations of navigating the world of plus-size fashion, its high points and its roadblocks.

Scott is our plus-size fashion spirit guide as she takes us through her journey of finding her favorite sustainable and size-inclusive brands. “The thing that frustrates me the most is the idea that fashion is there to change you or that there is this idea that clothing can change you into a different person,” Scott said.

Scott’s journey to finding herself in her style didn’t

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happen overnight. It’s been a dedicated process of carefully combing through the limited world of plus-size clothing. “I spent so much of high school and into my freshman year of college just kind of falling into this habit that I think a lot of young girls, especially plus-size girls, are susceptible to, which is you kind of just buy whatever fits,” she said.

Her closet became a mixed bag of multiple identities as she hunted down pieces of clothing in her size — at times it was difficult to curate the style she was going for. Scott made the decision to be proactive in her pursuit of finding more clothing options, so she assessed the pieces she wore most often then took to social media for inspiration. “I decided that I was going to make an effort to follow more women on Instagram who I identified [with] their bodies,” Scott said.

“I think there’s something special about following someone who you can identify with — your size, your shape, what they look like and how clothes fit on them.”

It wasn’t until she started following other plus-size fashion bloggers on Instagram that it all started to come together for her. “Following different women who I identified with hers-magazine.com

more was like, okay, well, this helps me so much,” Scott said.

Scott isn’t just passionate about seeking out stylish size inclusive clothing, she’s heavily focused on promoting sustainable clothing and ethical fashion that is more accessible to everyone. “I think that it is very important and vital for the fashion industry to look to plus-size bodies, to look to women of color, to look for more marginalized voices to say ‘this is what we need.’”

For Scott, these are the brands that get it right when it comes to sustainable size inclusivity: Alice Alexander “Mary Alice, from Alice Alexander, had a question that she tackled a while back that was: ‘what is the difference between an extended size range and a true plus-size range?”

Scott said. “A true plus-size line has been created with fit models that have that body type that are actually plus-size models.

“I think that that makes a huge difference and how the clothes fit and how they feel, you know?” Scott said. “That is for me the difference between putting on a pair of jeans and putting on a pair of jeans and being like ‘wow’”

unique sizing system,” Scott said. “She has a lot of integrity in the imagery in the marketing. You know, showing the consumer ‘this is what you’re getting.’”

The Perennial Closet “A smaller brand I really love is The Perennial Closet, which launched this year.” Scott said.

Madewell “I appreciate that Madewell has a pretty accessible price point and maintains quality in their clothes,” Scott said.

“They tend to steer away from trends, meaning that I get really great life out of the pieces I buy from them. Their plus sizes aren’t just a couple pieces thrown at the plus-sized crowd in order to appease us, and I think that’s shown in their attempts to diversify the offerings they have for larger sizes in the past couple of years.”

“As far as their jeans go: I like Madewell’s jeans because they have so many different washes and styles! Scott said. “My favorite jeans are the Curvy Cali cropped Bootcut jeans — I’ve been hard pressed to find other jeans in a size 18/20 that fit as well as those.”

Universal Standard “Universal Standard is one that’s really great with having models in all of the sizes that they carry displayed on the website,” Scott said. “And I also appreciate them because sustainably sourced, ethically made, but at pretty accessible price points.”

Sotella

Sydney Grace Scott’s shopping tips: 1. Don’t settle for things that don’t make you feel good.

2. Follow fashionable women with a similar body type as yours on social media to get style inspiration.

3. Open a dialogue with women wearing the clothes you want to wear, ask them about details and you’ll be surprised at the wealth of helpful responses.

“She just expanded her sizing last spring, she has a kind of a hers-magazine.com

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CHANGING THE WORLD THROUGH SEWING HOW MIMI G WENT FROM BEING HOMELESS TO OWNING A MILLIONDOLLAR SEWING BUSINESS

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KATIEE MCKINSTRY

ome people like chocolate and other sweet treats as a means to find comfort. Mimi G Ford’s respite is sewing. However, the founder of the online fashion design school Sew It Academy and the popular fashion blog MimiGStyle discovered this comfort while living in discomfort.

As a homeless teenager with a young daughter, Mimi Goodwin, her birth name, pursued her passion for sewing and creating her own clothes. “I was stressed out, working all the time, trying to make ends meet… Sewing became my getaway,” Mimi G said. “I started blogging because I was bored. I liked making something I can wear, and I started following other sewing blogs.”

After following other sewing bloggers, she realized that there was a market for people wanting to learn how to sew.

From there, she created her own sewing blog and grew into videos from there.

“I [didn’t] want to sew things for other people,” Mimi G said. “‘Make your own skirt!’ she thought. ‘I’ll teach you, but you do the work.’”

However, when she first started her blogging journey, she faced a lot of scrutiny from her friends and family, who were 12

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less than supportive. Her mother thought she was crazy to give up on her day job for her blog.

At first, she listened to the opinions of her loved ones.

“There was a sense of safety knowing that someone else was giving me a paycheck every two weeks. It limited my thinking,” Mimi G said.

Her empire began to build, and others were taking notice.

That’s when she started working with Simplicity on a huge collaboration. The company loved working with her so much that they kept having her back to work on new patterns each season.

She was working in film and production, trying desperately to make enough money to raise her child and provide for herself.

“I think part of the success of working with Simplicity is that no one looked like me. There weren’t any people of color, they were all models,” Mimi G said. “It’s important if you’re a young girl to be able to look at yourself and see yourself in what you want to do.”

Mimi G’s career skyrocketed through social media. She has millions of followers across her social channels, and her blog and YouTube content are thriving. The blog she created on a hers-magazine.com

Mimi spends time recording segments for her online fashion design school, Sew It Academy.

whim morphed into a million-dollar business.

However, being in the spotlight has never been her priority. Mimi G believes in privacy, but also in acknowledging this is the life she signed up for. While her empire was building, Mimi G also went through a divorce.

“I don’t post about the divorce on social media, because my kids don’t need to see all that. They’re young,” Mimi G said.

“Social media is what it is. If you want to do what I do, follow my blueprint.”

Social media is always changing and adapting new things, which can make a career in it more difficult than most realize.

She says that staying on top of social media trends and being open to change is one of the hardest things she’s overcome in her business.

“The hardest thing about running a business is staying ahead,” Mimi G said. “Once you become the face of a community, you have to stay ahead.” Social media puts pressure on her to continue elevating to help people who are starting to do what she does. Some things she tried didn’t work and she hated doing it. “It’s not always easy, I need people to understand that.”

One thing that helps Mimi G in her business every day is hers-magazine.com

her business partner, her husband. They live and work together and could not be happier. Her husband, North, started as her friend helping her film her YouTube videos, and soon became just as passionate as her about sewing.

“All our friends think we’re crazy,” Mimi G said. “What makes us able to do that is that we’re friends,” Mimi G said.

“That makes the difference. I can do anything with him.”

So, what’s next for Mimi G? When asked what trends she will be looking out for in 2020 Mimi G said, “I don’t give a hoot about trends. I’ve never been into following them, because you just buy them for whatever reason. I wear what makes me comfortable. Wear what it is that makes you happy. Who cares what anybody else thinks? Create things that make you feel good.”

For 2020, Mimi G and North will be releasing a new product, and she is hopeful that people will love it. Eight years ago, she was scrapping for pennies, not knowing how she would make ends meet. Now she has a million-dollar business where she works with her third husband, Norris Danta Ford, and inspires millions every day.

“I’m hoping to bring even more awareness to sewing and design,” Mimi G said. “My goal in life is to create new sewers.” | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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+ H E R F E AT U R E

H O W FL E E I N G W A R L E D ‘ T H I S I S U S ’ S T A R

BAHARA

GOLESTANI T O

H E R

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D R E A M

BY MELISSA LAWRENCE

ahara Golestani is the newest edition to the beloved, Golden-Globe winning TV series, “This Is Us.” Her addition to the series further secures the integrity of the notably diverse cast. While her character on the show will prove to be a part of a chilling narrative, the actress herself has a story of triumph.

Born in Afghanistan, Golestani was forced to leave her homeland at 4 years old. Despite being a child during a time when her country was engulfed in war, Golestani remembers moments of peace with her grandmother through the turmoil.

“I was probably like… like 3 years old,” Golestani said.

“And I remember vividly playing with her and it was just very peaceful. I remember bits and pieces, but I think those are the moments that bring me a lot of peace.”

Not only did Golestani have to flee her homeland at a young age, but she also experienced the loss of her brother. Golestani admits that as a child, she was initially very depressed. With everything that made up her identity — her friends, her language and her brother — being taken from her, it was difficult for her to get a grasp on who she was.

However, the life that followed Golestani leaving Afghanistan had something more to offer her. She looked mostly to women in novellas for inspiration at the time.

Despite a linguistic barrier, Golestani learned English in hilarious and heartwarming ways. Popular TV series like “Friends” and “The Simpsons” had Golestani glued to her television set. Not only was she learning English from these shows, but she was simultaneously falling in love 14

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R O L E

with acting. Like many viewers, Golestani had an admiration for actresses like Jennifer Aniston, but as a woman of color, Golestani recalls TV’s lack of representation. She remembers the internal struggle of seeing no one on the TV screen who looked like her, until she saw one actress that stood out among them all.

“When I moved to the United States, one of the people that I think for me that I kind of was like, ‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ was Salma Hayek,” Golestani said. “Because she has just dark hair, she’s curvy and I think that I identified with that a little bit as far as any other TV shows.”

Golestani had no idea that down the road, she would attend the same school as Salma Hayek, the Stella Adler Academy, a school for prestigious acting. Golestani would pass Hayek’s picture every day and sit in the same classrooms that Hayek did.

Golestani is aware of the societal impact of being an Afghan immigrant and woman of color has to influence young girls who watch “This Is Us.” She applauded the casting agency, Telsey and Company L.A., for their choice of ensemble on the television series and dedication to diversity. Golestani is proud to take on the responsibility of representing Afghan women in television and describes what it meant to her to be casted.

“It was my responsibility to bring [my character] into the light of the story the right way. Because it was going to either, you know, it was going to bring that awareness to women, particularly to women, Afghan women who don’t hers-magazine.com

have rights, don’t have a voice...” Golestani said. “And these documentaries that I watch for hours and hours doing research... I want to know. I want to know the truth. So, for me, you know, that was a big responsibility, but a responsibility that I was more than happy to take.”

Golestani only has words of encouragement to immigrants, Afghan women and aspiring artists. She believes that if you have a spark or a passion for anything, it’s worth looking into and shouldn’t be ignored. Golestani always had a passion for the arts, as her father was a performer and her mother an actress. She found herself in school plays hers-magazine.com

and even played the violin, which she’s considering picking back up.

But Golestani also had moments when she felt like giving up, especially with contrasting voices in her life. At one point her family even asked her to change her last name out of fear of connection to her profession.

Through it all, Golestani describes her life like a puzzle being put together gradually: that even in the moments when she didn’t understand tough situations, everything made sense in the end, just like a puzzle.

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MISS

UNIVERSE

ZOZIBINI

TUNZI is a Voice in the Fight for Gender Equality

BY BRITTANY MAHER

M

ore than just a beauty queen, Miss Universe, Zozibini Tunzi, is an empowered woman with an equally powerful voice. The 26-yearold has proven she’s a voice to be reckoned with ever since millions around the world watched live as she was crowned Miss Universe on Dec. 8 in Atlanta after speaking with purpose on climate change, women’s rights and diversity.

Hailing from the Eastern Cape town of Tsolo, South Africa, Tunzi stood out amongst the other contestants as she spoke with elegance and passion on pressing topics. Now, Tunzi’s voice is amplified and she is using it on a worldwide platform to speak out against an area of women’s rights she holds close to her heart: gender-based violence.

Before winning the competition, Tunzi was already actively campaigning against gender violence while simultaneously working toward obtaining her master’s degree in public relations. At the Miss South Africa national competition, the one that took her to the Miss Universe stage, Tunzi first spoke out on the issue. “Through all the darkness that South African women face — emotional, physical, sexual, economic abuse — what reason do we have

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to keep smiling?” Tunzi said. “We have absolutely no reason to keep smiling because South African women are dying every day… and, mostly, people are doing nothing about it.”

Tunzi ended her message with a call to action to perpetrators to do better when it comes to the treatment of women. But she did not want to let her message die there on the national stage, so Tunzi decided to use her international platform to vehemently support women’s rights.

As a part of her run for Miss Universe, Tunzi partnered with HeForShe, an organization run by the United Nations Women to encourage men to take a stand in the fight for gender equality. Her idea: ask men from her home country of South Africa to write supporting messages to women.

It was the words inside the influx of letters she received that inspired Tunzi’s national costume at Miss Universe, one that had loud undertones of her message against gender violence. “I wanted to approach it in a way of love,” Tunzi said in an interview with Insider. “I think if we start rewriting this narrative, teaching young boys to start looking at young girls as their equals at a young age, then maybe they will grow up to be the men that we need in society today.”

During the preliminaries at Miss Universe, Tunzi confidently took the stage in her national costume. The costume, called “Wave of Love” was adorned with 2,000 of

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the letters from men written to women, sewn into a skirt made of ribbons of all the colors of the South African flag.

Her goal with the costume was to spread a message of love and support.

“For me, it was a way of saying, if you as a man can write this message to women, then maybe a young boy is looking at you doing this, then maybe you can teach him to be a better generation than we are today,” Tunzi said. “That’s where the inspiration came from.”

Tunzi further explained she wanted to show people that gender-based violence is not solely a women’s issue, but as a society, we must work together toward change. As she made her way through the Miss Universe competition, moving into the top 20, the top 10 and then into the top three, she was asked a series of questions. Her pearls of wisdom tied back to her stance on women’s rights. When it came down to the end of the competition, the top three contestants responded to the question: “What is the most important thing we should teach young girls today?”

She responded that girls need to feel empowered to be leaders. “I think the most important thing we should be teaching young girls today is leadership,” Tunzi said.

“It’s something that has been lacking in young girls and women for a very long time, not because we don’t want to, but because of what society has labeled women to be.

I think we are the most powerful beings in the world and that we should be given every opportunity and that is what we should be teaching these young girls, to take up space, nothing is as important as taking up space in society and cementing yourself.”

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It was her final word on women’s representation that landed Tunzi the crown: “I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful,” Tunzi said. “I think that it is time that stops today. I want children to look at me and see my face, and I want them to see their faces reflected in mine.”

Tunzi was in tears as 2018 Miss Universe, Catriona Gray of the Philippines placed the $5 million crown upon her successor’s head. Tunzi’s gold and blue Biji Gibbs gown was sparkling under the stage lights, a look inspired by the South African sand and soil of her hometown’s coastline at sunrise.

While her supporters in South Africa celebrated from a different time zone, Tunzi took her words to the world once again when asked about representing women’s empowerment.

“It’s said that we have about 180 years before women can catch up and be equal [to men] which is kind of ridiculous to think that I will not see equality between men and women in my time, so this is why this is so close to my heart because I do not see why women cannot catch up to men in 2019,” Tunzi said. “Also, I don’t see why women should remain victims of gender-based violence, especially under men who supposedly love them and are supposed to be taking care of them. So, that’s what I am committing my time to, to make sure to bridge that gap between gender equality and gender-based violence.”

Since winning the competition, Tunzi says she’s realized that gender-based violence isn’t just a major issue in her homeland of South Africa, but it’s an issue across the globe.

Women are fighting all over the world to feel safe, and Tunzi’s goal in coming to a solution to this problem is to bring men into the equation. That starts with education.

“For me, I think educating the future generations is the best way to go,” Tunzi said. “My thing always is if we fail now as adults, maybe we can do something to change the lives of future generations. So, I want to challenge men, to actually step up to teach their sons how to look at little girls and young girls as equals at a very young age so by the time they grow up, they grow up to be the men we need in society today.”

Tunzi wants her reign as Miss Universe to be purposeful and is excited for her message of gender equality to travel across the globe.

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+ H E R S O C I A L C O M M E N TA RY

We Won’t Achieve

Gender Equality Without Male Allies

A

BY BRITTANY MAHER

ll over the world, women are fighting for gender equality.

But gender equality isn’t just a women’s issue, and it can’t be fought alone. Women and girls need male allies. With support and understanding from men and boys, together we can move forward in solidarity.

According to MenEngage.org, gender justice for all needs men and boys to be a part of the solution, working as allies to women’s rights and related social movements. The main approach the advocacy group is taking is by changing perceptions, organizing and advocating, and providing information and resources for men and boys. The global alliance is growing and has proven that engaging men and boys in gender programs evokes a supportive response. The Harvard Business Review reports that when men are deliberately engaged in gender inclusive programs, 96% of organizations see progress.

United Nations Women has also been doing powerful work to get men involved in gender equality. The HeForShe solidarity campaign launched in 2014 to engage men and boys in hopes “to become change agents towards the achievement of gender equality.” Former U.S. President Barack Obama was a supporter.

UN Women has also been working to train young male volunteers around the globe to give interactive

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presentations and organize events in high schools sharing the message of ending gender violence.

These programs are an incredible start in moving forward toward equality, but are still considered controversial and prove we still have a long way to go.

Gender-based violence and gender-based crimes continue to be described as an epidemic on a worldwide scale, further proving the importance of continuing to spread awareness and invite men to join alongside when it comes to combatting injustice.

Miss Universe, Zozibini Tunzi, has been heavily involved with the HeForShe campaign with a focus on gender-based violence. Since winning the competition, Tunzi says she’s realized that gender-based violence is a worldwide issue and she plans to use her voice and platform to make a change. Tunzi’s goal in coming to a solution to this problem is to bring men into the equation, starting with educating them to inspire change in future generations.

“For me, I think educating the future generations is the best way to go,” Tunzi said. “I want to challenge men, to actually step up to teach their sons how to look at little girls and young girls as equals at a very young age so, by the time they grow up, they grow up to be the men we need in society today.”

Despite decades of protest, policy changes and reform, gender inequality still exists all over the world.

Gender equality is only possible if we work together.

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Sharknado Star

S T E P S O U T O F C O M F O R T Z O NE T O P R O D U C E

Gut-Wrenching Documentary

BY BRITTANY MAHER

Actress and activist Cassie Scerbo once walked the same halls as the deadliest school shooter in U.S. history. It’s still surreal for her to associate her hometown with such tragedy. Nearly two years after the Parkland, Florida, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the “Sharknado” and “Bring It On: In It to Win It” actress has been working to help her hometown recover through philanthropy work. Now, with the stories she’s gathered, she is stepping out of her comfort zone to produce a documentary around safety in schools. “It’s just an indescribably horrible feeling knowing that kids ten years younger than you were walking down these same hallways and these same hallways ended their life,” Scerbo said.

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cerbo’s heart is still broken over what happened at her former high school. She vividly remembers the feelings of helplessness when she first received the devastating news. “I remember this overwhelming feeling of just wanting to be in Parkland with my community,” Scerbo said. “And the hardest part about it was that I couldn’t because I was leaving to film in Romania the next day, to shoot the final ‘Sharknado’ so I had to go and fly in the complete opposite direction, very far away from the one place I wanted to be.”

Since then, Scerbo has been back and forth from her hometown of Parkland to her current residence in Los Angeles. She felt propelled to jump into action and stand by her community as they healed from the incident.

With her love for her community matched with her natural drive for activism, Scerbo aims to use her voice and platform as a space to create change around bullying. “I really am a huge believer in using your voice — my thoughts

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on having a platform and using your voice are very strong,” Scerbo said. “You’ve got an audience and you’ve got a voice for people that don’t have as big of a voice as yours.”

Even before the Parkland tragedy, Scerbo was heavily involved as an activist against bullying. She is vice president of Boo2Bullying, a non-profit organization committed to eliminate and eradicate bullying through education and positivity. “One of my favorite things to do is to go into the schools and speak to kids and figure out what’s going on and try to change the climate, open up a conversation and break the silence,” Scerbo said. “I’ve always loved doing that even prior to this, but this takes it a little bit further with the documentary.”

The idea behind creating a documentary came from hearing people’s most vulnerable stories. But producing a documentary goes beyond gathering footage and interviews, it takes hours and hours of in-depth research, listening and self-educating. “A documentary is more powerful just

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because we wanted to actually create change,” Scerbo said.

“Giving this level of work, and this level of research has definitely taken it even a step further.”

While she’s no stranger to Hollywood, this is Scerbo’s first time as a producer. She said the role came with extreme learning curves, but it brought her a new appreciation for the production aspect of film. “Starting with the role as a producer, being on the other side of the camera, was so interesting to me just because I had never known,” Scerbo said.

“Honestly, I have gained so much respect for producers. Not that I had not respected them before, but I didn’t realize how much time and energy goes into every bit of production.”

Dealing with such heavy subject matter has taken its toll on Scerbo. During production, there were times where she says she felt mentally drained and fought to continue moving forward with production. “It’s been a new avenue for me, it’s been a lot,” Scerbo said. “I think it’s probably been even a little more draining for me personally because all the subject matter and watching some of the footage in editing is just so gut-wrenching to listen to and just the reality that this happened to my hometown.”

There have been delays in production, which has proven to be frustrating but necessary. Scerbo said the documentary was supposed to come out months ago, but production keeps getting pushed back because of the amount of information that needs to be told. The more the creators were learning and meeting people, the more they felt compelled to cover.

Despite dealing with painful material and interviews, Scerbo’s passion is what kept her pushing forward. “For me personally, it was a really great learning experience,” Scerbo said. “Even though this material was very heartbreaking, it’s definitely an avenue that I want to continue to explore because when you are passionate about a project, it is really neat to watch it come to fruition and to watch all the pieces come together.”

While singing and acting are both still major parts of her career, she sees herself doing more production work in the future. “As much as it was hard work, I really look forward to continuing to produce,” Scerbo said. “So, I am 100 percent looking forward to continuing forever doing this type of work trying to eradicate any negativity, behavior, bad policy, whatever it may be, and ultimately just use my voice and help people do things.”

Scerbo’s main goal for the documentary is to promote safer schools and is set to come out on January 15. “It’s about saving lives, ultimately, and creating change so that these things don’t happen anymore,” Scerbo said.

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The Magic Word for Success Tips and Tricks for

Hopeful Entrepreneurs

BY ALEXA CURTIS

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f you had asked me 10 years ago if I imagined being where I am today, I would’ve thought you were someone with an unrealistic perception of the world. Then, I became the person preaching the fact that you can do anything you want with your life.

The only person who will hold you back is yourself.

I launched my blog, “A Life in the Fashion Lane,” when I was 12 years old on September 12, 2011. I was bullied, my father was wrongfully convicted and in prison for most of my childhood and I had $0 and no connections. I spent my days in school yearning to be something different and get out of a small town. During the times I was bullied (you’ll reflect and realize that what happens in middle and high school prepares you for the real world) I resorted to my blog to get me through thoughts of suicide and depression. At 16, Rachael Ray called my cell phone asking me to go to New York City and appear on the show. The hour before Rachael called, I walked into my high school and dropped out. With no money and no clue how I’d ever get into college, I was still relentless in my desire to be successful in some way or another. Subconsciously, I look back and realize that I found my purpose at a very young age.

A lot has happened in the six years between then and now. From the occasional almost lawsuit (because apparently you can’t legally sign a contract at 16 years old), to my first show “Fearless Everyday” on Radio Disney, I’ve learned a lot in this period of time. I’ve realized that the magic word for success isn’t “viral” — it’s “time.”

I didn’t go viral, I don’t have millions of followers yet but I’ve gotten this far by following my heart. At 17 years old, I

to be a high school drop out with no college degree, but I had an obsession with writing and inspiring people. “How could you ever turn that into a career?” People would ask me constantly.

I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was 16 years old, and I live with both every day. The more my career grew, the more crippled I began to feel with depression. I often still feel that way. Being a young entrepreneur is thrilling, but it also brings strong feelings of self-doubt. On the days when I’m unsure of how I’ll pay my rent next month or if I’ll ever have 1 million Instagram followers (not that I actually care), I push myself into a dark hole that’s hard to get out of. That’s why I prioritize exercise, therapy and meditation six days per week.

You will be successful if you want to be successful. Be willing to take chances, break barriers and never sacrifice yourself during the journey.

Here are some of my tips for young entrepreneurs: 1. Find your PURPOSE! Stop wanting to be an entrepreneur simply because it’s trendy. Being an entrepreneur takes time and strength — you want to be in it for the right reason.

2. Realize that making mistakes is part of the process. Don’t be so hard on yourself.

moved to Brooklyn with nine suitcases, found a sublet and gave myself 31 days that February to find a way to pay the rent to stay. I got a tattoo on my birthday this year with the numbers 3 6 0 in honor of my dusty 5-bedroom apartment in New York City. On the 27th day, I got approval from a hair brand who was willing to pay me $1,500 for an Instagram story takeover. I had a mere 700 Instagram followers but one heck of a good pitch on why they should pay me.

The world is going to throw the craziest experiences at you, and it’s up to you to determine which path you want to proceed down. As a child to a teenager, I was on a trajectory hers-magazine.com

3. Go to networking events or start a group at your school for other people who have ideas. That way when you’re feeling alone, you’ll remember that there is always someone out there working toward what you’re working toward!

4. Utilize social media. Whether that means starting an Instagram page or a Tik Tok, do it! But remember that to run a successful company, you need to run it online and offline.

5. Find someone who inspires you. Who do you want to be in five years? Go through their journey over and over and start making steps in the direction to how your idol got to where they are now. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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ORGANIC PRODUCTS FOR THE BEST

Natural Hair Looks

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all hair types and is sulfate-free. It is infused with charcoal and coconut oil. The charcoal draws out impurities from the scalp and hair strands. It gets rid of the dead skin and builds up from the scalp. Your scalp does get a lot of build-up from products that you use every day. It adds up and can make your hair flat, make your scalp itch and cause dry flakes to appear. The product gives you a tingly feeling and it is best recommended to use your regular shampoo first then use this product because it does not clean your scalp the way regular shampoo does.

BY WENDY PHAN

y now, most of us have our hair routine down to the tee, but maybe it’s time for a hair routine detox. As the seasons change, so can your beauty routine. We recommend starting with organic hair products. It might be a pricey change, but the damage you save your hair from is worth it in the long run. Organic hair products help you maintain healthier hair, unlike chemically enhanced hair products that damage hair strands over time. A majority of hair products have sulfates and silicones that can irritate your scalp. Here are a few products you can incorporate into your routine:

Hello Bello Two-in-One Shampoo and Body Wash

Briogeo Scalp Revival The Briogeo Scalp Revival is a pricey yet effective microexfoliating shampoo. This exfoliating shampoo works on 34

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Hello Bello is an affordable, plant based baby brand founded by husband and wife duo, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard.

The two-in-one premium shampoo and body wash can be used for your kids but works for adults too. It has organic aloe, avocado and cucumber extract with organic jojoba and sunflower seed oils. The formula is pure, gentle and safe to use. It is dermatologist-tested, hypoallergenic, pH-balanced and is suitable for newborns. Baby shampoos are so pure and gentle that you can use it yourself without worrying about harsh chemicals.

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so this mask will help restore hydration to your hair and scalp.

It is made with natural and certified organic ingredients that are beneficial to your hair in the long run.

As I Am Coconut CoWash There a lot of co-washing products on the market, The As I Am Coconut CoWash is a must-have. Curly hair or straight, co-washing benefits both. This CoWash is perfect for those in-between wash days when you don’t want to shampoo your hair. It helps hydrate your hair while providing great detangling. Co-washing allows the natural oils to cleanse and condition both your scalp and hair. Co-washing frequently is up to you and your hair condition. It is best recommended two to three times a week if you have curly hair.

Acure Dry Shampoo

Shea Moisture Manuka Honey & Mafura Oil Hair Mask Hair masks are essential to having healthy hair. Shea Moisture’s Manuka Honey & Mafura Oil Hair Mask is a great selection when it comes to a deep conditioning hair mask that exfoliates and nourishes your hair. It has organic shea butter, honey and mafura to help smooth your hair and restore softness. You can even replace your conditioner with this mask. During the wintertime, your hair is prone to dryness, hers-magazine.com

Dry shampoo is a girl’s best friend. When hair gets oily after a few days of not washing it or even the next day, dry shampoo comes to save the day. Acure’s dry shampoo is designed to refresh your roots from being oily and it saves you a few days of washing your hair. It is made with rosemary and peppermint. It is 100 percent vegan and natural and you can easily understand the ingredients. Most dry shampoos leave you with a white cast if you don’t rub it in, but this product has a fine texture that spreads evenly through your hair.

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A H E A LT H Y D O S E O F R E A L I T Y: HOW ‘PRETTY WILD’ STAR AND BLING RING MEMBER

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ALE X I S HAI N E S

IS USING HER PAST STRUGGLES WITH ADDICTION FOR GOOD

BY GABBY DANCE

f you spent your Sunday nights watching the E! Network in the early 2010s, you may be familiar with Alexis Neiers. About a decade ago, she recorded what she refers to as the “voicemail heard ‘round the world” after an infamous Vanity Fair article dropped about a group of Calabasas teens, “The Bling Ring,” who robbed the homes of Orlando Bloom, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities. Though only present for one of the robberies (that of Orlando Bloom), Neiers, the star of the reality show “Pretty Wild,” quickly became the face of the group.

“Nancy Jo, this is Alexis Neiers calling. I’m calling to let you know how disappointed I am in your story,” the teen star wailed through sobs. “There are many things that I read in here that were false, like you saying that I wore six-inch Louboutin heels with my tweed skirt [to court], when I actually wore little brown bebe shoes.”

The incident was practically made to be a meme, and it is — she’s resurfaced as a pop culture icon through stan Twitter’s late 2000s and early 2010s reality show renaissance phase, drawing in a crowd of avid Gen Z followers — but her outburst wasn’t another display of the proverbial bratty teenage valley girl. It was more so a snapshot of someone reaching their emotional limits, crying for help.

Now Alexis Neiers is Alexis Haines, a 28-year-old survivor of drug addiction and sexual abuse with a supportive husband, two daughters, a podcast called “Recovering from

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Reality” and a new book by the same name where she reveals the truth behind the TMZ field day that was her teenage years.

Haines says she was born into an environment that bred constant trauma, something that started affecting her at a very young age. “There was incest that was taking place and sexual abuse. There was physical violence, drug addiction and alcoholism,” she said. As the daughter of former Playboy bunny Andrea Arlington, she was encouraged to sexualize herself and was sexualized by others for as long as she could remember. This ranged from strange yet funny stories she looks back on now as an adult — she still can’t believe she was allowed to strut around the house in her mom’s lingerie and sing Celine Dion songs at 8 years old — to atrocious and heartbreaking moments that still plague her today, like when she was raped by a family member at only 5 years old.

That specific instance gave her damaging messages about her body and the meaning of love. “[There are these] subliminal messages that you’re receiving [when you are raped], like your body’s not your own and this is something that’s used for someone else’s pleasure,” Haines said. “And then there’s also the challenges of love, right? I loved the person who was raping me when I was 5 [years old]. I loved him. He was a family member and someone that I looked up to, so there’s that whole message that the people that we love hurt us.” hers-magazine.com

By the time that she was 9 or 10, she was already looking for an escape. After being prescribed opiates to recover from a surgery in her early teens, her addiction started snowballing. “[When] I tried opiates for the first time, I was like ‘This is it. This is where the money’s at. I need to do this for the rest of my life.’ and I really felt that way,” Haines said. “Eventually around the age of… 15 I found a steady supply of oxycodone and I began using it every single day. Before I knew it, I was, you know, shooting up heroin.”

Along with substance abuse, she ended up finding herself in the wrong crowd. Her friend and unofficially adopted sister, Tess Taylor, introduced her to Nick Prugo, who started robbing celebrity homes in October 2008 alongside his best friend Rachel Lee. Haines ended up going with them to ransack Orlando Bloom’s house right before her new reality show “Pretty Wild” began filming.

“Pretty Wild” followed Haines and her family (Arlington, Taylor and her biological sister Gabby) as the girls tried to make it in the wacky world of Hollywood. Originally, the show was set to be called “Homeschooled with the Arlingtons” and center around her mother’s philosophy of raising the girls on the manifestation teachings of a 2006 documentary called “The Secret.” They were supposed to become the “hippie Kardashians.” However, the show instantly shifted gears toward the Bling Ring and the girls’ party lifestyles when the police showed up to Haines’ home with a search warrant to look for stolen celebrity goods on their first day of filming.

During filming, Haines said she was in a fragile state, living in a Hollywood Best Western and panhandling for drugs while pretending to live in her mother’s house for the show. Several traumatic reality show setups, like an episode where the producers hid her dog and told her it ran away or another when the crew planted pills on her to start a family argument, brought her to emotional hysterics for the sake of good T.V. “You literally feel like you’re going crazy because you can’t tell what is real and what is not,” Haines said. “At the time, I was so young and so naive, and I didn’t have any idea how reality T.V. worked.”

The aftermath of that is when we got the iconic Nancy Jo call, arguably the most well-known moment in the show’s brief history. “It’s not that the Nancy Jo thing was fake or staged, it was that they had read it and they knew that they were going to get a reaction out of me. Initially, I was sad, and I recorded the original voicemail, but, you know, my mom kept yelling in the background, so I kept having to re-record it. hers-magazine.com

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Then what they aired was, of course, the big, long meltdown that transpired after re-recording a voicemail like ten times. And at that point I was just so frustrated and so done.”

Because of her reality television prominence, she says the media wrongly painted her as the ringleader of the group of teen thieves. “It says a lot about the way that the media portrays women and that sex sells, unfortunately,” Haines said.

“The story of the Bling Ring would not have been that exciting or lasted that long in the news cycle had some young, hot girls who had their own reality show not been the face of it.”

When the story of the Bling Ring broke, people surely did get obsessed with its members, specifically Haines. Time Magazine used her as an example of millennial narcissism in a controversial 2013 article, and Emma Watson played a vain, 38

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privileged character said to have been inspired by Haines in Sofia Coppola’s film “The Bling Ring,” which Haines still has not and does not plan on ever seeing. The world loved having girls to hate, and who better than one who, on the surface, seemed to have already had it all? “They really spun it the way that they wanted to, which is what it is,” Haines said. “It’s definitely an interesting conversation to be had. I certainly was not the most likable person back then. I was really sick and obviously strung out on heroin.”

After a media frenzied court case that resulted in Haines spending one month in jail, notably having a brief period where she was one cell away from Lindsay Lohan, her struggle only continued. She was arrested again for heroin possession in December 2010 but, this time, was sentenced to recovery, something she says was one of the best things that could’ve ever happened to her. “I kept going to jail, and I realized that like there was no other way to go,” Haines said.

“I was either going to get my life together... or I was probably going to die.”

That’s when her life changed forever. While healing through the difficult process of rehab, she surrounded herself with supportive people, including her husband Evan, who she met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The two got married in 2012 and have two children — Harper, who was born in 2013, and Dakota, who was born in 2016. Now, she’s giving her children the childhood she wishes she’d had. “My intention with my children is to not only make an environment for them that is as conducive to a loving, safe home as possible, but also giving them the tools and the things that they need to cope with the very real challenges of this world,” Haines said.

“I don’t remember ever getting these things from my parents like coping techniques or having someone guide me through the biggest challenges of life.”

She and her family reside in her home state of California, where her husband now owns several recovery centers called Alo House. Haines serves as a counselor there. “We use passion and connection to help people have a better life,” Haines said. “I just feel really blessed to be able to do this work”.

After seven years of recovery and adjustment to a lightning speed lifestyle change, she felt it was time to talk about her experience on a larger scale. “I really felt this calling to start talking about mental health and addiction and overcoming trauma,” Haines said. “I would argue that most people in their lifetime will experience many challenges, and a lot of us experience traumatic experiences. And so, I said, ‘You know what, screw it I’m just going to talk about it.’”

Thus, “Recovering from Reality” was born. Since its start in February 2019, the weekly podcast has deep dived into topics all over the board that Haines is passionate about,

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from her experience as a Doula to her passion about the body positivity movement. In a special family reunion episode, she brought on her mom and sisters to have a group discussion with a family therapist about their childhood trauma, which her mother apologized for having a hand in causing.

In another episode, she emotionally came out as bisexual. The podcast is full of healthy communication about life’s hardest problems.

Though her life story is heavy, she’s not afraid to sometimes keep it light. She’s never one to shy from poking fun at herself. The podcast’s Instagram profile is full of memes from her “Pretty Wild” days. “My favorite [meme] by far hands down is a Star Wars one,” Haines said. “They put the script of the Nancy Jo call over the Star Wars opening. I’ll post it on my Instagram story later so you can see it.” Sure enough, it was posted the next morning, with fans joining in to laugh and reminisce along with her.

Her relatable blend of communication styles — she’s not afraid to honestly speak about the awful, heart breaking, traumatic moments people endure in life, but also loves laughing at a good internet meme — has amassed her over 85,000 Instagram followers for her personal account and podcast combined. With a larger audience and so much to say, she hers-magazine.com

felt that it was time to release a memoire about her life. “I had been toying around with the idea of writing a book for many, many years, but I didn’t really feel ready,” Haines said. “I needed to have eight years to really do this work, to really heal, to apply everything that I had learned and all of the knowledge to create what I would consider more than [just] a memoir.”

When asked what genre you could categorize the book in, she said it’s more than just a self-help book. “If self-help worked then everyone who went on Oprah in the ‘90s would’ve been cured by now,” she said.

Instead, she sees it as a book for everyone, whether they want to be inspired or not. “I am a person who has been through a lot, whether it be divorced parents, abusive relationships, domestic violence and all these things, so it’s really a book for everyone, or just someone who wants to read a juicy story,” Haines said.

Her goal with both her book and her podcast is to let her readers and listeners know that they are worth recovery. “I think for a long time, I believed that I wasn’t worthy of great things and that I was not capable of them either and all of that is just not at all true. You can change your life and create a big, beautiful life for yourself.”

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Award-Winning Independent Filmmaker and Director Works Against Industry Pay Disparity

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BY PIERA VAN DE WIEL

nclusivity is key to film production and casting to accurately portray the stories being told. That’s why award-winning independent filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff firmly believes that “cinema is a tool for empathy, films teach us to relate to perspectives different from our own, and the more that stories on screen reflect the diversity of the world around us the better off we will be.”

After noticing a lack of push for this diversity, she founded Film Fatales, a nonprofit organization that advocates for parity in the film industry. The organization aims to make the industry more inclusive for women and non-binary feature film and television directors nationwide. “[I want to help] close [the] gender gap,” Meyerhoff said. “In the end, it will make it easier for me and other women to do what we really came to do. Audiences are hungry for bold new voices. To tell the stories of the world, filmmakers must

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better reflect the composition of the world.”

Each month, Film Fatales facilitates networking events for filmmakers in a dozen cities and hosts panel discussions and mixers throughout the year. Film Fatales raises the visibility of underrepresented directors and increases the talent pool for industry organizations, programmers, and production companies looking to hire at parity. By expanding the landscape of storytelling to include more marginalized voices, Film Fatales continues to bring exciting new films to the screen.

Meyerhoff believes that “through both a top-down and a bottom-up approach, we can join forces to create more opportunities for underrepresented directors to get their work made and seen. And studios and production companies with the power to greenlight films need to become more aware of their passive bias and make an active effort to hire closer to parity.”

Meyerhoff has created a community that is deeply needed. Film Fatales aims to give women directors a voice, a support network and a place to work on their craft through extensive workshops with other professionals.

The non-profit is fostering and nurturing the directing talent of women. Film Fatales offers a grassroots solution towards increased parity by providing a structure for peer mentorship and creating a platform of visibility for women directors. “Although there is still a long way to go in terms of achieving truly equal opportunity and representation in the film industry, I am optimistic. Together, we can create the hers-magazine.com

world we want to live in,” Meyerhoff said.

She’s faced this industry firsthand as a filmmaker and found a way to push past the glass ceiling to gain success.

She got her big break when she wrote and directed the narrative feature film “I Believe in Unicorns” starring Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack and Julia Garner. The film was released theatrically after premiering at SXSW, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival and additional awards from Tribeca Film Institute, San Francisco Film Society, Woodstock Film Festival, and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation.

She has directed half a dozen short films and music videos which screened on the LGBTQ film festival circuit and aired on MTV. Her producing credits include the lesbian horror feature thriller “LYLE and MOMSTER,” which premiered at Tribeca last year in 2019. More recently, she has been credited as an executive producer for the documentary feature “I AM NO BIRD,” which is coming to the U.S. this year in 2020 after premiering in Australia in 2019.

Her storytelling is heralded as arresting and fresh, and she brings together a power behind the vulnerability of the characters, creating s a beautiful playground for her actors to play in.

Meyerhoff loves working with an entirely female crew both above and below the line, saying that “the energy on set is electric.” Production runs smoothly. No one raises their voice. Actors feel safe to give deeply vulnerable hers-magazine.com

performances. The overall vibe is collaborative rather than competitive. “Of course, every production is different, but I have learned from experience that inclusive crews are not only more pleasant to work on, but they lead to better films as well,” Meyerhoff said.

She also currently works as a professor and has lectured at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Studio Arts College International and the New York Film Academy. She hopes to help shape future younger generations of female directors through her engagement with students and her non-profit organization.

Her advice to the next generation of artists, filmmakers and audience members is to keep fighting to create films that women want to see — those that invoke questions, evoke empathy and teach them something new. “If we weren’t ready to face adversity with pathological optimism, we might as well pack it in and go home,” Meyerhoff said.

“Hollywood is a risk averse business that perpetuates a system of privilege in which the majority of opportunities are given to homogenous group of mostly wealthy straight white men. Artists outside of that system have learned to forge their own paths against all odds and figure out a way to get their films made and seen.”

She says the only way to achieve your professional goals is to get out there and fight for what you want. “Don’t wait for permission. Give yourself permission,” Meyerhoff said.

| Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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+ H E R T H E AT E R

REVIEW:

BROADWAY HIT

‘SLAVE PLAY’

is Both a History Lesson and National Therapy Session

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BY MADISON OGLETREE

o one is safe here. In his breakout Broadway production “Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris incites a personal and national reckoning with racism — that not-so-mysterious force with whom all Americans have been strange bedfellows. If you find yourself not implicated in Harris’s provocations, watch, think and listen again.

Equal parts unsettling and enlightening, “Slave Play” forces an intimacy between us and our deepest social anxieties. Poet, essayist and novelist Morgan Parker writes in the play’s forward, “This might hurt…

But there’s nothing in ‘Slave Play’ that part of you doesn’t already know.” At every turn, Harris lays bare the human condition and the materiality of American

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racism with humor, sexuality, aggression and — ultimately — empathy.

I walked into the Golden Theater with few expectations, none of which involved the confluence of twerking and antebellum slave labor. Indeed, Harris’ sharp social commentary plays with the audience’s spatial and psychic experience of time.

Before the show, sounds of a gentle piano, rustling leaves and plates being put away filled the room.

Occasionally, you’d hear a faraway whistle and a dog panting while running toward the call. Scrolling through my cellphone, I paused and looked up.

Reflected in the mirrors that constitute the play’s set was a plantation house — the lily-white site of black suffering and oppression.

“Slave Play” is full of jarring juxtapositions be-

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tween the idyllic and the grotesque, between the best of who we want to be and the worst of who we are. To experience “Slave Play” is to be mindfully disoriented. Harris’ conscious surrendering of time and space forces audiences to come face-to-face with our shared, ugly and ever-present past.

Set on MacGregor Plantation, three interracial couples explore illicit sexual desire, confounding antebellum power dynamics and the color line.

From the title to the stage, double entendre permeates Harris’ work. The American experiment itself — a so-called democracy built on violence and submission — shares qualities with the character’s experimentation with leather and whips (and even dildos) in an antebellum setting. These objects of terror and niche pleasure take on a dual meaning in “Slave Play,” being both the tools of violent nation-building and one of the many vehicles of personal exploration and healing.

The play explores contemporary topics on inequality, racism and colorblindness — specifically interrogating black people’s perceived “alexithymia” and white people’s supposed “myopia.” In the play and in life, Harris turns long-held racial dichotomies on their head, forcing us to interrogate why we all seem to identify racism as a sickness or a “virus” inherent to one’s perceived proximity to blackness rather than one perpetuated by racists. Again, no one is safe.

The play’s ingenious cast brings Harris’ story to life. Joaquina Kalukango (Kaneisha), Ato Blankson-Wood (Gary), Sullivan Jones (Phillip) and Chalia La Tour (Teá) depict the corporeal and psychic experiences of black people under racism’s historic and present duress.

Their humorous and tragic interactions with their nonblack partners Paul Alexander Nolan (Jim), James Cusati-Moyer (Dustin), Annie McNamara (Alana) and Irene Sofia Lucio (Patricia) illuminate the many ways in which old, historic wounds get ripped afresh by casual racist actions.

It seems to me that one’s reaction to “Slave Play” reveals more about the onlooker than it does the play itself. Harris’s skill lies in confounding the boundaries between where the play stops and where reality begins. hers-magazine.com

“It is not often that an audience gets to walk into a theater and have to examine themselves so fully. Especially with this mirror behind us all watching you all have these reactions,” said Cusati-Moyer. “To follow that humor and discomfort is really key to getting down to the politics of the play, but also the politics of the individual both as an audience member and as these characters.”

Both a history lesson and a national therapy session, Harris’s “Slave Play” teaches us the first step toward healing is finding comfort and clarity in our discomfort. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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BLAIR

W A L N U T S

Tests Out Celebrity Fitness Routines So You Don’t Have To

BY GABBY DANCE

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H

ave you ever looked at a model or celebrity and thought, “I wonder what their diet and exercise routine is like?”

Blair Vail, known on YouTube as Blair Walnuts, has wondered the same thing, and she’s trying those celebrity lifestyles out so that you don’t have to. She’s tried out tons of different lifestyles, from calorie-counting K-Pop stars and Victoria’s Secret Models to notorious junk food fans like Jeffree Star, to answer one question — can your everyday person live like this? “I grew up watching professional bikini competitors and fitness models try different diets and always succeed, but I never related to the ‘clean and perfect’ way of eating,” she said. “I wanted to see a regular person try to eat healthy in their different lifestyle and see if it was possible for them. So, I’m that regular person, here to try it out so you don’t have to.”

The Bulgarian-American YouTuber goes all the way when recreating a person’s lifestyle, usually following their routine for several days. In one video, she even puts on her own Victoria’s Secret Fashion show. “It was fun because, not only did I eat like them, but I also worked out [like them], had my makeup done and even tried a salt room massage,” she said. “It was fun recreating their fashion show in my room with a face mask and a robe on.”

Through her videos, she’s found some diets completely unrealistic for her to keep up with. “The model diets are certainly unsustainable in the long run, unless your only job is to model,” she said. “The largest part of their job is staying fit and healthy, so they dedicate a considerable amount of time to specific workouts and diet regimens. I don’t think you could fit in a rigid workout and diet routine along with another job.”

These diets can even be difficult to keep up with for just a few days. Just like anyone, Blair isn’t always in the mood for a hardcore workout. “There’s challenging parts of any job, so I accept those as obstacles to overcome, but of course, some days you just don’t feel like working out. Some days I’d rather eat popcorn on the couch than cook the ‘required’ meals.”

On the other end of the spectrum, some of the more junk food diets can cause massive cravings. “[Having a] McDonalds McDouble with fries and doughnuts in a video makes me crave it the next day,” she said. “Sometimes I just go get it. Life’s short, eat the fries.”

Every once in a while, she runs into a diet that’s nearly a perfect fit, feeling comfortable for her body to maintain during the trial run. “[YouTubers] Remi Aston and Alisha Marie promote average size meals and eat five to six times

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+ HER FITNESS

a day, with healthy snacks including a banana with peanut butter, protein shakes and apples,” she said. “I think eating frequently works for me because it prevents binges and keeps my blood sugar stable. I can’t speak for everyone though.”

In general, Blair recommends listening to your body as much as possible to find the right fitness routine for you.

For her, that ideal lifestyle includes a diet full of fruits and vegetables. “My grandparents raised me on the Mediterranean diet, which I credit to all my life’s general health,” she said. “Every dinner comes with salad, and dessert is usually fruit. I think being taught to eat an incredible amount of vegetables at a young age really helped. We have this salad, called a ‘shopska’ and its tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, feta cheese and olive oil. I think I’ve eaten it so much; my body composition is half tomato.”

Her exercise routine mainly includes walking, something she says can help boost happiness levels. “Mental health and physical health can be mutually exclusive. There are a lot of studies that show that walking can bring down your anxiety levels,” she said. “So, physical exercise, even low impact, can help your mental health. Next time you’re stressed, go on a 10-minute walk, you might find it helps.”

Blair has found a way to balance a healthy relationship with her body while maintaining a career where her day to day routine is constantly changing. However, her relationship with her body hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

Growing up, she says her culture emphasized the importance of being thin while her family also encouraged her to eat all of the food on her plate to avoid waste. To move past that, she turned to social media for body positivity inspiration. “There’s models who show their ‘rolls’ when they sit, there’s curvy girls looking confident on the beach, there’s people who aren’t afraid to show their cellulite, so it’s really been a positive influence on my mental health. Nobody’s perfect, and I’m grateful that people have the guts to show that. I think social media can be a positive place, if you look in the right place.”

Though her own social media presence heavily features fitness and diet content, she wants viewers to know that it’s all in good fun. “I really don’t want to accidentally offend anyone with my content,” she said. “I don’t think anyone needs to be on a diet or lose weight. It’s all up to them and if they feel healthy, that’s all that matters. I get worried because my content can sometimes push a ‘health’ narrative, but I always try my hardest to tell people you don’t need to have $40 goji berries in your smoothie, you don’t need an expensive personal trainer, you don’t have to eat the same boring things to be healthy.” | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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+ HER MOVIES

Women Directed Movies We Loved from this Decade

BY NJERI DEAN

As we enter the year 2020, let’s take a journey back through the films we loved from the past decade. Some made us laugh and some made us cry, but there’s one thing these films have in common — they were all directed by women

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) In this psychological thriller directed by Lynne Ramsay, a mom (Tilda Swinton) is disturbed by her son Kevin’s (Ezra Miller) behavior as he grows up. This dark tragedy film has twists and turns that will make your skin crawl.

The Kids Are Alright (2010) In 2010, Lisa Cholodenko introduced us to a loving family with a lot of faults. The film stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as partners trying to find themselves after their kids reunite with their dad.

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Zero Dark Thirty (2012) Kathyrn Bigelow directed another war movie, with actress Jessica Chastain. Chastain portrays a CIA operative who plays a big part in taking down Osama bin Laden.

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Belle (2013) In this period drama directed by Amma Asante, Asante brings us the story of Belle, a mixed-race woman played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who plays an interval part of abolishing slavery and standing up for herself and who she loves.

Queen of Katwe (2016) This film made its way into our hearts in 2016 when director Mira Nair told the story of a slum girl (Phiona Mutesi) who makes her way out of poverty by learning to play chess, eventually making her way to The World Chess Olympiads.

The Sisterhood of Night (2014) Is the Sisterhood of Night real? That’s what director Caryn Waechter wants you to find out. A girl claims to be victimized by a society called the Sisterhood of Night, which promotes her into the media. This was a true crime mystery of 2014.

A Wrinkle In Time (2018) Based on the bestselling book, director Ava DuVernay tells the story of a girl who sets out to find her father. Along the way, she also finds the true meaning of friendship and forgiveness.

The Dress Maker (2015) Starring Kate Winslet, director Jocelyn Moorhouse paints a picture of a woman’s return to her small town after she was accused of a murder that took place there as a child. This movie is The Devil Wears Prada meets No Country for Old Men.

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Late Night (2019) Director Nisha Ganatra tells the story of late-night talk show host (Emma Thompson) hiring a new writer (Mindy Kaling) to help her save her late-night talk show spot from becoming nonexistent. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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AHIMSA HOUSE

SHELTERS PETS of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS

BY KATIEE MCKINSTRY

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+ HER LESSONS

hen Shannon Oxford was a junior in college, she set out to prove a rude professor wrong.

“I had this really misogynistic teacher who was making fun of people who work as victim advocates,” Oxford said. “So, I thought, ‘okay, now I have to prove him wrong.’”

Now, she works for Ahimsa House, a non-profit organization that helps victims of domestic violence house their animals while they are seeking help.

Not often do people think about what happens to pets while a survivor of domestic violence is seeking help. Ahimsa House helps provide homes and care to animals in need, which is something that can be overlooked. Many shelters turn away animals, and they end up alone. Oxford said the biggest challenge of her job is seeing the animals, as many do not come into the shelter in great shape.

“The work we’re doing is difficult,” Oxford said.

“It’s obviously just terrible to see what the animals are experiencing. I really don’t like to meet the pets, because I become attached to them. I try to push that stuff away when I’m not in the office, but it is a little hard to disconnect.”

Another challenge she faces is the political climate of the South. Specifically, Georgia, where Ahimsa House is located. In this environment, she says domestic violence is often overlooked. According to the Georgia Commission of Family Violence, from 2003 to 2018, at least 2,035 citizens lost their lives due to domestic violence. Forty nine percent of victims in cases studied by Georgia’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Project began their relationship with the person who eventually killed them between the ages of 13 through 24. “Living in Georgia, with our political leaders, it’s a little bit hard [to do the job] because of the lack of productivity when it comes to domestic violence,” Oxford said. “We’re always ranked rather high; I think we’re ninth in the country for the rate of men killing women.”

Oxford believes that the best way to change these statistics is to start a conversation surrounding sexual assault and domestic violence. Spreading awareness is one of the goals of Ahimsa House, and Oxford enjoys being able to do outreach events and talk with people about her work. “When I’m at home watching reality TV with my husband, I’ll notice people acting

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a certain way. I’ll explain to him why that behavior could be seen as manipulative, and could turn into something that’s abusive,” Oxford said. “Talking about it honestly and openly and telling people it is not their fault is the best way to start the conversation. It’s changing people’s language.”

Ahimsa House is making strides to start that conversation, additionally taking on pet abuse as well.

The shelter takes pets that they receive calls about, placing them in foster homes and shelters. Most of the time, the people who call in have shelter for themselves but need a place for their animals. Often domestic violence shelters will not take in animals, which is why there is a need for organizations like Ahimsa House. “One time a shelter wouldn’t even take a goldfish,” Oxford laughs. “A goldfish!”

While Oxford’s work is meaningful, it is difficult.

It’s hard to see other people and animals at their lowest, seeking help to leave their abuses. Oxford believes that in order to do her job to the best of her ability, self-care is key. “Self-care is really important in this job,” Oxford said. “When I’m home on the weekends I just try to disconnect. I really enjoy spending time with my husband and my friends, I also adopted a cat from the shelter, and I have a new nephew I spend time with. I watch trash TV instead of an intense crime show, something light.”

However, at work Oxford says that she’s surrounded with a great group of women who are all going through the same things. She feels comfortable enough to be able to cry and scream and let out all the tough emotions from her work with her co-workers.

The ladies at Ahimsa House truly believe in mental health days and understand each other completely. “I just really want to thank everybody who has helped to have the house or send their friends our way or donated or supported or even just liked our posts on Facebook,” Oxford said. “I mean, just the support that we get from our community is amazing. Keep talking about domestic violence. You know, reduce the stigma, make it a household conversation. We just try to help as many people as we can. We just want people to be compassionate.”

On March 7, 2020, Ahimsa House will be hosting its Joining Hands and Paws Celebration. The event is a celebration of the 17 years Ahimsa House has worked to help people and animals reach safety from domestic violence. For more information please visit: https://ahimsahouse.org/celebration | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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8 Things to Do in Order to Reach Financial Independence by 35

I

BY EMILIA TANEVA

f you look around social media, you’ll notice that a lot of the big-name gurus preaching about financial independence are men. But looks can be deceiving; recent studies have shown that women are actually outperforming men in terms of financial independence.

Over the last several decades there have been big pushes to get more women enrolled in college and into the workforce with equal pay — the traditional 9 to 5 lifestyle. Now women have outpaced men in terms of higher education, but financial independence requires some additional work.

time you turn 35. You may think you’re not able to get along without the extra several hundred you save every month, but with a little discipline and long-term focus, you’ll realize you can still make life work while putting a percentage of your money away. You can take the money out of the brokerage account when you need it, although you should only do so to jump-start another investment, like a rental property or a business.

Here are 8 things women should do today in order to achieve financial independence by the time they turn 35.

1. Put a portion of every paycheck into a brokerage account.

Depending on how much you make, you’ll want to put anywhere between 10 percent to 30 percent of your income away — and not into a savings account. Sure, it’s nice to have 1-3 months of living expenses stored away in cash, but that won’t make you any additional wealth. Instead, you need to open a brokerage account where stocks, bonds and mutual funds can build into a sizable, cash-generating portfolio. Placing your money into a brokerage account will give your money a real chance to grow, exponentially. A good brokerage account with index funds could grow between 6 to 8 percent every year.

Assuming you’re able to save $5,000 every year starting at age 25 and your brokerage account grows by 8 percent annually, it’s value might swell to around $83,227 by the 50

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2. Eliminate credit card debt.

Debt is one of the biggest obstacles to financial independence. Unfortunately, many people use credit cards regularly to make their purchases, which often leads to buying things they can’t afford — and then they carry that debt. Before they know it, it’s snowballed into something unmanageable.

They think they’ll just pay it off later. In the meantime, their purchases are racking up as much as 25 percent interest per year (that’s $250 for every thousand dollars). Don’t get caught in that trap. Pay off your credit card balance in full every month! The monthly interest fee you no longer have to pay can now go toward your brokerage account or other investments.

If you’re already carrying credit card debt, consider refinancing it. Some banks will give you a consolidation loan or balance transfer with 0 percent APR offer for 12-18 months.

You can use that time to pay it down as much as possible.

Since you won’t have to pay interest, you can increase your monthly payments. hers-magazine.com

+ HER BUSINESS

is true for men and women, but I think women are taken advantage of a little bit more in this area by all the advertisements we’re bombarded with for clothes, jewelry and perfume. Yes, it’s nice to have a luxury handbag for every season and a closet full of shoes but think about how many liabilities you buy on a regular basis — and how many assets you could pay for with the money you spend on them..

3. Pay off student loans — or prevent them from happening.

Student loans are another huge debt-related obstacle that can prevent you from breathing in the air of financial independence. Unfortunately, the price of a college degree has skyrocketed far beyond inflation and salary growth within the past few decades, creating a situation where many young people will be saddled with college debt until they retire. If you’re about to go to school, please do yourself a favor and look into scholarships and grants. There are plenty of them out there for women, literally thousands. It may seem like a lot of work now, but you won’t regret it later.

Do well in school, and when you get accepted into a few different colleges, consider going to the one that offers you the best scholarship — not necessarily your favorite one. Try to pick a degree and career path that will bring you into a well-paying job after school. If you have to take on student debt, having a well-paying job after college will make sure that debt was worth it — as well as give you means to pay it back. And if you’re already at the point where student debt is looming in the rearview mirror, look into consolations, or refinancing, or deferment programs that freeze the interest.

4. Buy assets, not liabilities.

Robert Kiyosaki has a very simple definition of assets and liabilities: assets put money into your pocket; liabilities take it away. Unfortunately, most people purchase liabilities, and even assume that some of them are assets. Remember, according to this definition, your house is not an asset, because you have to pay your mortgage every month. A rental property, on the other hand, is an asset, because it generates cash flow. Society today has us all caught in a game of buying expensive things to “keep up” with everyone else. This hers-magazine.com

5. Learn, learn and learn some more.

The wealthiest people read lots of books to learn how to manage money. Don’t be intimidated if there are things about entrepreneurship and wealth generation that you don’t know about. Stocks, real estate, business ownership: these things have a lot of details to them, but you can easily learn about it all. Go into the bookstore or the library and get some of the many business books that are out there already. These books are surprisingly simple and straightforward, so don’t be intimidated. Go to conferences and seminars to learn new skills. Listen to podcasts as you drive to work. Many of them are free, and it’s an easy way to fill up the down time of your morning commute with some financial education. Talk to people who own a business, flip homes or buy and sell stocks. You can never do any of these things if you don’t learn about it. In fact, there are plenty of ways to achieve financial independence you may not even know about yet. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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6. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.

Too many women are making the dangerous assumption that their 9 to 5 job is a secure path to financial independence. Unfortunately, these days, it’s often not. Companies no longer let you stay onboard for decades until they hand you a gold watch before retirement. Many companies will hire and fire as the winds of profit change. In fact, recent studies have suggested this is even more detrimental to women than men in terms of finding a new job that pays better. The average person switches career paths 5 to 7 times over the course of their life — not jobs, but career paths.

Don’t put all your eggs into one basket. Save money in a brokerage account. Get a rental property. Invest in a business.

And even when it comes to entrepreneurship and investments, don’t assume that any one thing is the golden egg.

Most entrepreneurs have multiple streams of income!

7. Create intellectual property.

Some businesses have huge startup costs, but there’s one way to generate cash flow that is ridiculously inexpensive to get started: intellectual property. This includes books, courses and subscription services. There are a number of places online where you can sell your knowledge, passion and experience — such as Udemy for courses and Amazon for books.

If you’re not sure how to put all the pieces together (design, marketing, etc.) you can always do what great entrepreneurs do and outsource it all. However, when you get there, don’t miss an easy opportunity to create ongoing cash flow. It can even open other doors — for example, if you self-publish a book, you can turn that into an opportunity to get speaking engagements.

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8. Plan for retirement.

Most Americans are not actively saving for retirement, which is a huge mistake — especially for women. The average lifespan for women in the US was almost 79 years as of 2016, and it keeps going up. That means women are living potentially decades after they retire. Even having a million dollars saved up is not enough, especially with some of the surprises that can creep up in old age (like medical costs).

Women need to plan ahead and put an additional amount of savings into retirement accounts such as 401k and IRAs. Roth IRAs are a smart savings tool for young people just starting out, because they’re likely to face higher income tax rates as they move along in their career. The total annual contribution to an IRA for 2019 is $6,000 dollars (under age 50). The Roth IRA contributions and investment earnings grow tax-free and provide tax-free income in retirement. If you max out the contribution account every year until retiring in your mid-sixties, a typical IRA might swell to around seven figures.

You’ll also want to take advantage of the 401K retirement account offered by your workplace. Most companies will match your contributions, which is essentially free money for you. With a Roth IRA and 401K growing your money through the decades, you’ll have what you need when you retire. But if you don’t plan ahead, it could be difficult to get by, because Social Security is not enough.

A final word: Financial independence is like catching a breath of fresh air all the time. Nothing beats the feeling of knowing you’re not enslaved to debt or trapped beneath the proverbial glass ceiling, or that you’ll have the money you need to enjoy life and travel when you retire. While many Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, there are a few things you can do to get out of the rat race and become a financially independent woman by the time you’re 35. hers-magazine.com

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+ HER TRAVEL

Tropical Family Travel Advice from a

Working Mom

A

BY LISA COLLUM

s the CEO of Top Score Writing, a growing writing curriculum for elementary and middle school students, and a busy mother of four, I cherish time out of the office more than ever. I’m blessed to live in the Sunshine State – where there is a beach or palm tree on every corner, so I really take advantage of spending time off exploring the various attractions Florida has to offer.

As a family, we travel to Orlando quite often — usually two or three times a year. Since it’s less than three hours away from our home, it’s an easy trip to take. We will usually hit Universal Studios and Disney World at separate times, always staying at a park hotel to enjoy the many resort perks and amenities. Getting complimentary “Fast Passes” to Universal, for example,

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is just one of the many bonuses! My kids love all that Universal and its adjoining theme park, Islands of Adventure, have to offer. There is literally something for everyone. A few of our favorite rides include the “Jimmy Fallon” ride, the “Mummy” and the “Men in Black” attractions.

While we are Disney World fans, through and through, sometimes we don’t even need to go to a park when vacationing there. My younger two are thrilled just enjoying a themed dinner or breakfast, complete with a character meet-and-greet like “Chef Mickey” in the Contemporary Hotel.

We do make it a point to get to the “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party” in the Magic Kingdom each year. It has become a family tradition! We all love it

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Allure of the Seas Cruise

Allure of the Seas Cruise

because it’s a special event, only a certain amount of tickets are sold (so the park is not packed to the gills) and the kids get to trick-or-treat throughout the park, getting handfuls of candy at each stop! To make it even more fun, we all dress up an enjoy the rides in a more private setting. It’s an incredible way to celebrate Halloween!

While I love our Orlando trips, one of my favorite ways to truly enjoy is taking a cruise. We recently did a sevenday excursion on Royal Caribbean and traveled to Labadee, Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico. While at sea, all of us except my 3-year-old daughter who stayed back with my babysitter enjoyed an aqua park activity, which was incredible.

The aqua park was in the middle of the ocean, complete with big floats, rafts and slides. One area was set up like an hers-magazine.com

obstacle course, which was a hit with my boys! To make the trip even more memorable, we happened to be traveling with four other families we know from my sons’ basketball team. There were ten kids in all. They hung out with one another every day, sleeping in different rooms most nights, and the parents enjoyed some much-needed adult time together too. Each night, we went to dinner as a group and then the adults would go out afterwards. It was one of the best trips we’ve taken!

When I want to escape with my husband, we usually jet off to Key West or spend a night or two in Miami. With four kids and a busy business at home, I need to be able to dash back if anything should arise. We are also on the road quite often with my sons’ travel basketball team so we frequently opt to make a mini vacation when we can, exploring new cities like Cleveland and Indianapolis.

Because I am always on the go, between my growing academic program, the nonprofit Coastal Middle and High School I own and operate and being a busy mom, I grasp at any time off I can to enjoy those who matter the most – my family. I’m happy to spend my selfcare, “me time” with them while we travel, explore and recharge. No plane ticket required!

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Linda Speer-Walker

Proves It’s Never Too Late to Start a Rock Band

A

BY LEN KNITTER

fter nearly 40 years of owning and managing Speer Entertainment, a booking entertainment agency, Linda Speer-Walker set out to start her own all-female rock band, the Vintage Vixens. For the past four years, they have toured through the Southeast performing classic hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Speer-Walker got her start as a booking agent in 1981 when Bill Pinkney, an original member of The Drifters, asked her to book some gigs for them in Atlanta. Bill wrote a speech for her to pitch the band to the venues. She got them the gigs, he paid her a commission and Speer-Walker was officially a booking agent. While raising four kids alone, she got her business license and created Speer Entertainment. The agency has been growing ever since.

Four years ago, Linda bought her husband, who is a drummer, bass lessons for Christmas. He suggested that they take lessons together, and this was the beginning of her passionate connection to the bass guitar and to becoming a musician. “When I was younger, I had the obligatory piano lessons, and I wish I had stuck with that” Speer-Walker said.

“I also played clarinet as a kid. My husband asked me to join 56

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in on his bass lessons. I told him I had no interest, but he kept bugging me about it. So, I said I’ll do them with you.”

Speer-Walker went out and bought a bass and began attending lessons with her husband. She says she felt the magic after her very first lesson. “Something just happened inside of me and I embraced it,” Speer-Walker said. “I loved it.

I couldn’t wait for the next lesson.”

The couple took a series of lessons, and Speer-Walker began watching YouTube videos of her favorite 1960s songs from artists like the Beatles and other British invasion bands, teaching herself how to play the songs she loved. “Then the light bulb went off in my head,” Speer-Walker said.

Instead of joining an existing band, Linda chose to start her own. To find musicians, she put advertisements in Craigslist, BandMix and other musician websites, as well as putting the word out to her network.

After holding auditions, Linda found her initial lineup of talented and experienced female musicians. Over the next few months, a couple of members had to drop out of the band, but she soon found the right replacements and they rehearsed for their first show.

“Our first gig was for the city of McDonough, and I was terrified, but it went well,” Speer-Walker said. “You just don’t hers-magazine.com

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know how that first gig is going to pan out. When you’re on stage, everyone has their eyeballs on you when you’re playing. It was really terrifying, but that terror soon turned into joy and love, and a totally rewarding feeling. It fills my heart with so much joy.”

But, it’s not always fun and joy when you’re in a band. As with any creative process, challenges arise. “We’re an estrogen driven entity, and you’re bound to have some conflict, but I think we’re all very good at conflict resolution,” Speer-Walker said. “When you have five women all together, obviously there’s going to be personal and business conflicts here or there, but we have been so fortunate that everybody comes to the table with a very musically experienced mindset.”

Speer-Walker says feelings do sometimes get hurt during talks at band meetings, but she and her bandmates always work through their conflict with maturity, driven by their mutual love for music. “We all know everything that’s being said is for the betterment of our band and our show,” Speer-Walker said. “There have been a few tears occasionally, but we love each other, we work well together and we’ve managed to get through everything.”

There’s a lot of preparation that goes into their shows. The band rehearses frequently, customizing their set-list for each show, all while pulling together a variety of stage clothes that have a colorful and unified hippie vibe from the ‘60s. They are keenly aware of the importance of the visual aspects of a performance.

“That’s one of the things that we love to do, is dress up,” Speer-Walker said. “At rehearsal we figure out what we’re going to wear, and we don’t usually dress alike, but our outfits kind of coordinate sometimes.”

Being able to play an instrument, sing, create a set list, put on a good show and visually charm the audience aren’t the only things keeping the band successful and happy.

During performances, it’s important to keep the audience entertained and moving on the dance floor, and to know when to give them a break with a slower song.

Performers have to be flexible on stage, which might call for an on the spot change in the set list in order to keep the audience engaged. “Sometimes one of our singers may take her mic off the stand and go down into the audience,” Speer-Walker said. “And if we have a song that lends itself to call-and-response, we give them an opportunity to give a shout out on the mic. So, we do try to stay cognizant of that and accommodate people. Sometimes it is a little more work when they’ve been liquored up, but it’s all in good fun.”

Everyone in the Vintage Vixens is over 50 years old, but that doesn’t stop them from rocking out and fully engaging their audiences. “I didn’t think that women at our age would have groupies, but they’re out there,” Speer-Walker said. “I’ve hers-magazine.com

had people come to me and go, ‘you know, the bass player gets all the phone numbers.’ And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, I don’t know if my husband would like to hear that, but it’s very funny.”

Speer-Walker admits she was surprised to get that kind of attention from her music. “I’ve had people ask me out and, you know, different things, and I’m like, ‘wow!’ It’s just amazing to me,” Speer-Walker said. “I haven’t had any experiences where it would require law enforcement intervention, shall we say? But a lot of surprising little elements there.”

Being in an all-female band has its challenges with venue accommodations. Sometimes the band has to change into their stage outfits and put on makeup in a cramped bathroom stall or in the back of their van. “People don’t have creature comforts for an all-girl band,” Speer-Walker said.

The band has also had to overcome gender bias from male promoters when it comes to booking shows. “We’ve had some male promoters that were surprised that we’re as good as we are. We had one promoter that hired us, and after the show he said, ‘I didn’t expect you to be as good as you were.’

He hired us to come back again and paid us more money.

That was very rewarding.”

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Linda Speer-Walker plays her bass-guitar (photo by Jazmine Speer). Linda performs with her band, the Vintage Vixens, (left to right, page 56) Amy Smith - Linda Walker - Vanessa Simon - Carol Petrovich - Janet Eller (photo by Bryson Eller Photography).

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Speer-Walker and her band have shattered expectations despite navigating a typically male-dominated field. “I think it’s a very male driven business,” Speer-Walker said. “But I’m happy to see more and more women taking the forefront. I think it’s time for equality in the music business with female musicians.”

All of the band members have shared duties, ranging from maintaining their social media presence, to running the sound system, working on the ever-changing set lists and helping with setups and breakdowns of gear and props at shows.

There’s a lot of work involved in maintaining a band and being able to deliver an entertaining and professional performance night after night. Starting a band may seem daunting, but Speer-Walker says if it feels right, do it.

“There are going to be some naysayers that are going to question your ability or maybe try to hold you back,” Speer-Walker said. “And it may be because they’re jealous of you. If you have a dream, never give up on your dream. You’re never too old to start. Just go forward and don’t let the naysayers hold you back. You can do it. You just gotta persevere and keep going and never lose sight of what your dream is.”

Having a dream is one thing, but making it happen requires a plan. “Write everything down, because these thoughts are all going to come into your head,” Speer-Walker said. “This helped me a lot. Anytime I thought of something, I always either would put it in my phone or jot it down on a on a piece of paper. I kept a journal in my car so I could write notes down.”

Speer-Walker’s advice is to set goals, write them down and stay focused toward achieving them. “This helps you set your path. You need to have an organized path to go forward, and figure out your steps,” Speer-Walker said. “Put together a business plan!”

Asking advice from more well-seasoned members of the music business is also a helpful tool in moving your music career forward. “Don’t be afraid to ask people that have gone before you and have experience of what you’re trying to do,” Speer-Walker said. “You’d be surprised how willing people might be to help you and give you a hand up. Reach out to people and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”

Above all, Speer-Walker wants women creating their own bands to know one thing: don’t let anything stop you. “The most important thing is don’t ever lose sight of what your vision is and keep going forward no matter what,” Speer-Walker said. “There’s going to be roadblocks, but you’ll figure out how to circumvent them and go forward. That’s just part of the business.”

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+ HER LESSONS

HOW TO AVOID EPIC CAREER & LIFE FAILS Success Guru Sheryl Grant Cites 3 Ways a Mental ‘Road Map’ Can Help you Reach Work and Life Goals

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or entrepreneur, professional speaker and success coach Sheryl Grant, transformational leadership through personal development and community building is the name of the game. A Ms. Olympia at over the age of 50, Grant clearly knows what it takes to realize over-and-above achievement both in life and in business. Today, through her eponymous company, she is helping CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs and other professionals master key areas of their careers and lives overall.

Her secret sauce? Grant taps into a trifecta of neuro-training, physical fitness and increased productivity to unlock personal ambition, revenue potential and self-confidence. She urges that success-minded people must aspire to be F.I.T., heavily leaning on “Faith, Intuition and Tenacity” to reach their goals.

“F.I.T. cultivates your inner ability to push through any of life’s perceived obstacles, break through barriers and manifest your heart’s dreams and desires,” Grant explains. “Whether you seek a job promotion, new business endeavor or a healthier body, F.I.T. helps establish a mind-set and emotional framework that will nurture, uplift and inspire these and other areas of your life.”

A key area of Grant’s various F.I.T. presentations and webinars is a focus on developing mental strength through neuro-training, whereby she offers a variety of tactical techniques. With this having piqued my curiosity, I recently connected with Grant for insight on some of her mind-bolstering methodologies that, as Grant explains, can help us cultivate a greater awareness of who we are, develop a road map of where we need and want to go, and conceptualize how we intend to get there:

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1. Start a Dialogue with Yourself.

Begin by asking yourself some basic questions: Who are you? What are you good at? What do people you care about see in you? When have you felt the most alive? What can you learn from others who have a strong purpose and who are inspirational to you? Such self-awareness fosters drive, confidence and self-esteem that can transform you into an unstoppable force,—giving you the strength to persist...even through failure and adversity. You’ll likely be happier, too, and an inspiration to those around you.

2. Identify ALL of Your Inner Strengths. When people are living in their “sweet spot,” they are more productive and naturally add value to the world around them. Accordingly, this “mode” is when people also tend to make more money! What are the things you’ve always been good at? What motivates and inspires you? Perhaps it’s things that come naturally to you, to the point that you wonder why others struggle in the same area? While passion can also certainly blossom from areas in which you aren’t naturally talented, Grant’s personal and professional experiences have shown that we rarely aspire toward ambitions for which we have no natural talent to achieve. As civil rights leader Howard Thurman once wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive, then go do that.

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Indeed they do.

3. Know Where You Add Value. Doing work that you’re good at, but which holds no pas-sion for you, is not a pathway to fulfilment. When we know our greatest strengths and where we as individuals can add the most value, we can better

focus on the opportuni-ties, roles and career paths in areas where success will likely occur. These are usually the same areas where a person finds the greatest sense of accomplishment and contri-bution. All too often we undervalue our strengths, skills and the expertise that we naturally acquire over time. A great way to discover this for ourselves is to discern what we’re equipped to help solve in the workplace, career, organization or industry. Also, uncover-ing what problems we enjoy solving, and what problems we feel passionate about at-tempting to solve.

The answers to these questions can help people focus and develop a much clearer series of intentions that are based on natural strengths and those things one is innately good at rather than trying to bolster or eliminate weaknesses.

Through overcoming challenges in multiple areas in her life helped by employing the strategies above, Grant says she quickly learned that her biggest difficulty was not the obstacles in front of her, but rather the lack of belief and trust in herself. By her shifting from a focus on fear and limitations to a focus on empowerment fueled by faith, intuition, and tenacity (F.I.T.), she reached greater heights than ever before...and continues to do so.

Grant also conveyed her belief that, ultimately, unlocking one’s inner presence makes leaders the best businesspeople and human beings that they can be. Grant suffered in her own life until she established, and wholeheartedly practiced her F.I.T. philosophy. In doing so, she not only realized extreme changes but also actually enjoyed the process... and the people around her en-joyed her more as welI.

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Female Musicians of the 2010s, A Playlist KATIE MCKINSTRY

Over the last decade, women have been dominating the music scene. Several huge stars have arisen from this decade that will be forever remembered, like Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Kesha. Women made waves in many genres this year, from pop to indie to country. Here are some of our favorite female written songs of the 2010s.

Noah Cyrus, “July”

Following her family’s lead, Noah has dropped several singles over the past few years. Recently charting with “July” and “Lonely.”

Lizzo, “Truth Hurts”

Lizzo took the world by storm with her single “Truth Hurts.”

This sleeper hit was originally recorded in 2016, but it exploded in 2019.

Zella Day, “Man on the Moon”

Don’t sleep on Zella Day, if you haven’t heard “Man on the Moon.” It will be your next feel good song for the rest of forever.

Billie Eilish, “Bad Guy”

Bille came onto the scene over the past few years, and she has popped off in the alt-pop genre at only 17 years old.

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Taylor Swift, “Blank Space”

We had to include Taylor on this list, for obvious reasons.

She has been one of the most anticipated artists of the decade! hers-magazine.com

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Miley Cyrus, “Wrecking Ball”

Who can forget Miley Cyrus’ hit song “Wrecking Ball?” She completely wrecked the internet with this one.

Ariana Grande, “Thank U, Next”

Ariana named dropped every one of her ex-boyfriends in this bop, including a tribute to the late Mac Miller. If you didn’t bop to this song at the end of 2018, what were you doing?

Ke$ha, “We R Who We R”

Ke$ha rocked our worlds in early 2010 and has since grown to be an advocate for women who have faced harassment.

She’s a warrior, and she still inspires us with her music.

Beyoncé, “Sandcastles”

“Lemonade” was probably the MOST anticipated album of the decade. I mean, it’s Beyoncé. What else would you expect from this absolute icon?

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Florence + The Machine, “Dog Days”

Florence Welch has inspired us for decades, and we can’t believe it hasn’t been ten whole years since “Dog Days” came out!

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YouTuber

NikkiVegan on

HOW TO STICK TO YOUR VEGAN NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

BY GABBY DANCE

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f your New Year’s resolution was to go vegan, you’re not alone. The end of the 2010s saw the rise of meat-free diets, with notoriously carnivorous chains like Burger King and Wendy’s even hopping in on the plant-based trend. Now may seem like the perfect time to take the plunge into a vegan lifestyle, but the idea can seem overwhelming.

That’s why YouTubers like Nicole Vranjican, known online as NikkiVegan, are working to make that transition easier for prospective vegans and vegetarians.

Vranjican recently celebrated her fourth vegan anniversary, but the process wasn’t an overnight switch. “I went vegan really slowly,” Vranjican said. “I also didn’t have any intention of going fully vegan, I’ve always been a foodie and someone who likes to travel. I thought that part of that and part of really enjoying life was being able to eat all of the incredible things… like cheese and chocolate.”

Then, she became a fan of a community of vegan, Australian girls on YouTube — overflowing with glowing women eating big portions of vibrant, healthy foods. “They were talking about eating until you’re truly satisfied,” Vranjican said. “They talked about food in a way that made it seem really exciting and as a source of energy and something to be excited about, instead of something to fear or restrict,” she said. “That had kind of always been my relationship with food. I always loved it and wanted to eat a lot of it, but then I always felt guilty like I was overeating or that I should try to eat less or fewer carbs. These girls had absolutely the opposite message, and I found that really appealing and attractive.”

As someone who had an eating disorder at only 12 years old, she always had a love/hate relationship with food. She credits a vegan diet as the best way for her to change that. “I think it really helped heal my relationship with food because it helped me trust my body and feel like food wasn’t the enemy,” Vranjican said. “It wasn’t something that was going to make me gain weight or something that I should be afraid of.”

Not only did going vegan help her health-wise, it brought her a sense of peace to cut out animal products once she researched the ethical side of veganism. “I would say that it makes you feel really good physically, but also emotionally. I think there’s something really special that happens when how you feel on the inside aligns your actions. What’s in your heart aligns with what’s on your plate.”

For Vranjican, she recommends that people start their vegan journey the same way she did — with breakfast. From there, she recommends finding vegan alternatives for your favorite non-vegan foods. “I would say if you are someone who loves tacos and cheeseburgers and lasagna, don’t just hers-magazine.com

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immediately jump to eating salad,” Vranjican said. “Find a vegan alternative for that. There are so many recipes online, you can still eat in a way that feels like you and that feels normal, just with the swap. I would recommend focusing on one thing at a time and trying to make it fun. So, maybe you experiment with finding the best plant-based milk alternative or the best vegan cheese.”

She credits YouTube as a great resource for how to make the switch. “There are resources like grocery hauls, which are literally what people buy at the grocery store and how they make it, and ‘What I Eat in a Day’ videos are really helpful. YouTubers in general love answering questions about that kind of stuff.”

She has her own YouTube channel as well as a collaborative talk show style channel called The Vegan View with two other vegan YouTubers. Both are hearty resources for recipes, vegan news, product reviews and meal inspiration.

On her personal channel, she has a segment called “Make this Tonight,” where she posts easy recipes. One of her fa| Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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vorites is her recipe for potato taquitos. “It’s something that vegans and non-vegans really have seemed to appreciate,” Vranjican said. “It’s easy to make, and it’s just really hearty, cozy and flavorful.”

Resources online and vegan options in restaurants only continue to grow as the movement does. In the next decade, Vranjican expects vegan lifestyles to become more normalized. “I think veganism is becoming less exclusive.

Even though the term ‘vegan’ has a very special meaning for people, and it’s a very specific thing, I think the more people eating more vegan food is the ultimate goal of the vegan movement. Even if someone’s not fully plant based or fully vegan, the impact that they have by reducing the amount of animal products that they consume is huge. I think it’s becoming a more and more inclusive space.”

A common misconception of veganism is that everyone looks and acts a certain way — the typical hippie stereotype.

Vranjican and other YouTubers are trying to break down that misconception to show that anyone can participate. “I think there’s this sort of old archetype of what a vegan is.

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[People think] that you have to be a hippie and an animal lover or nature lover, or someone who really likes vegetables and does yoga. All those things are great and there are vegans who fit that bill, but there are so many different ways to be vegan. There’s no right way to be vegan, and anybody can do it.” hers-magazine.com

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How to Recover from Holiday Burnout & Rejuvenate Health in the New Year

BY JENNIFER MARCENELLE

Feeling burned out? You’re not alone. Burnout is a growing mental health problem in America that was classified as an official medical condition by the World Health Organization last year. Burnout can lead to an assortment of health and wellness issues, and it’s consistently at an all-time high this time of the year.

After the holidays we feel mentally, physically and emotionally drained.

It’s understandable why our energy levels are depleted. The festive season brings an overwhelming array of demands from shopping, baking, decorating and entertaining to traveling and excessive eating and drinking. With so many things depleting your energy, it is important that you take time to recharge so you can sustain mental, emotional and physical health.

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The new year is a fantastic opportunity to rejuvenate your mind and body. Here are some ideas to get you started: 1.Maintain Balance We all know diet, exercise, sleep, and hydration are paramount to health. Like most things in life, moderation is key. It is important to balance indulgences with a bit of physical activity, nutritious food and a lot of water. Filling your body with fresh whole food will fuel your energy. It might sound counterintuitive, but expending energy through exercise will help too.

2. Prioritize Mindfulness Recovering from holiday burnout also starts with mindfulness. Take a few minutes out of your day to clarify your intentions and be in the moment.

Engage in thoughtful activities like meditating, yoga, journaling or anything else that helps exude a calm and controlled “you.”

3. Cleanse your Space A key component to busting the holiday blues is to remember to keep your energy field clear. A cheap and easy way to do this is to burn incense in your home or office. White sage clears negative energy, Palo Santo uplifts your emotions and sandalwood keeps your space clean and clear even while you’re away for the day.

4. Start a Routine Whether you’re a resolution maker or not, the new year is a clean slate and a great chance to develop healthy habits. What’s important is that your goals are realistic and attainable. Find a routine that works for you and stick with it. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2020.

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+ HER BOOKS

Book Review: ‘Grabbing Lightning’ The Messy Quest for an Extraordinary Love

BY KATIEE MCKINSTRY

The authors of “Executive in Passage,” Donald and Paige Marris, are bringing the reader a story of incredible strength and love in “Grabbing Lightning.” This memoir explores the idea that true, passionate love exists, and to hold on to it with all you can.

The kind of love that surpasses what we normally experience.

As you open the memoir, there is a quote from Gabriel Marcel that truly sums up the theme of the book. “You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die,” Marcel said.

The story follows an ad executive at a dark point in his career when he has an out-of-body experience. This epiphany disrupts his entire world, and he clearly sees how his past choices have led him down this path. Thus, he vows to expierence live in a new way, and love deeper than he ever has.

To have extraordinary love, it takes work and patience. This story highlights the struggles and life lessons that one goes through in order to love themselves. By loving themselves, they are able to accept love from others, and give love to them as well. The memoir illuminates the hard part of life and of love, that bring the reader on a messy quest to get there.

This memoir is refreshing, because it is not just the basic cheesy love story. There are trials and tribulations, and the once powerful ad executive gives up his entire life to pursue happiness and love. The point of view is relatable and not preachy. What makes it so raw and real is how uniquely messy it is, such as life. The chapters are structured into short bits with lessons at the end, which create a chopped effect that really lets you delve deeper into the themes of the memoir. It does not present as a self-help book, but rather a deeper love story.

This memoir is about following your inner voice. What is the world trying to tell you? Sometimes to find the deepest, truest love, you must let go of what you think you want. This memoir is elegantly written and reads as a fiction novel as you follow their beautiful love story.

Paige and Don now dedicate their lives to helping their clients experience messy, extraordinary love in their relationships. They currently reside in Los Angeles.

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Fierce Female Characters of the 2010s Who Inspire Us WENDY PHAN

Young girls around the world need strong female characters to look up to — strong females that fight for themselves and their loved ones and heroines that young girls can strive to be when they grow up.

A strong female lead is someone who is not only fierce, but also vulnerable and confident despite her flaws. She has a story goal, she changes the course of the story’s journey, and she does not exist to support any other character but herself. Strength comes from struggle and overcoming it and that’s what these heroines did.

Hermione Granger

Hermione Granger is one of the most fearless, determined, intelligent and compassionate characters the wizarding world has witnessed. What makes her important and strong is that Granger is very logical — a bookworm — and she’s goal-driven. She may be a know it all, a high achiever and often hardheaded, but she is unafraid to disagree with others, she is independent, and she only relies on herself.

She’s not a damsel in distress. She always saves her friends Ron Weasley and Harry Potter when they are in trouble.

She’s loyal to her best friends and they can always count on her. Granger is an inspiration to a lot of young girls around the world. Granger is the ultimate wizard that Hogwarts is fortunate to have.

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Wonder Woman

Amazonian warrior Wonder Woman is immortal, compassionate, fearless and competitive. Also known as Princess Diana, she tries her best to avoid conflict unless she is pressed to fight. She is also focused on her objectives. Diana might be naive and unaware of basic human life, but she is familiar with warfare. Her grasp on humanity is dim, but her desire to fight for love and righteousness for humanity is what makes her strong. When Diana left the island she grew up on, she embarked on a mission she knew would be dangerous. She also knew she couldn’t return home. She trusts her gut feeling. Taking a leap of faith may be terrifying but there’s no reason to let fear hold you back from your full potential.

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Elastigirl AKA Mrs. Incredible

Elastigirl is not only a superhero, she is also a mother finding an equilibrium between her work life and her family.

Elastigirl shows us that she wants to save the world, but at the same time, she feels the weight of responsibilities when she leaves her family at home. Moms want to feel like they can save the world, but they also know that their families need them the most. She enjoys being a mother and she knows that being a mother is one of the hardest tasks a woman has to juggle. You are always constantly thinking about your family and how you never want to disappoint them. Elastigirl always preaches about coming together as a unit and that family is stronger when everyone fights together. She never let fame get to her head because family is the most important aspect of her life.

Captain Marvel AKA Carol Danvers

Captain Marvel or Carol Danvers is the ultimate superhuman. She’s assertive, observant and goal driven. Not only are we now seeing women in the air force, but we also see them working in space programs dominated by men. Little girls look up to strong women who dominate and create something for themselves. This goes to show that women can be anything such as CEOs, politicians, soldiers, etc. and still be heroic at their jobs. Although Captain Marvel has split personalities of being a superhero and a pilot, she still remains a powerhouse hero. She has faith in herself and she trusts her gut feelings enough to know what she needs to do. hers-magazine.com

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen, the “girl on fire” who started a revolution to overthrow the capital and succeeded. Everdeen is loyal, fearless and she values family over everything. With four words that struck District 12, “I volunteer as tribute!” Everdeen took her sisters place in the Hunger Games to show us family comes first. Everdeen stands for hope and change, she was just a regular girl from District 12 who stood up for what she believed in. She inspired change and the rest of the districts followed her lead. Everdeen shows us that if you want change, you have to fight for what you believe in.

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SYLEENA JOHNSON Navigates the Ups and Downs of the Music Industry on 10th Studio Album

BY MELISSA LAWRENCE

Syleena Johnson, the famous voice singing that catchy hook on “All Falls Down”

by Kanye West, gave us a transparent look into her career, the music industry, her philosophies and her personal life. But she doesn’t want to be known for that Grammy nominated hook alone, her 10th studio album “Woman,” is in the works and its message of women empowerment hopes to evoke an emotional response from audiences.

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efore Johnson became a singer known for her soulful and raspy voice, she grew up listening to almost every soul artist you can think of. The deep-rooted influences of the genre show up in all of her music. During the song writing process, Johnson drew from multiple real-life experiences, like being a mother, a wife and a TV show host.

Working alongside names like Musiq Soulchild and friend Kanye West, Johnson has a number of stories from her long-winded career as a musician. She remembers West’s album “The College Dropout” was due that night and he wanted to add in a feature by her. When West asked her to jump into the studio next door to hers, face to face with deadline pressure, Johnson dived right in to help.

Encouraging her to “do her own thing to it,” and put her own spin on the song, she made it her own. “To know that something I that I did, you know I’ve had this entire career of all these albums and all these records, you work so hard and the one small thing that you do just out of love and just out of friendship...”

Johnson said. “Because it wasn’t like ‘Oh, I need to get our contracts together before I get in there,’ he was like ‘Hey, Syleena. I need you to try the hook.’ I was like ‘Okay’ you know… something you just do because that’s your guy, that’s your friend...that makes the biggest impact.”

Johnson says R&B has the ability to bring artists together, even during tough times. The collaborations on her latest album celebrate her belief that everyone needs each other to lean on when life gets hard. While there are men featured on her album, “Woman” mainly focuses on women’s vocalization and recognition — something she believes the music industry is currently | HERS Ma gazi ne | Januar y 2020 |

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craving. “What I’ve witnessed in America right now is what women are dealing with. It saddens me, it’s outrageous.” Johnson said. “So I just feel like we didn’t have anything dedicated to us, music-wise, and anything to give from our perspective from our point-of-view on how we view things as far as love is concerned; love for others, love for ourselves, love for this world… I just think this album is really, really important for right now, just to give women self-esteem, and to give women something to be proud of.”

On the album, Johnson opens up about the music industry and what it can turn people into at times, like her estranged relationship with her father — who is also a musician. The artist has seen the worst of it all, with R. Kelly, the writer and producer of her song “I Am Your Woman,” having been accused of abusing young women and girls. For this interview, she preferred not to comment on the subject, but she has commented in past interviews that she was unaware of his actions at the time. She told Billboard that she feels uncomfortable ever singing the song again.

Luckily, her understanding of the industry has helped her navigate its ups and downs. The more aware she is of her platform, the more determined she is to use it for good. She refers to her albums as chapters, but at some point in life, she says, you have to close the book and start a new one.

When you sit down to listen to Johnson’s new album, the messages embedded within her melodic vocals transform the musical experience beyond just listening. It’s something you take in lyric by lyric. Johnson’s entire heart can be heard in this album, and the songs encourage self-love and empowerment.

“Woman” will available on iTunes on Jan. 31, 2020. hers-magazine.com

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+ HER PERSONAL GROWTH

Comfort vs. Destiny

BY MELISSA LAWRENCE

L

ife is a miniscule word for the amount of true depth it holds. This little four letter word symbolizes a series of everchanging seasons that we all go through. As individuals, our seasons differ from one person to the next. However, have you ever felt stuck in one? It’s this feeling of near satisfaction with simultaneous inadequacy. You may feel like you’re in the perfect spot, but at the same time you may just be comfortable.

Now, this doesn’t go to say that you can’t be satisfied wherever you are, but have you truly placed all your goals out for life on a table and asked yourself if you’ve reached them? In this life, it can sometimes be easy to get blinded by comfort if you aren’t keeping your eyes on the prize.

Sometimes we experience stand-still traffic within our lives due to sacrifices we’ve made for others, a hiccup from a few years back, or we’re too busy focusing on things that aren’t important.

These events are natural, and you can’t beat yourself up if they’ve happened a few times. However, it’s important to recognize and analyze how that stagnant movement, or no movement at all really makes you feel. Yes, you. There is a little “I” in life, and it seems intimidating to focus on and push the one thing you live with every day; yourself. For some reason, most of us are masters at pushing people to their greatest potential in life; but we all fall short when it comes to taking our own advice.

What would your life look like if as soon as you feel yourself getting comfortable, you pushed yourself outside of that comfort zone? Again, this is a space where you can be grateful for what you have and experience ambition at the same time.

Honestly, most people believe that their dreams are too big for them. But how can you produce something in your mind that can’t come to fruition to some extent? All the obstacles we place in front of our goals are the things that keep us stuck are feelings of doubt, feelings of it being too late, or feelings of it being too unrealistic.

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Don’t let your large dreams intimidate you; instead take a breath. Go back to the table, and lay out those goals, as crazy as they may seem. Factoring in where you are in life at this moment can be beneficial in terms of planning accordingly, but detrimental if you let it cloud your judgement in terms of thinking your time has passed.

One of our favorite and inspiring actresses, Taraji P. Henson, might have one of the most quintessential examples of this situation. She has shared her story multiple times about leaving her job in Washington D.C. to pursue a career in Hollywood with her son at the age of 26 and $700 in her pocket. The inspiration partially came from her father who also believed in her destiny.

Destiny may be a word even more intimidating than life, but if you knew how in control you were, you might not feel so stuck! The obstacles don’t disappear, but your strength can reappear and grow with each one that comes your way. You deserve the most out of life, and hours are merely unguaranteed tics on a clock. Stretch yourself and let go of fears that prevent you from true definition of success. This success is ruled by your definition, not society’s.

As children, the phrase “you can be anything you want to be” is said so often, that we may have begun to take it for granted. Maybe we should all go back and try to understand the superiority that lies within the imagination of a child.

If we pair that with the life lessons we’ve learned already and transform it into the ability to effectively navigate and climb through life and all its negative thoughts, doubts, stereotypes, etc. we could all truly be anything we want to be; and it wouldn’t sound so cliché the second time around.

What does your life represent? Does it represent your heart and mind; the things you’re truly passionate about?

You owe it to yourself to find these answers. Don’t get stuck.

Don’t get comfortable in stand-still traffic. If that little feeling is there, conquer it, and find out what season you might be stepping into next! hers-magazine.com

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+ HER LOVE

The 36 Questions

that Might Turn Your Tinder Date into the

Love of Your Life

BY AUTUMN MORRIS

The modern dating scene is exhausting and frustrating. Why? Not because there aren’t plenty of singles out there ready to mingle, but because we aren’t finding plenty of genuine connections with these eligible lovers.

W

e are living in the day of swipe culture.

Idealistically, we’d find the love of our lives while swiping right on Tinder or Bumble, we’ll meet up with our date in person, we will be perfect for each other and we will live happily ever after. But we all know that’s usually not how it goes. We match, we meet, and everything after that is a fast ride to rock bottom. It’s becomes one dry date after another of, asking the same tired questions like “what Netflix shows are you watching?” or “are you a cat or dog person?” I don’t know 74

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about you, but I personally would like to walk away from a date without feeling hopeless or feeling the subtle need to block him. So, how do we change this narrative? How can we ensure our dates are hook-line-and-sinker and we don’t have to waste our time anymore? Enter psychology.

Arthur Aron, a psychologist, proposed there is a set of 36 questions that, when asked in chronological order, can leave you feeling a closeness that can mimick magnetism towards a perfect stranger. Crazy, right? I was skeptical at first, too — until I tried it. I was on the typical first date, watching our hers-magazine.com

initial connection fizzle as small talk struggled to occupy the air and I made a bold move: I brought out the questions and gave it a go…AND IT WORKED. By the end of the date I felt empowered but also in sync with my date, like we had known each other for years and we were FINALLY catching up. It was a new, refreshing, and magnetic experience. Thank you, 36 questions of love, for saving my date.

This psychological discovery means that, armed with these questions, YOU could potentially walk out of your next dinner date with not only a satisfied stomach, but also with the potential love of your life. No more small talk, but rather, juicy, informative, and magnetic conversations that create space for real romantic connections.

So how do these questions work? The idea is that vulnerability fuels love. The questions start off super simple, non-intrusive, yet intriguing and become more personal, revealing, and vulnerable over time. It’s proven that “intense, escalated, reciprocated vulnerability” creates a closeness like no other, providing the perfect environment for genuine pair-bonding. You’re able to transition from simple questions like, “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you choose as a dinner guest” to increasingly more vigorous questions such as “If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?”

Intense, I know, but it’s this intensity that makes these questions effective. Trust me, when you find yourself feeling increasingly more enchanted by your date as you navigate these questions together, you’ll thank me. So, the choice is yours, on your next Tinder date, will you fumble through small talk and hope for the best, or will you be using the 36 questions of love?

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? 4. What would constitute a “perfect” date for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

8. Name three things you and your date appear to have in common.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

11. Take four minutes and tell your date your life story in as much detail as possible. hers-magazine.com

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

16. What do you value most in a friendship?

17. What is your most treasured memory?

18. What is your most terrible memory?

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are living?

Why? 20. What does friendship mean to you?

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your date. Share a total of five items.

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling ___.”

26. Complete this sentence, “I wish I had someone with whom I could share ___.”

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your date, please share what would be important for them to know.

28. Tell your date what you like about them. Be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

29. Share with your date an embarrassing moment in your life.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

31. Tell your date something that you like about them already.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire.

After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save one item. What would it be and why?

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? 36. Share a personal problem and ask your date’s advice on how they might handle it. Also, ask your date to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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HOW TO

MANIFEST YOUR DREAMS

in 2020

BY KATIEE MCKINSTRY

Last year, the word “manifestation” was thrown around like crazy, but what does it really mean? Manifesting, put simply, is the idea that you can create the life you want. You are powerful and able to achieve anything your heart desires. So, how do we do it?

K

nowing what you want is the first step. What are your goals and life aspirations? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? That can be scary, but it is important to know what you want in life, even if it’s something as simple as a bag of popcorn. Literally. You can decide you want to eat a bag of popcorn and eventually you will have it in your life. What you put out into the world; you will receive back to you.

The second step in changing your mindset. If you are going to sleep every night with negativity in your heart, that is what you will project out into the world the next day.

Before you fall asleep, ask for what you want, or for clarity on how to get there. When negative things happen in your daily life, try to spin them into something positive. Put love out into the universe, and you will get that love back.

Negative self-talk is what universally holds us back as humans. In order to manifest our dreams, we cannot stand in our own way. Being positive is key. Self-doubt causes so much negativity, and even if you’re saying all the right things you could be thinking another. Reprogram the way you talk to yourself. It’s easier said than done for sure, but even just

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changing one negative thought into a positive one can open a door you didn’t even know was there.

Once you have the right mindset, it’s time to take things into the physical plane. Grab a notebook, your phone or your laptop. Jot down these five things: °Admit what you want, and why you want it. How does what you want support you? °Believe you are worthy of what you want. Tell yourself you are worthy. °Ask (the universe, God, etc) for what you want. °Stay aligned with your values. What are they? °Who could be a good mentor or community to join to achieve what you want?

This method comes from Shannon Alego, who has a famous manifestation podcast. Once you bring in your manifestations from the mental to the physical, they find a home in the world around you. Writing things down is also a great way to remember them. You can go back to these pages when you feel lost or unworthy. Remember you are worthy of your dreams. You can change your reality in an instant if you have goals in mind.

At the core of manifestation, it is simply believing in yourself. Knowing what you want and going after it. It takes work. If you are constantly putting yourself down and not putting in the work, you won’t get very far. A huge component of manifesting is trust. Trust the universe has a plan and believe that whatever is happening now is what was supposed to be. Everything happens for a reason; to teach you a lesson, to propel you forward. Trusting that is key to believing yourself and manifesting your dreams.

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+ HER WELLNESS

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+ HER WELLNESS

HOW PSYCHIC

FIA JOHANSSON USES HER POWER FOR GOOD

W

KATIEE MCKINSTRY

hen Fia Johansson was only 7 years old, she says she had her first vision of the future.

A friend was leaving her house, and she told them to heed a very specific warning.

“I told her, ‘don’t, because you’re going to have a car crash,’” Johansson said. “Later our phone rang and [they] mentioned they had the car crash that I saw three hours before.”

Now, Johansson is a psychic, medium, life coach, author, movie producer and more. With more than one million fans following her life on Instagram, she has created a space full of love and light.

There are two sides to every person, and Fia Johansson is no exception. “You have Fia, and then you have Fia,” Johansson said.

By day, Johansson is a life, finance and business coach — that’s Fia. By night, she’s a medium, psychic and healer — that’s Fia Fia, the natural version of herself. Johansson connects with the dead, sees colors and numbers and often works with law enforcement to help solve cold cases.

Johansson has been a practicing psychic medium, clinical hypnotherapist, and holistic healer for over 25 years.

Called the “Persian Medium,” Johansson says that, at first, her abilities were confusing and scary. She had to learn and understand the difference between being psychic and a medium. Mediums can connect with the dead, while psychics can see colors, numbers and the future. She says colors have meaning and provide a message.

She uses her ability to help people find closure after tragically losing loved ones and help those who need justice.

Johansson is proud of her abilities because she feels her calling is to help people. “This is what I’m proud of,” Johansson said. “I can feel things no one else can.” hers-magazine.com

Similarly, in her daily life and career, Johansson focuses on helping others. The psychic recently co-wrote a book called “Recoding Your Brain for A Better Life.” The book is centered around the internal battle of the conscious versus subconscious and how to rewire your thoughts to achieve your dreams. Johansson believes that by changing your negative thoughts into positive ones, you can shift the energy around you to enable you to become whatever you want in life.

“So basically, your subconscious is just going to go through this and search because the system in your subconscious is like a machine. It’s like a computer,” Johansson said.

“When you are sleeping, it’s just this little muscle in your head. It will research about anything and everything you are telling to yourself and others about yourself. And that will bring and package them for you. Right after.”

The conscious and subconscious are all about energies, according to Johansson. “People who believe in their energies can really get somewhere,” Johansson said. She says the subconscious is working like crazy to put out energy into the world. Energy can change in a second by working with the subconscious. Johansson’s fans often refer to her as the “Subconscious Mind Surgeon.”

So, how do you re-wire the brain to work with your subconscious? To Johansson, the key is letting go. As humans, we want to be happy in life in order to sleep tight.

To become happy, we have to let go of the things that are holding us back in life.

“All women should let go of everything that’s holding us back from ourselves,” Johansson said.

Patterns are what control us, and what we cannot let go of. Johansson gave the example of women choosing the same men to date. The men may look different, sound different and have a different name, but they are ultimately | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e |

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the same person. Johansson believes that women fall into this pattern, because they are unwilling to let go of what has happened to them in their past. The conscious mind is thinking of the bad experiences, and the subconscious mind is putting that energy back out into the world. Thus, the key to moving on is letting go.

Letting go can also help for entrepreneurs in business. A huge part of Johansson’s coaching career is working with women and people in business who want to grow.

Johansson helps them prosper, and often invests in their ideas. “If you don’t have quality, you won’t bring quantity to your life,” Johansson said. “Money is energy. Money flows. It’s the quality that brings happiness in business and in life.”

On Johansson’s website, she has the words “I am powerful” written across the front page. The psychic says that “I am” is one of the most powerful phrases anyone can use to recode their brain or re-wire the subconscious. “‘I am’ is a very important word,” Johansson said. “When you say it, you give yourself a magical power. ‘I am’ is a code, it means you. You are telling yourself who you are. You tie the universe to yourself to become what you are, bringing happiness to the earth and yourself.”

Johansson’s advice is to look at yourself in the mirror every morning when you wake up. She says to look into your eyes, particularly the left one, and say “I am…” Fill in the blank. That’s why Johansson uses “I am powerful” on her website, because she knows she is.

The psychic also says that if you’re confused and looking for answers, your subconscious will give them to you. Ten minutes before you go to bed, ask the universe for what you want clarity on. Do not fall asleep with the TV on, because it messes with your subconscious. In the morning, you’ll have your answer. “My purpose is helping others,” Johansson said. “I have a gift, and I have to deliver it. That’s what I do.”

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+ HER BOOKS

Book Review: ‘Being Mostly Cat’

BY KATIEE MCKINSTRY

“Being Mostly Cat” is the sweetest little book illustrated by Tracey Grist, who uses cat illustrations to give “cat tips” that help you “sit on the face of anxiety.” Anyone who suffers with anxiety would love this book because the illustrations are a cheerful way to address a much larger, darker problem.

Grist starts by sharing insight into why she wrote the book. Her friend, Marjo Cooper, encouraged her to pursue her passions and that it would be therapeutic. “Being Mostly Cat” is the result of that.

“In this book, there are cat-trampled note pages for you to write down your thoughts, feelings, goals and dreams,” Grist said. “It has 52 illustrations so you can focus on a theme a week if that suits you. The tasks are easy to begin with, gently nudging you in the process.”

The books illustrations begin as rituals for self-care when you are feeling anxious. Some reoccurring themes across the pages are about getting enough sleep, enough food and staying hydrated. “If you are addressing anxiety, good sleep is of key importance,” Grist said. “Food is just as important.”

Then the book moved to more deeper levels.

Images that say, “if you feel miserable, it will pass” and “leave the past behind” go by as you flip through the pages. All the while, depicting an adorable cat to help get you through whatever trying time you may be in.

As you near the end of the book, more positive messages arise about loving yourself and your body.

Embracing your uniqueness and being proud of yourself is one of Grist’s mantras throughout the book, especially at the end. “When you feel below par, you have your own top tips for ‘nailing it’, right on the pugly face of your anxiety,” Grist said.

If you’re someone that suffers with anxiety, this little book is extremely touching. It is filled with lessons on loving yourself, and not being too hard on yourself when facing mental health issues. The kitten is small, but mighty. A forced to be reckoned with, and so are you. hers-magazine.com

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+ HER BEAUTY

ALLEYOOP

is the Women Powered Brand Simplifying the Way We Approach Beauty

K

BY BRITTANY MAHER

eeping up with today’s beauty world can be daunting. It’s a challenge trying to navigate an already oversaturated market when there’s constantly new products, new techniques and new steps to add to our beauty routines.

While growing her career and simultaneously growing wary of feeling this pressure to keep up with the beauty industry, Leila Kashani, founder and CEO of Alleyoop, sought out a way to simplify beauty — by creating her own products. “We’re busier than ever before, but the amount of work that it takes to keep up with our beauty is taking up more time,” Kashani said. “So, I really wanted to develop a brand that kept up with us.”

It began when Kashani noticed on social media that women’s beauty routines were becoming longer and longer.

“It became the seven-step morning routines to 14-step beauty routines, and I was just like, wait a minute... I need to stop getting sucked into this world,” Kashani said. “I need to

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focus on my life and my future.”

Kashani wanted to know if women were experiencing the same pressures. So, she created a Slack channel where women sounded off on their gripes with the beauty world and talked about what they, as consumers, actually wanted from their products. “I invited a group of women to help me kind of think about it in a way that involved more people and kind of made sure that everything we were creating was something that people would actually use,” Kashani said.

It turns out, she wasn’t the only one who felt overwhelmed by the vast beauty world. With this in mind, Kashani hyper-focused on her problem-solving skills and got to work. “I wished someone could just make this much more simple for me,” Kashani said, “And so I was like, ‘I can make it much more simple for me.’”

Created with the busy modern woman in mind and with a mission to simplify our ever-growing beauty routines, Alleyoop was born. Kashani and her team designed travel hers-magazine.com

sized, vegan beauty products as multitasking tools — think along the lines of a swiss army knife but for makeup and body care. “Every industry has figured out a way to get us our time back, except for the beauty and body care industry,” Kashani said. “And so, I really wanted to create a brand that kept up with us, that was encouraging us to get outside and away from our beauty counters and focus on the things that matter.”

As a self-proclaimed workaholic and mother of a 1-year-old child, Kashani’s products are made with the lifestyle of the busy woman in mind. Her products aren’t just beauty shortcuts; they aim to ease the daily hiccups of women’s busy lives. “I have a one-year-old, so I’m thinking about saving my time,” Kashani said.

Before she was a mom and CEO, Kashani was a busy twenty-something hustling to build her career, working, volunteering, dating, maintaining a personal life and going to events. She says her products would have come in handy during that always-on-the-go time of her life. The original idea for the need of Alleyoop-like products came to her during that time in her life. “I really could have used all of our products back then,” Kashani said. “It would have allowed me to have more flexibility in my schedule to not have to stop in my apartment before I wanted to go out at night. I could have just gone straight from work to an event and felt fine about it.”

Leaning into what women want and need from beauty products has been important in the creation of her brand. She still consults with a community of women to help develop products for Alleyoop. “We found through the research of asking these women, [many women] buy anywhere between 10 to 15 different colors of lipsticks and lip products [and end up] really only gravitating to one to three of those colors throughout the year,” Kashani said.

“So, we’re buying way more than what we need. And so, having this community of women is really teaching me the hers-magazine.com

behaviors of where else we are salting as a society and what else we are being pressured to do that we shouldn’t be doing, or where we’re spending where we shouldn’t be — it has been so eye opening to me.”

Kashani says that by developing products that people are actually using, based on input from women and research on what women use the most, it adds value to them. “That really taught me the importance of understanding how your market is going to use what you’re creating, versus you working in a silo to create it on your own,” Kashani said. “It comes from the place of solving a problem versus selling a product.”

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83

HER-ISCOPES FOR

2020

Congrats! Shine in your victory.

G E M I N I (5 / 2 1 - 6 / 2 0 ) KATIEE MCKINSTRY

A RI ES (3/21-4/1 9 )

You’re the first sign of the zodiac, Aries, and that’s totally because you deemed it so! Aries people love to be first, so it’s really no surprise. You are assertive with a drive to succeed. You have a fiery heart and personality that attracts others to you. In 2020, you’ll see big changes in your love life. Aries tend to be wild and hard to settle, but if it’s love you’re seeking, 2020 will be the year to turn it around. This year, your inner light will shine, attracting others to you like a moth to a flame. When it comes to family, you are either all in or all out. Last year, you may have had a falling out or two, so this will be your year to make amends. You are very loyal to your people, and 2020 will be your year to show them that. Career wise, you are one of the most ambitious of the zodiac. This year, there may be an opportunity that places you in a competitive spot with someone you know or care about. Tread lightly.

TA U R US (4 /2 0 -5/20)

As a Taurus, you have an eye for beautiful things. In 2020, you will be attracting all those things to you. From people, to places and experiences. Your love of beauty may attract you to a person romantically, but it’s not what will keep you there. You will be drawn to their soul and personality this year. What you need to focus on this year is what has caused you trouble before in relationships. Work through those problems as you attract new love in 2020. For a long time now, Taurus, you may have felt distance from your family. This will be the year to make amends with them, if you can. At your next get together, reach out. They have been waiting for you. You are probably feeling way more | HERS Ma gazi ne | aspirations Januar y 2020 84 confident about your career this| year, Taurus.

You are very mysterious, Gemini. This makes you alluring to the people around you. You were born with a duel nature, often feeling that you’re being pulled in opposite directions.

Your love life probably feels like a soap opera at times.

You can love deeply and swear you’re a romantic when you want to be. You attract people to you, but often confuse them. This year you will be growing in many ways and should look for someone that will grow with you. Choose a partner who is good for you, rather than one who gives you anxiety. Your emotions will probably run hot and cold often, especially with your family. This year, you may have family conflicts you have to resolve. Be prepared and open minded as family members reach out. Your conflicting nature may sometimes cause problems as work. You are independent, and often don’t accept help. Be more open to the possibility of more, career-wise.

C AN C E R (6 / 2 1 - 7 / 2 2 )

Cancer, you may have been wondering why everything you’ve wanted hasn’t gone according to plan. In 2020, things will be looking up when you least expect it. Right now, it may seem like this isn’t the case, but everything you’ve dreamt of will be within reach in a matter of months.

Your hard work will pay off. Your love life may not have been the best last year. Romance and loyalty are incredibly important to you and you want that in a partner. If you didn’t have that last year, someone will be coming into your life in 2020. Cancers are family oriented, usually close to their loved ones. You may even play a parental role in your life, and your family life will be rich this year. The first half of the year may be a little rough, but the second half will bring you closer than ever. You may feel unstable in your career this year, but it will be on the upswing. You could make friends with people who have connections this year, and it will be your time to shine. hers-magazine.com

LEO (7 /2 3 -8 /2 2 )

If you’re a Leo, you’re probably very loyal, and you always will be. You see what is beautiful in everything you do.

In 2020, there will be a focus on what is possible in your life. You lust for a happy love life. If you haven’t found it, it’s coming this year. Your temper may get in the way, so watch out as you move forward with potential partners. But you could have all new levels of passion come your way, if you let it. You are most likely the leader of the pack when it comes to family. You may feel your family’s support has been lacking this year, and finally you will have that appreciation this year. You’re a star at your job, Leo, and good things will continue to grow. You are able to write your own story this year, so let’s make it a good one.

VI RGO (8 /2 3 -9 /2 2)

Your analytical nature and precise way of getting things done hides your sweet, kind nature, Virgo. This year, it’s time to let the soft side of you out to play. You can be deeply passionate, especially in your love life and ambitions. You are most comfortable falling into the predictable, and you want a partner you can count on. You may already have one, Virgo. Hang on to them and show them the love they deserve this year. You are a straightforward thinker, and this could cause tension with younger family members this year.

Just remember, they deserve love and support too! You are a problem solver who is goal oriented, which is perfect as you enter a new career path. You will gain momentum very quickly in 2020, achieving your career goals.

LI BRA (9 /2 3 -1 0 /22)

This year, Libra, you will have more opportunities presented to you. It will be up to you to take those big chances in 2020. Much of your life will be focused on love and relationships. This will be a good year to open up your deep love connection with your partner, showing them how deeply you care. 2020 will be a great year for your love life, if you let it!

You are often someone who gives advice to your family, and in 2020 a family member may come to you for it. Be open minded, as they need a little guidance. As far as career, you seem to be pretty stable. Don’t worry about your performance, concentrate on enjoying your efforts. They will pay off.

SCO R P IO (1 0 /2 3-11/21)

Scorpio, you will strut into 2020 with style. Those who felt they could not grow close to you will this year, and you will form some beautiful friendships. Relationships will present themselves to you this year, and it will be your choice if you want to be with them. 2020 will also be a good year for hers-magazine.com family expansion, Scorpio, if that’s something you’re into.

2020 will be your year of growth, and you deserve it! There will however be a drastic change at work, so be mindful as you approach a new career season.

S AG I T TAR I US (1 1 / 2 2 - 1 2 / 2 1 )

You are anything but boring, Sagittarius. The year 2020 could be as exciting and fast paced as you want it to be. Life is what you make it. Your social life will thrive this year, and you’ll meet lots of new people. You may have a few romantic arguments, but once you push through you will thrive in your relationship. There will be a happy family engagement for you this year, and you will probably have the opportunity to plan it. Your social skills will provide you with a great work environment this year. You will see more financial security this year, as you gain momentum.

C AP R I C O R N (1 2 / 2 2 - 1 / 1 9 )

You are a go-getter, that’s for sure. Nothing gets in your way, and you solve every problem with ease. You inspire others and attract people to you. However, in relationships you may seem detached. This year, your love life should be rather stable, just remember to show your partner lots of love. Your family will always come first in your life, and in 2020 you may face some struggles. Just remember to show your family how much you care and provide them with a sense of love. Your career may shake some this year, Cap. Make sure you are always thinking of the future, and not getting stuck in the present. You deserve to thrive.

AQUAR I US (1 / 2 0 - 2 / 1 8 )

You are very independent, Aquarius. This can make it hard for people to get to know the real you. Love can be a tricky area of your life, and it’s time to let people in. In 2020, you’ll see relationships bloom, and it will be your choice if you let people learn more about you. Open up and show your true colors. You love your family, and this year a family member will inspire you to make a drastic change in your life. Be open to letting that happen. Your career will grow this year as you do, and you have to be open to all the new things.

You’ve got this.

P I S C E S (2 / 1 9 - 3 / 2 0 )

You are highly emotional, creative and sweet, Pisces. Enjoy that and let yourself thrive in 2020. Your love life may have been rocky last year, and it’s going to build a lot this year.

Be open to seeing change in yourself and your partner, as you evolve into your true self. Believe in your power. You may have felt disrespected by a family member last year, or it could be ongoing. Just remember that the only opinion that matters is your own, Pisces. Your career has probably been unstable last year. This year, if you play your cards right and gain momentum in your career. Things will begin to prosper. | Januar y 2 0 2 0 | H ER S Ma gazin e | 85

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