The Power of Love and Vulnerability

Aim

Raising the funds to print our magazine which focuses on mental health awareness, empowerment and love in Nottingham!

Femme Fatale Gals is a Nottingham based empowerment platform ran by Khaya Job, a 21 year old creative aspiring to lift and bring together others by creating positive media in the form of magazines and workshops. Help us print our full sized magazine!

Many people, young and old in this day and age struggle with their mental health. I too have struggled with my mental health and self esteem for several years, and it has greatly affected my ability to go forth in life and succeed. 

With this project and my Femme Fatale Gals platform, I wanted to provide as many people as possible with a platform to safely share and be heard. With our first zine (mini magazine) we successfully did this, with only 10-15 pages. We sold over 100 copies of our first issue with no previous experience and donated all of the money raised to Nottinghamshire Women's Aid. We realised that not only were people interested in our project, but that we could get people to listen to what we wanted to say. And so we embarked on this journey of creating a full sized magazine, this time with over 100 pages!

So many people in Nottingham got involved! We were sent a number of art submissions, poetry, articles on topics covering mental health, self esteem, creativity, relationships, toxic masculinity and more, and we interviewed more than 10 different people to get as many voices as possible.

This magazine is important because of the real and unfiltered conversations we had. In most magazines these days you see glossed over, unattainable images and interviews and stories that are mostly vain. But in our magazine, there is something for everyone. There is a story that anyone, no matter what your age, gender, or position in life, can relate to. We have created an inclusive, compassionate community of people that are able to talk openly, and we believe that this is where real change begins. 

Printing the magazine has been somewhat difficult. Going from creating a little 10 page zine for an audience of none to a full sized 100 paged magazine to a wider audience - the cost has vastly increased and we found ourselves a little out of our element! Not only do we need to print more magazines than before that are bigger and of a higher standard than our little zine, but we also need to pay for all the help of graphics designing and photography and the putting together of the magazine. All of the content and stories are there but currently the magazine is in stagnation whilst we try and raise the funds to actually print it!

The more people we are able to reach with our magazine, the better. How uplifting it will be for people suffering in silence, or for those feeling misunderstood in someway, to read one of the stories inside and know that they are not alone in their feelings. Waiting lists for counselling services are months and months long, talking and sharing is something that we can do now! The more people involved, the better.

I'm really proud of this new magazine, our first little zine (as seen in the picture above), the Femme Fatale Gals movement and all of the incredible people whom have contributed. I've made so many new friends and close relationships with people in the must unlikely of places just talking about mental health, relationships, creativity and everything in between. I'm so proud of Nottingham and my community, of myself and everyone involved.

If you would like to help see our magazine printed please donate to the cause and or share it around! We are itching and very excited, and will stop at no rate to get it printed! If you would like to get involved with our movement feel free to email us at [email protected]

Thank you very much x

This project successfully funded on 7th October 2019