by Georgia Luckhurst This summer, we wanted to celebrate the female protagonists who truly stood out for us as the most kickass, daring, courageous, and admirable. In this week’s Summer Reading series, SPARKteam activists will be discussing those heroines who matter so much to them personally – and why they should matter to you, too. …
by Stephanie M. Anderson I am not a runner – or at least I wasn’t. I grew up hating running for all of the obvious reasons: panting, chafing, blisters, short shorts. Frankly, I would have rather spent an hour at the dentist than run 2 miles. So when I completed the New York City Half…
by Montgomery Jones I first read The Fault in Our Stars in February of 2012. As a nerdfighter and avid book reader, I make it a point to read books by my favorite authors hot off the presses. At that time there was not a huge following for the book, so there were no whispers…
by Annemarie McDaniel and Anya Josephs Annemarie and Anya are both SPARK bloggers, in Paris studying abroad for the summer! We’ve both had magical experiences here, but we’ve also noticed significant street harassment. We wanted to write this blog together to talk about the ways we’ve experienced harassment here differently than back home in the…
by Brenda Guesnet The FIFA World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world. The 32 best national male soccer teams compete, attracting an audience of more than 26 million people worldwide and costing billions of dollars every time it is staged. This time, the host country of the cup was Brazil, and advertisers…
by Lande Watson Every morning when I wake up, I put on my feminist suit of armor, ready to face a day of sexism and misogyny. As a girl activist fighting for gender equality I always knew there would be plenty of issues to tackle in my lifetime. How will sexism impact a successful female…
by Alice Wilder We’re all pretty big fans of filmmaker Therese Shechter, who you might know from her film I Was a Teenage Feminist. Her 2013 documentary How To Lose Your Virginity, which is available for streaming in July, explores the ways we think about sexuality and how it changes the way we feel about ourselves…
by Annemarie McDaniel What do astronaut Neil Armstrong, President Bill Clinton, basketball star Michael Jordan, and singer Bon Jovi all have in common? When they were juniors in high school, they all attended a prestigious but little-known program called Boys State. That’s just the beginning of the incredibly long list of famous Boys State alumni,…