Features / galdem
Setting a new agenda
Frustrated at the lack of articles for women of colour, by women of colour Bristol university student, Liv Little tells Pamela Parkes how she set up her own magazine.
Fitting in final university exams and launching a pioneering online magazine may phase some, but Liv Little is not your average student.
She set up Gal Dem to cover politics, beauty, fashion, art and music for women of colour, written by women of colour.
is needed now More than ever
It was “frustration” with mainstream media which promoted Liv to create a “publication that I would identify with and the kind of things I would want to read all in one place”.
We met only a few weeks after the launch of Gal Dem and Liv is astounded at the reaction to her magazine: “I was frustrated, I thought I am going to become so miserable if I spend my whole life complaining and feeling negative about it.”
So she used social media to reach out to women across the UK and beyond. Now she has a team of 50 people writing, commissioning and sub-editing articles on subjects usually ignored by mainstream media
“You don’t open a magazine to see makeup tips for your dark skin, that’s not a thing that happens, you don’t open magazines and see when they are talking about curly or frizzy hair that they are talking about afro hair.
“We are not represented in mainstream media at all and when we are it’s a very one dimensional picture which is given and our voices are very diverse,” says Liv.
“The whole point of this is that people of colour in mainstream media are only commissioned or asked to talk about race or gender. As a person of colour you are not one-dimensional and you do have a lot of opinions on different issues.
“You should be able to talk about something which is serious and race related and something that is more light-hearted and which you find interesting. You don’t always have to be one thing or another.
For Liv, the opportunity to connect online with other young women and give them a voice was a huge breakthrough: “I can’t sit around and ask powerful white men to listen to what I am going to say because history will show they are not really interested in what I have to say, so I’m going to say it elsewhere through another channel – we are trying to speak out and I hope change is possible.”