CateSevilla.com

What I See When I Look in the Mirror

The What I See Project is an exciting online platform and project that aims to “recognise and amplify” women’s voices and personal experiences through answering the question, “What do you see when you look in the mirror?” Even better, the project helps to create a safe environment for women online to express themselves and connect with each other, and watching other women’s responses is incredibly interesting.

I was thrilled to be asked to be part of this project, and I shared what I see when I look in the mirror as part of the project’s campaign to showcase over 100 women’s voices across a 27 August to 1 October.

 

Why You Should Definitley be Watching The White Queen

If you’re a BBC One viewer, you undoubtedly saw this teaser trailer early this summer:

A cover of “Wicked Game”, and a bunch of bad-ass women wearing armour? YES.

The White Queen is based on three of Philippa Gregory’s novels, The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Kingmaker’s Daughter. Each novel looks at the War of Roses from a different queen/woman’s perspective, The White Queen being Elizabeth Woodville, the Red Queen being Lady Margaret Beaufort and The Kingmaker’s Daughter being Anne Neville, daughter of Lord Warwick. Gregory’s novels separates each woman’s story, but the BBC’s version, written by Emma Frost, brings all of their stories together.

 

The Story of a Girl and Her Dog

Mia on my bed/her throne.

A few days after my 16th birthday, my mom called us from the car.

“Vacuum the entire house, there needs to be nothing on the carpets, nothing small!” we were told. My sister and I probably assumed we were having last minute guests or a friend come over, so we frantically tidied the house.

The doorbell rang, and finally we could figure out why we’d been asked such a request.

I opened the door, and all I could see were my mom’s hands, and hanging there in front of my face was a little brown, white and black puppy with ears shaped like angel wings on the side of her ridiculously small head.

After years of resigning myself to the fact that we simply could not have pets, and my sister’s obsession with dogs (at one point she may or may not have even insisted we pretend she was a dog - drinking water only from a bowl on the floor) - we suddenly could have a puppy. We could have a dog.

My parents had divorced about 3 or 4 years prior and it was just us girls in the house, and now we had Mia - named after Mia Hamm.

 

The Greedy American & The Hairy Bikers

This past Friday I made my debut on the BBC by talking about... cupcakes! 

Me, making sure Annie is enjoying her cupcake correctly

Last October I was asked by the team at The Hairy Bikers if I'd like to come on the next Best of British series to talk about cupcakes. I was joined by the terribly clever Dr Annie Grey, a food historian, to basically sit in The Hummingbird Bakery, eat a bunch of cake, and argue about the differences between fairy cakes and cupcakes. 

In Defence of Young, Silly, Female Writers

I, as a writer, know a lot of other female writers or women would like to call themselves a writer one day. Whether we call ourselves journalists, bloggers, songwriters or authors - we love to write. We write about our feelings, feminism, equality, sexuality,  motherhood, technology and anything else people will pay us to talk about. 

Most of us are considered "young", anywhere from 24 - 35 and we would write even if no one paid us to do so.  As the skin on Lady Gaga's left arm states:

“Confess to yourself in the deepest hour of the night whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, Must I write?”

The answer for us is always yes. 

Yesterday over on The Atlantic, Jamie Tarabay questioned television's puzzling fixation on with who are writers - specifically Hannah Horvath, Lena Dunham's character in Girls, and Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker's infamous character on Sex and the City. Why exactly having two TV shows, one that began in 1998 and the other in 2012, that dare to have a TV show led by a female writer is puzzling, I'm not sure.