We delve into the beauty and hardship that comes with accepting yourself as a young LGBTQ+ womxn
Dear womxn,
When I was a teenager, there was very little in the way of magazines that were tailored to girls who thought they might like girls. There was plenty of content for teenage girls and there was certainly no shortage of magazines dedicated to teenage life but they were often centred around ‘which boys I should crush on’ and how best I should style my hair to ‘maximise my appeal to the opposite sex’.
I would rake through magazine after magazine, hoping to find some kind of kinship somewhere – hoping for just one page that would tell me that I was normal, that girls could like girls too and that I wasn’t completely alone in my thoughts and my wants.
Instead, I navigated my way through my queerness mostly on my own and learnt my lessons by myself, largely by trial and error. While I survived and live happily now as an openly gay woman, I know that I would have felt a lot less alone if even just one of the magazines I pored over when I was coming of age had been designed for queer girls.
What we want to do here at HERKIND is provide a platform for young LGBTQ+ womxn and girls, and to serve as a safe space for you, particularly if you don’t feel comfortable enough to actively come out at this current moment in your life. We want to provide for you what a great deal of us wish we had been given when we were younger – a place to explore your queerness without fear and a place to ask the questions you might be too afraid to voice aloud.
We hope from reading HERKIND you can find comfort in knowing that you are not alone and that there is a compass right here to help you along in your navigation of your identity. We hope you enjoy the first issue and join us on a journey to provide solace and queer entertainment.
Love Hannah, and the rest of the HERKIND team
x
Follow the link below to read the full magazine on Issuu:
Issue 01: The Acceptance Issue delves into the beauty and hardship that comes with accepting yourself as a young LGBTQ+ womxn. From engaging with your religion to tackling queer imposter syndrome plus what queer TV, music and film you can’t afford to miss – we will be there every step of the way.