GloryGirl: The Inspiration and Purpose
GloryGirl was inspired by four things. First and foremost, our daughters -all budding heroes (1) in their own right. Then our work with human archetypes, a love for art and visual storytelling, and a lifelong respect and inspiration from heroic women who achieved as much or more in their individual roles versus male contemporaries, from Ruler to General to Physicist but were criminally left at the sidelines of history based on their gender. These were some of our own heroes growing up, and we realized that when we passed them along to our daughters, verbally, and they couldn’t find any source texts, we needed to reintroduce them to the word (as a whole).
What’s Different: Real Women, Real Visual Storytelling, in the Voice & Tone of Each Hero
Real Heroes of Every Type
We’ve listened to our daughters and broader audience. As we worked on the first books, which were first written in long form (non-visual books), we noticed a few other allies in our mission publishing some historical bios of women in areas that were outside the traditional “caregiver” role. And a couple of comics of (non-credible) female superheroes (e.g. Ms. Marvel). Being told by our direct audience that they already “had enough dry history books” to read for school, we knew we had to tell these heroic life stories in a format they wanted, highly visual, and more palatable, but still respectful our readers’ intelligence by keeping the stories real, about real women and written intelligently. True to life, using the real tone and voice of the protagonists for each book, and professionally illustrated. (2)
Full-Spectrum of Hero Types for All Girls (& Boys!)
We also believe the (Jungian) human archetype model is outdated. We believe heroes are those with the courage of their convictions (and faith in self based on a higher purpose vs ego), that have the persistence and strength to overcome the obstacles that normal mortals would retreat from, and that achieve something important, contributing to their community and world at large in the process. So, an archaic association with the “warrior” archetype as the “hero” or even having a separate “hero” archetype on the heroic wheel is inaccurate. That the creator, wizard, caregiver, sage/philosopher, rebel, et al archetypes all, at their best, are truly heroic. We do share archetypally warrior and ruler lives of women in the series, both because we love the people (Tomoe, Samurai General to Sela and Grace ‘O Mally, Viking and Celtic Rulers, respectively), but also because they have been historically verified and are proof positive that women can be as good (or better) rulers and warriors than men. But that is just part of the human spectrum of greatness. We ALSO need more women Wizards (creative physicists like Emily du Chatelet who brought modern physics to France), and Explorers (Freya Stark who opened up an understanding of the Middle East, almost losing her life in the process, almost 100 years ago) to positively change the world, together. And also, that the total equality “solution” is not in only influencing our daughters to be athletes, warriors, CEOs, unless of course, those are the archetypes that they were born with, but in helping foster whatever innate archetypal drive they have. Luckily, (or really, logically) all of the women featured in GloryGirl led adventurous lives, and so it makes it easy to tell “exciting and adventurous” stories for all of them, not just the warriors. For example, Emily du Chatelet was a physicist who also was an early mathematics-based gambler and rabid horse racer as well as being a bon vivant. Josephine Baker was THE original Diva (“O.D.”), after first being a St Louis street tough, but also a key anti-Nazi freedom fighter for the French Resistance (and CIA spy!) as well as the mother of dozens of orphans from around the world, well before Beyoncé (and Angelina Jolie), respectively. This makes it “easy” to tell exciting life stories about a “singer” and a “scientist” without having to change or add one false note to the music of their lives.
Our Agenda (Values):
We’re also staunch Humanists. We believe in the beauty and splendor of different cultures, and sharing and appreciating those. But we do not believe in race or that today there is more than one “race”, the human race (3). So, for every archetype, we have found a heroic woman from a different region of the world.
And, as humanists, we are both feminists and chauvinists, or radically “post-feminist”, in that we do not believe the world just needs “more women CEOs and scientists”, but rather more women CEOs, scientists, warriors, creative-technologists, etc. And part of our purpose is to provide real-life role models for each of those types for life-long inspiration, not just the most obvious “non-traditionally female” archetypes to inspire every girl based on the specific archetype that resonates with her.
Our What: Visual Books, Entertaining Life Stories, Not Comics and Episodes
All of these books are closer to illustrated novels than traditional graphic novels. Everyone is well over 120 pages, with every panel hand illustrated (and colored, and often painted). More text, but this is because we pack more story into each. So that we provide a truly engaging story, each one is based on real events in each person’s life, but told through 3 acts, and the second act, the “conflict” being the major life challenge for that person. This is how we maintain true entertainment (dramatic stories) without just providing “edutainment” (medicine with sugar to make it go down). We are trying one experiment with Emily in “contemporizing”, but simply changing Newtonian to Quantum Physics, and illegal horse to motorcycle racing, still set in Paris. The people, characters, and events are still the same.
Notes:
(1) we use the word “hero” just as modernists use “actor” when describing an actor that is female. IN that the designation should be the same for man and woman, and using a separate label is pejorative to women.
(2) this is also a response to a publisher and an agent who said “make them all like Anne, that’s sassy and funny, Tomoe is so serious” and “kids want it to look like Diary of a Wimpy kid, think cartoons, not art”, respectively. Sorry, we’re doing this for our audience, who neither likes b.s. nor cartoons. If the protagonist is passionate, serious, and tough, the writing and voice for that book will match. Though with that said, there are several witty or funny and brash GloryGirl women. And all of them are proudly themselves. Changing styles by book is painstaking, but we’d rather do this right for our people (audience and the women whose lives we are sharing) than mimic what sells to the masses and pander for bucks.
(3) If you want to get scientific, to the racists (those with the mental vestigial tail of fear-based tribalistic protectionism) if you want to get scientific to support your agenda: there is a high standard deviation around important traits such as intelligence, will, creativity among immediate family members, but zero deviation on average among geographical groups of people from different parts of the world.
