Beholding Ourselves

Black Girls as Creators, Subjects, and Witnesses

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
Erin M. Stephens The Beautiful Project, North Carolina, USA estephens@thebeautifulproject.org

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Jamaica Gilmer The Beautiful Project, North Carolina, USA jgilmer@thebeautifulproject.org

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The bus was full of excited chatter as it pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (known universally as The Met) on Fifth Avenue on a cold morning in January. Thirteen girls, along with invited loved ones, had traveled for nine-and-a-half hours from Durham, NC, to view their art displayed in the exhibit, “Pens, Lens, and Soul: The Story of The Beautiful Project” (hereafter, “Pens, Lens, and Soul”). First, the girls filed off the bus to take a photograph on the steps of The Met. As their family and friends waited to disembark, they laughed and shivered while posing for numerous photographs and videos on the cold steps. As they stood at the bottom of the steps of the grand prestigious museum, the impressiveness of their accomplishment was just beginning to dawn on many of them. As she walked around the exhibit one of the artists would comment, “I feel surprised because I didn't realize it was this big of a thing and I was here and it's a thing, it's a big thing … we are capable of doing anything.”

Contributor Notes

Erin M. Stephens (ORCID: 0000-0002-9104-3481) is a Black feminist sociologist and staunch advocate of social and institutional change to better meet the needs of marginalized populations, particularly women and youth of color. She is currently the Program Director for The Beautiful Project, a Black women and girls arts collective in North Carolina. Email: estephens@thebeautifulproject.org

Jamaica Gilmer (ORCID: 0000-0003-0157-0702) is a strategist, storyteller, photographer, and curator who has a fifteen-year background in creating and implementing curricula. She is the founder and director of The Beautiful Project, an arts collective that centers Black women and girls as the authority over their own narratives. Email: jgilmer@the beautifulproject.org

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Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal