Create & Cultivate 100: Food: Yola Mezcal
THEY BOTTLED MAGIC.
THEY BOTTLED MAGIC.
Forget yolo, this year it's all about Yola.
Lykke Li, Yola Jimenez and Gina Correll makeup the co-founders of Yola Mezcal, the Oaxaca-based brand that is creating opportunity for economic independence in San Juan del Rio.
It is handcrafted, distilled on the namesake farm, bottled BY WOMEN (HELL YES!), with a recipe passed down from Yola's grandfather. In 1971, Luis Jimenez purchased a mezcal farm in San Juan del Rio, Oaxaca. At present, the trio honor his OG recipe and preserve the 300-year-old method of traditional mezcal making. They're also committed to making their process more sustainable.
They're keeping it family and they're keeping it real. However they are breaking from tradition in one major way. Yola's bottling facility in Oaxaca employs only women and they pay their workers a living wage.
We'll cheers to that.
Drink up more of Yola's goodness below.
Names: Yola Jimenez, Lykke Li, Gina Correll Aglietti
Instagram Handle: @lykkeli @ginacorrell
Business Instagram Handle: @yolamezcal
How did the three of you meet?
Lykke: I met Gina under the stars in the Hollywood Hills and Yola at a house party in Mexico City.
Yola: I met both of them in Mexico City over the past decade. We drank mezcal in both occasions and became instant friends and from those nights two of the must important and rewarding friendships of my life began.
Gina: I met Yola ten years ago when she was opening La Clandestina, her bar, in MX City. I met Lykke ten years ago when she was playing one of her first shows in Los Angeles. They met subsequently and coincidentally in Mexico City and the three of us have been friends ever since.
At what point did you know, let's launch a biz! And let's do it together?
Lykke: Gina and I lived together in Laurel Canyon and Yola would come stay with us-- we became quite excellent at throwing a party in between my DJing, Gina's cooking, and Yola's mezcal. One day thought, this is exactly it, let's bottle this, name it Yola and bring the best atmosphere possible and most importantly surround ourselves with like-minded women. We, of course, have grown out of that simple state of mind and are now mostly interested in creating opportunities for women in Oaxaca while preserving a completely artisanal mezcal.
Yola: We began by having dinners at the house that Gina and Lykke shared in LA.
I would bring mezcal from Mexico, Gina would cook and Lykke would play music. They were magical nights that we wanted never to end. We all loved mezcal and were committed to keeping the traditional methods of production intact. On one of these magical nights it hit us that we should create Yola mezcal which would encapsulate these ideas as well as the feminist ethical practices that have been lacking for so long in the alcohol business.
"Feminist ethical practices have been lacking for so long in the alcohol business."
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Gina: In the beginning of our friendship, Yola would come stay with Lykke and I in LA. The three of us would spend a lot of time together drinking Mezcal, throwing dinner parties, and sharing ideas about what it meant to be modern women. We realized there was an undeniable synergy between us, we had an amazing product at our fingertips, and a common vision and voice.
Yola, your grandfather's passion was mezcal. At what point did you realize it is also yours?
Yola: When I inherited the farm and begun to understand the amount of work, talent and sophistication it took to make and how it was a beautiful tradition we had in Mexico that needed showcasing.
Where do your (respective) drive and passion come from?
Lykke: Whatever makes me feel alive; whether it's music, food, travels-- and of course the sweet burn of Yola.
Yola: The women that work on our farm.
Gina: I grew up on a farm in Ojai, which sparked my passion for food and sustainable farming practices. My father was a music producer. So, I was constantly surrounded by great food and music... both are now the cornerstone of my career.
What are your (respective) biggest pet peeves?
Lykke: Gold!
Yola: Unkindness
Gina: Excessive use of plastic and wasted produce.
What are your biggest fears about running a business together?
Lykke: That it can take away from our friendship, but at the same time there is no one else I rather have by my side then these two badasses.
"There is no one else I rather have by my side then these two badasses."
Yola: That we could ever disappoint the women that work for us.
Gina: The biggest have been overcome.
How can we stay original when we are so saturated by other people's work?
Lykke: Don't even look to what other people are doing but simply follow your own inspiration.
Yola: By not measuring our achievements by the ones of others.
Gina: Every time it feels like we're becoming apathetic or there's too much noise, the three of us regroup and usually find sincere inspiration.
What about your careers make you feel the most complete?
Lykke: To see the community of women we've built around us, all so strong, complex and unique.
Yola: When we hire more women on the company.
Gina: A sense that the product we're putting out into the world is something I believe is bringing people joy, while maintaining integrity. As well: employing women that I find talented and complex and giving them an opportunity to explore and grow within the company.
If you (respectively) had to trade jobs with anyone else in the world, who would it be and why?
Lykke: I could spend all day at flea markets bargaining.
Yola: Siri Hustvedt because she reads about everything.
Gina: I don't want to trade!
You all come from very different backgrounds. At what point in your careers did you find the confidence to really take charge and become the women you are today?
Lykke: I try to find it everyday, it's a process, you do things because you simply cannot not do them and then try to gather some strength and acceptance along the way.
Yola: I could do that early on in my life because I've had the luck to be born in a place with choices and access to education which unfortunately is rare for women in my country.
Gina: 1. I read an article when I was young where a girl I looked up to said: 'life is short, work with your friends". 2. In my early thirties I experienced a lot of personal loss, and I realized I need to do something meaningful with the time I have here.
What's the best advice you've each ever been given? Or your favorite piece of #realtalk?
Lykke: To be an artist is to always be dissatisfied
Yola: Don't take anything for granted and be graceful.
Gina: Lykke told me early on in our friendship - "if you don't know exactly what you want how are you gonna get it"
When you hit a big bump in the road, how do you find a new road or a detour?
Lykke: A shaman in Mexico told me; just redesign, redesign!
Yola: A detour almost always, I was told many times that the things that I wanted would never happen, like working in the alcohol business being a women, even it has been complicated many times I was never deter.
Gina: Make sure you have a get away car.
What song do you each sing in the shower when you’ve had a bad day?
Lykke: "Passion Fruit" by Drake
Yola: "La Maza" by Mercedes Sosa
Gina: "What's Love Got to do With It" by Tina Turner.
TO SEE THE FULL CREATE & CULTIVATE FOOD LIST CLICK HERE.
Links From Our Group Chat: Minnie Driver Slams Matt Damon & We Applaud All Black Women
You snooze, you lose.
Feminism. It's the word of the year, according to Merriam-Webster. #trending. According to the wordsmiths, Merriam-Webster said "feminism" was the most looked-up word in its online dictionary, with the term generating 70% more searches than last year.
So how do we make sure that this continues? Maybe not treat gender equality as a trend.
Would you ride a gondola to the Hollywood sign? DVF and her husband are looking into it.
Thank you black women. Thank you black women. Thank you.
Thank you Salma Hayek for so explicitly detailing the abuse of power.
Ugh, but no thank you on this. We like our internet the way we like our winter wardrobe: neutral.
Also, no thank you on this many Diet Cokes.
Russell Simmons started a #notme hashtag. & Matt Damon did an awful lot of mansplaining this week, but Minnie Driver wasn't havin' it.
Conde Nast's newest online publication that focuses on queer youth is called them.
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Ladies Clap Back: A Roundup of the Raddest, Baddest Feminist Merch
Every day can be International Women’s Day.
Image credit: Glamour Mag
While feminism is far from a new phenomenon, interest around it is at an all-time high. And we are here for it. When Dior’s Paris show last fall featured “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirts as part of its Spring 2017 collection, the (political) statement took on a whole new meaning. And to give the T even more gravitas, Dior announced that it’s donating a portion of the proceeds to Rihanna’s non-profit organization, the Clara Lionel Foundation (which supports and funds effective education and health programs around the world).
Some background about that T-shirt: Dior collaborated with writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who penned an essay of the same name as an adaptation of Adichie’s 2013 TEDx talk. And if you haven’t yet had the chance to hear the TEDx talk, you might recognize this line: “Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes,” as it appears in Beyonce’s “Flawless.”
Natalie Portman was seen rocking the “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirt at the Women’s March in L.A., while RiRi stepped out at NYC’s March with a pink THIS P**SY GRABS BACK hoodie, designed by Victoria’s Secret model Leomie Anderson and created by LAPP The Brand.
Even Karl Lagerfeld had a huge feminist-inspired moment in September 2014, when he staged a feminist rally starring the likes of Gisele and Cara, megaphones, and posters of the “He for She,” “Ladies First” and “History is Her Story” variety.
But while Chanel’s “women’s protest” back in 2014 felt like a throwback to a bygone era (and almost felt theatrical in its grandeur), the groundbreaking Women’s March this past January was all too real. And all too necessary in an era where we need to make our voices heard as much as possible. Because this year, shit’s getting REAL.
Consider feminist-inspired gear our way of clapping back to 2017; a way of flexing our feminist muscles and using our voices -- so even if you aren’t heard (and shame on the world if you aren’t), you will be seen. After all, fashion has always been a form of self-expression.
"Consider feminist-inspired gear our way of clapping back to 2017; a way of flexing our feminist muscles."
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In honor of International Women’s Day, we rounded up some of our favorite feminist-inspired goods: best enjoyed the other 364 days of the year.
THE FUTURE IS FEMALE
photo credit: Otherwild
Those “The Future is Female” sweatshirts spotted on Cara Delevingne and girlfriend St. Vincent in October 2015 have become an Insta phenomenon (and spawned similar merch like pins and baby onesies). While they might seem like a recent political statement, there is feminist history behind them. According to a New York Times article, the OG “The Future Is Female” T-shirt design was worn by Alix Dobkin in 1975, when photographer Liza Cowan took a picture of Dobkin (her girlfriend at the time) for a slideshow she was working on.
Thirty years later, Rachel Berks, the owner of LA-based shop / graphic design studio Otherwild spotted the photo on the Instagram account, h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y. Berks made 24 T-shirts, which sold out in two days. She made another batch and decided to donate a portion of the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. Soon she introduced the sweatshirt design, and the rest is literally, her-story, as the T has taken on a life of its own.
NASTY WOMAN
Photo credit: @AlfieFriday
Get yourself a “Nasty Woman” T-shirt or reusable bag, made by Amanda and Cameron of Google Ghost (50% of the T-shirt’s proceeds go to Planned Parenthood; 20% of the bag’s proceeds go to the ACLU).
NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED
photo credit: Casetify
Studio15 is a socially responsible fashion brand geared towards millennial women and founded by total boss lady, Jia Wertz. The company supports female entrepreneurs in developing countries by donating a percentage of proceeds to fund women-led businesses in Uganda. The brand launched “The Future Is Female Collection” on Presidents' Day to make a statement against the current administration's comments about women, immigrants and refugees.
For International Women's Day, Casetify released an ENTIRE "Nevertheless, She Persisted" Collection. Protect your rights. Protect your phone. All in a day's work. CAN YOU HEAR OUR FEMINIST VOICES NOW??
STRONG FEMALE LEAD
photo credit: bando
One of our favorite “girl gangs” ban.do created this “Strong Female Lead” sweatshirt, among its wide array of other femme-perfect swag.
Stay warm when taking down the patriarchy.
LET'S CALL THEM, ACCES-HERIES
Check your self-ie. Protect your phone with these “Nasty” cases by Casetify.
We’re having our cake and eating it too. Feminist blogger slash baker Lyndsay of CocoCakeLand.com whipped up these delicious messages on her sweet creations and was featured in the resistance-leading mag, Teen Vogue, as a result.
Wear your feminist flair with enamel pins, buttons and patches from the likes of jewelry brand Bing Bang NYC (50% of “girl power” swag’s proceeds are donated to women’s organizations) and our favorite “Girls’ Only Club,” The Wing. We love the Bang Bang Bad Bitch Circle Patch or the Girl Power Button Starter Pack.
Speaking of NYC-based The Wing, its feminist merch is a call to arms, especially “The Self Supporting Tote.” The tote's text comes from a call to action written by Anna Cardogen Etz in the early 20th Century. The letter, "Self Supporting Women of Hornell" argued for the creation of a women's club and was printed in the local newspaper in Hornell, New York. (A tote that literally carries the weight of women’s issues.) Or wear your feminism on your keychain.
So let’s make sure feminism is more than simply “a mainstream trend,” and actually becomes the norm. Instead of proclaiming to “Wake up like this,” let's stay woke. Happy International Women’s Day, ladies.
Karin Eldor is a writer specializing in career, fashion and lifestyle. After several years in the corporate world as the Social Media Manager and Copywriter at ALDO, she took her side hustle full-time and is now living out her dream as a contributor for COVETEUR, Levo, Shopify, 818 Agency, and of course Create & Cultivate. Her mission is to offer guidance and mentorship to women by aligning with brands that value self-expression, integrity and impact. Follow her on Insta @alwayskarin.
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11 Badass Women Share Their Thoughts on International Women's Day
Stay woke.
Future is Female poster designed by Kimothy Joy
We asked 11 women the following question in anticipation of International Women’s Day (today!!), a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.
Q: If you could steer the conversation around International Women’s Day, what would that dialogue be about?
These are their badass answers.
LAUREN MILLER ROGEN
Oh man, so many important things! I think there are many conversations worth having. But, I think one of the biggest issues that women still face is breaking gender stereotypes that have been laid out for them for generations and generations, so for me I love to celebrate women who really broke the mold whether it be Eleanor Roosevelt, Malala, Beyoncé, or Kamala Harris. Women are doing AMAZING things and I think that there are so many worth highlighting to inspire women everywhere by examining the choices trailblazers made along their way.
DAYA
As women, we need to focus more on building each other up rather than tearing each other down. We need to lead the way to change and we are not going to make progress unless we focus on bringing other women with us so we can rise together.
FRANCHESCA RAMSEY
I'd encourage more women to be intersectional in their activism. It's important to acknowledge our privilege and remember that there are all types of women from a variety of walks of life that face challenges that we do not. If you're truly committed to advocating for women you have to be willing to stand up for all women regardless of race, sexuality, physical ability, religion, class or gender identity, not just ladies that look like you.
CONSTANCE ZIMMER
Equality. I find it unbelievable that a woman doing the same job as a man is not making the same amount of money. That's mind boggling to me.
SANAA LATHAN
I want us to focus on anything around mentoring and empowering young girls-- from body image to cultural pride to self-esteem and self-worth.
NICOLE BYER
That all women are beautiful, smart, strong as fuck and special. We also have to listen to each other and remember to be inclusive. There's feminism and intersectional feminism.
LAUREN CONRAD
I think the progress we've made in recent years is fantastic, but we still a lot of work to do. As women we should do all we can to support each other and continue to move in the right direction. We are always stronger together.
LAUREN PAUL
I would hope that the conversation is well rounded and that it would make every woman feel celebrated. Whether you are a politician, CEO or a mother. There is no specific definition to what a strong, empowered woman looks like because that varies for each person. To define that, ultimately creates exclusion because we are all different. In this beautiful chapter where feminism and girl bosses are highlighted (yay!) I really want stay at home mothers to feel celebrated and reminded that they too are hard-working HEROS.
PIERA GELARDI
The world is sitting on a huge untapped natural resource: billions of women who have not been able to reach their full potential. I’d love to create a vision statement and paint a picture of what the world would look like — what greatness we could unleash by bringing Women’s Equality and Empowerment to the forefront. And show that there’s a huge business case for doing this.
MANDY MOORE
I hope the dialogue continues around gender equality and recognizing the need for a larger political, cultural and social shift when it comes to pro-women policies on a global level. When women and girls are empowered, educated, healthy and free of violence, they can recognize their full potential and make an enormous impact on their communities and ultimately the world economy.
SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR
I hope to see more women supporting other women. I have always believed that when women work together we can do anything. So often we are pitted against each other instead of remembering we are a big tribe.
What do you hope for today? Share below!
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Content Creator: Jessica Bennett
Leading us into battle.
This article is part of our Create & Cultivate 100 List created in collaboration with KEDS, you can view the full Content Creator List Here.
Leading us into battle.
Jessica Bennett, gender and culture writer and author of Feminist Fight Club, knew she wanted to be a journalist from a young age— 10, she says, give or take a few homework assignments. After scoring an internship at the newspaper in her hometown of Seattle, Bennett worked at the Boston Globe during college, the Village Voice when she moved to NYC, eventually landing her first staff job at Newsweek.
It was at Newsweek where she started writing about gender politics, spurned in part she says, by “my own inability to rise up.”
“In the height of that frustration,” Bennett explains, “two colleagues and I stumbled upon the story of a group of female staffers who had sued the company for gender discrimination in 1970.” The lawsuit was the first of its kind and paved the way for female journalists everywhere, but their story had been largely forgotten. (herstory, not herstory.) When Bennett and her co-workers realized that not enough had changed for women at work, they agreed there was an important story to unearth. “We ultimately wrote an oral history of their story, and our own, looking at how much (not enough) had changed.”
It was a piece they believed they’d be fired for writing. Waving a polite middle-finger to your own place of employment isn’t safest way to climb the corporate ranks, but they were in too deep and hoisted the story up the pole. They wove the stories together, citing underlying gender issues in the workplace, a lack of female bylines and cover stories, and limited though high-profile successes, like that of their boss Ann McDaniel, then Newsweek’s managing editor, that mask the bigger problems. They weren’t fired.
Instead the piece became the lede for a book, the Amazon original series, Good Girls Revolt (which, Amazon cancelled after one season without one woman present) as well as Jessica’s own book, Feminist Fight Club, released early 2016. “The most important step I took to getting where I am today was saying ‘Fuck it,’” she says. “I'm going to fight for what I believe in -- even if it meant losing my job.” The only thing losing, at least if Bennett has a say, is the patriarchy.
But why fight, a word and mentality that is easily interpreted as aggressive? A word the media tiptoes around when it comes to women. “Women are too often hesitant to use words like ‘fight,’” says Bennett, “for fear that we'll be perceived as ‘too aggressive.’ But you know what? Aggression is OK, and sometimes it's even necessary.”
“Aggression is OK, and sometimes it's even necessary.”
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She also says she’s “sick of hearing people talk about empowerment and then buy a certain brand of shampoo to attain it.”
“Empowerment is good—but you don’t magically achieve it, you fight for it. To me ‘fight’ implies action, and I believe in action,” Jessica says. “At least when it comes to issues of equality.” When we ask what “female empowerment” means to her, it’s a simple response we’d never considered. “It means feminism,” she says, “but for people who aren’t comfortable with the word."
It’s why she’s focussed her sights on a new position. “Chief Gender Correspondent, New York Times— a job that doesn’t yet exist, but I’m workin’ on it.”
As for the fight club, both her own personal group whom she credits as her mentors, and the group at large, she’s ready to march. (Which she did this past Saturday at the Women's March.) To charge ahead. To give up, never. “It looks like we are a whole lot further from equality than I thought. But that's all the more reason we have to continue to fight -- this battle isn't over any time soon.”
Good thing we've found a leader in Jessica Bennett.
10 Defining Moments for Women in 2016
Shed a tear for our favorite First Lady ever.
2016 was full of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, but no matter where you're standing now, it was a monumental year for women. We are counting down ten of our favorite defining moments.
FEMALE-LED POLITICAL TEAMS & KATY TUR
Reporter Katy Tur lived out of suitcases for over a year and a half. Received endless threats (to the point where she needed Secret Service protection), and bullying at Trump rallies, but the reporter never stopped doing her job. Of the campaign trail she wrote, "For one thing, the boys on the bus are now the girls on the plane. Fellow NBC reporters Andrea Mitchell, Kasie Hunt, Hallie Jackson, Kristen Welker, and I are the first women-led politics team in the history of network news—just one remarkable shift in a campaign season where the only rule seems to be that there are no rules."
SIMONE BILES MAKES HISTORY
The reigning floor champion in gymnastics, American gymnast Simone Biles became the first female gymnast of this generation to take home four Olympic gold medals. At 19 she is considered the greatest gymnast in the world.
She's also a powerful advocate for radical self-acceptance. Biles who was just named the AP female athlete of the year has taken so much criticism about her body that she felt the need to address the bullying on Twitter recently: "you all can judge my body all you want, but at the end of the day it's MY body," she wrote. "I love it & I'm comfortable in my skin."
Call it a gold medal mic drop.
SAMANTHA BEE CHANGES THE LATE NIGHT GAME
With one of the best and most diverse writing staffs and its boss front woman, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee easily became one of the best shows in 2016. Bee might not have changed the outcome of the election, nor should a late-night comedy show have the ability to, but her satirical overtones are the best in the game. And she does it standing up, as if to remind people that she wears the pants. Beyond that, her writer's room diversity efforts have paid off and she's leading the charge, challenging other shows to do the same.
HRC
She won the popular vote, didn't win the race, but Hillary Rodham Clinton made history. For women everyone. For little girls who saw a woman command the national stage. For women who never thought they would cast their vote for a female nominee. At the DNC Clinton accepted her nomination saying, “When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit. So let's keep going, until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves. Because even more important than the history we make tonight is the history we will write together in the years ahead.”
SARAH MCBRIDE MAKES STRIDES FOR THE TRANS COMMUNITY
Sarah McBride became the first transgender speaker at a major political convention when she spoke during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She's interned at the White House, helped her home state of Delaware pass protections for the LGBTQ community and is now the National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign. Though she one worried that her dreams and her identity were incompatible, she has become a brilliant example of the power of inclusively. "Will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally?" she asked the convention. "A nation that's stronger together?" Will will if she has anything to do with it.
THE FOREST THROUGH THE TREES: SENATE SILVING LININGS
We may not have realized our first female president, but there are now a record number of women in the Senate. On Tuesday, three women of color were newly elected to the Senate, quadrupling the number of sitting members. Prior to Tuesday's election, Hawaii's Sen. Mazie Hirono was the only woman of color in the Senate. She became the first and only Asian-American woman elected to the Senate in 2006, along with the first woman elected senator in Hawaii. Amongst the newly elected members of the Senate is California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is both African- and Indian-American. Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina senator in U.S. history and the first woman elected senator in Nevada. Tammy Duckworth became the first Thai-American senator in history after she beat out her Republican opponent for an empty seat in Illinois.
COMPANIES ARE MAKING MAKING MATERNITY LEAVE STRIDES
This past April Etsy employees became eligible for 26 weeks of fully paid leave over the first two years after a child's birth, with at least eight of those weeks taken continuously during the first six months following the birth.
American Express will offer twenty weeks of paid leave will be offered to men and women bringing a new child into their families through surrogacy, adoption, or birth, with an additional six to eight weeks for birth mothers.
Coca-Cola, EY, IKEA, and Basf are all expanding benefits as well. Though policies in the U.S. regarding paid parental leave are up in the air, the steps taken by these companies are important for the county overall. There is still a long way to go, but when big companies set the standard, others follow suit.
TAKING OUR ACHIEVEMENTS TO THE BANK
In America we believe in money, and in a move that’s long overdue, women will gain representation on U.S. paper currency for the first time in over a century. In August, the U.S. Treasury announced that women suffragists will appear on the back of the $5 and $10 bill, and Underground Railroad abolitionist and escaped slave Harriet Tubmanwill become the new face of the $20 bill.
BEYONCE GOT EVERYONE IN FORMATION
With her all female, all women of color drum line Queen B performed "Formation" at the Super Bowl to the tune of unapologetic black feminist overtones. She paid homage to the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. A few months later, she dropped "Lemonade," a revolutionary visual album that Rolling Stone named the best album of the year.
MICHELLE OBAMA DELIVERS ONE OF THE BEST SPEECHES OF THE CENTURY
She may have been on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton, but when First Lady Michelle Obama took the microphone in Manchester, New Hampshire, she delivered one of the best political speeches many of us hear in our lifetime. She was raw, emotional, and brutally honest about the sexually abusive comments made by now President elect Trump. It was a rebuke that will reverberate for years to come. "It has shaken me to my core," she told the crowd. "If all of this is painful to us as grown women, what do you think this is doing to our children?" she asked. "What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act? What lessons are they learning about their value as professionals, as human beings, about their dreams and aspirations? And how is this affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this."
Move over Jackie, we can expect alllll of the Michelle Obama biopics.
Have more favorites? There are plenty more to choose from. Share in the comments below!
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Why Poetess Rupi Kaur Follows Zero People on Instagram
No, she's not pulling a Beyoncé.
photo credit: Rupi Kaur
Like most writers, Rupi Kaur, the 23-year-old Toronto-based poet, illustrator, and photographer thinks she’s better at putting pen to paper than she is at giving an oral interview. “I’m a better writer than I am a speaker,” she tells us.
On one hand, we believe her. Her work is biting and soft. She twists language in a way that makes you want to walk into a forest and stare up at the sky through the trees. Her words allow you the space to see the world a little differently.
On the other, we don’t. Not really. Especially when the author/mother of “milk and honey,” her debut book of poetry and prose which shot to the New York Times Bestseller List says this: “We navigate the world, come across so many people, but at the core of our experience is love. I think that’s the message I’m trying to consistently share, without even really realizing that I’m sharing it.” The message that, “you deserve to be here and you’re welcome here and allowed space.”
"You deserve to be here and you’re welcome here and allowed space.”
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A native of the Punjab region in India, Kaur spent her formative years in Toronto, where she currently resides. She is a modern day storyteller, using her poetry and social handle @rupikaur_ to explore beauty standards, violence, love, injustice, the female body, and more. “my issue with what they consider beautiful/is their concept of beauty/centers around excluding people,” she wrote in an Instagram post on July 11th of this year. It's the same platform that deleted a photo of Kaur's sister, Prabh Kaur on a bed, her gray sweatpants and bed sheet stained by (fake) period blood. Instagram claimed the post violated their community guidelines. Kaur reposted the photo, which was part of a photoseries project for a visual rhetoric course with a caption challenging the decision. "i will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society," she wrote on August, 25, 2015, "that will have my body in an underwear but not be ok with a small leak. i bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility." Instagram recoiled, apologized; the community clapped loudly. And they kept clapping. Her approach to language and honesty has captured the attention of nearly 600k Instagram followers.
****
When she first started sharing her work online there was no intention of a book. “It’s still such a personal experience for me. I’m not writing for anyone else," she says. "At times I don’t understand the interest. But all of the sudden I was building this online community and they were the ones that would comment, ‘Where can I buy your book?’”
Consider that Kaur's first reaction to the idea of a book was, “I’m me, I can’t." She was 20 at the time, thought of writing as her “hobby,” and had just started university. Her thoughts were, “I need to finish my degree, I’m paying thousands of dollars to be here.” We’ve all experienced this tug of war-- the one between our head and our heart, our reason and our dreams. But Kaur slowly warmed to the idea. Between the encouragement of friends and the enthusiasm of the online community she began piecing together what would become ‘milk and honey.’
“It was a very difficult moment in my life,” she says, “and I just strapped down. It was the summer of 2014 and I didn’t think I was going to get through it. I couldn’t see myself and I couldn’t imagine my life after this moment. I needed it.”
She wrote the pieces and crafted the book by listening, she says, “to what my body said.” She designed everything from front to back, the font, the pictures, and then put it into the world. “I don’t think anything I ever do will feel as holistic as that,” she says. “It was deeply grassroots, on the budget of zero dollars. When you give birth to something like that and see it blossom, it’s so incredible."
Now consider that her debut paperback, self-published book of poetry and prose sold over 18,000 copies in the first 8 months. "milk and honey" flowed into the world November, 2014 and kept moving.
Around the 8 month mark publishers started calling. Andrews McMeel (AMP) became her publisher. “They’re very agile,” she says. “My biggest worry was someone coming in and saying, ‘Oh, we want to remove these pieces about body hair, or 'We want to change the cover.'”
“It’s not a product to me, it’s my heart.”
Currently, she is working on the release of a hardcover. “It’s very important to me that people have something to hold,” she explains. “That’s what gets passed down from hand to hand and moves across the world. A hardcover is the version that refuses to be ruined. The paperback version is going to fold, its matte black is going to stain, but the hardcover is beautiful and elegant. You keep the hardcover on your bookshelf and you keep the paperback under your pillow or in your purse.”
Throughout this journey, she has remained the creative leader of her work, though there has been pressure to create more, both from herself and industry pros. Earlier this year she tried writing for the audience. An experience she describes simply as “bad.”
“I was holding a knife to the neck of my writing,” she says, and it wasn’t working. There were people who told her she needed to release a second book. That by next year the industry would try and replace her. It didn't deter her. It only annoyed her. “I have to be honest with myself, " she explains. "It’s a very Adele approach. You have to remember why you started and stay true to that.”
She'll tell herself, "You brought yourself here, not the industry. I think that’s a huge source of my power. My inability to see how people perceive my work also allows me to see how powerful I am. I have my insecurities, but I feel powerful. I’m here and I’m doing what I love.”
“It’s not a product to me, it’s my heart.”
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She knows social media has a lot to do with her success, but Kaur currently follows zero people. However, she’s not pulling a Beyoncé. “Like most people I have my own personal, multi-dimensional battles with social media.” But without it she says, “the publishing world wouldn’t have cared about this young, brown woman. Social media was a free tool that I used to create my own community. It can also swallow you up.”
At the moment she has deleted all social media from her phone. She tweets from her laptop. She’ll download Instagram, log into her account, post, and log back out. She doesn’t read any of the comments. “It’s helped me feel more rooted again. I’m a very sensitive person and I don’t want the thousands of eyes pouring over my work to change the way I’m going to write in the future.”
The way she writes, is magnetic, sticking to all lower case as her words stick to her audience. It’s almost a way of ensuring that no one letter is left in the shadow of another. And it's human.
"When I first started writing it was about getting my voice back and finding my voice,” she says. Now, she has a “loose idea of three to five books that I will write in the next ten years. So I’m going to keep writing and listening to what my body tells me.”
“The recipe for my success, if any,” she notes, “is that I’ve always been honest with myself. I’ve always written what I’ve needed.”
This Friday, August 19th, Rupi Kaur will be delivering a Ted Talk at the Kaufman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. She will be performing a new spoken word piece followed by a talk called “My First Home.” Via Instagram this past week she told her followers, “I think the piece I’ve written is some of my best work.” Tickets have sold out, but you can tune in and watch it live at 6 pm central time at tedxkc.org.
Arianna Schioldager is editorial director at Create & Cultivate.