Hi! (About Bianca and PLT)

I approached Jackie with the idea to start a blog a couple of months ago. An avid blog reader myself, I realized how useful blogs are both as social networking tools and also as an information source. I love writing and wanted to share my thoughts and ideas, and also wanted to bring the every day discussions I was having to an online forum. Jackie, also a writer, jumped at the idea.

We're both 20-year-old female college students who identify as feminist. So, naturally, we decided to write from that perspective and discuss our everyday lives and how we try to infuse them with feminism and other progressive values. This won't be all about heavy political jargon and analysis or pushing an agenda - it's really just about two down to earth college gals.

So here we are, the first introductory post. I thought the best way to start would be to tell you a little about myself.

My name is Bianca, I'm 20 and I go to school in Orlando. I'm studying journalism with a minor in women's studies. Besides writing, my interests (hobbies?) include art - specifically photography and design, and sometimes music. As for my feminism? I took an Introduction to Women's Studies course one summer on a whim, and I was hooked. Before fall started, I'd identified as feminist and had become an activist at my university. I'm currently an officer in our chapter of NOW; we formed a coalition of feminist groups and I help manage a radio station that we started. I'm starting my last year of school soon, so I'm slowly turning my activism into writing (like with this blog, for instance). I'm going to be starting a research project that will tell the story of a local toxic lake and the farmworkers that live and work near it.

You might have questions about our site name. We debated the title for a while, and eventually settled on Pretty Little Things. It was inspired by the play I Read About my Death in Vogue Magazine by Lydia Sargent. It's a low-key play, but it was performed at my school, and I fell in love with it. The phrase "pretty little things" was used to describe women throughout the past several decades - in the 50s they were no more than pretty little things, in the 60s they were "radical" pretty little things, then "independent" pretty little things - and so on, and so forth. But they remained and continue to be objectified.

So we chose the title as an homage to the play, and also to be ironic. Jackie and I are both young and petite, but by no means are we simply pretty little things. We're using this site as a means to have our voices heard, to prove that we are thinkers and speakers. Not things.

Oh! And the layout was hand-crafted by Jackie. Isn't it fantastic?

I hope this answered some questions. So welcome to the blog, and we hope you continue to visit.

- Bianca