The Female Lead Read online

  Gail’s Object

  My first paperback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I hesitated between two books – this one and my first hardcover copy of T.S. Eliot’s poetry – but if I have to pick one, it would be the Márquez. When I read it, I was quite young, and it was quintessentially what a novel should be. Novels transport you out of your own life, open your eyes to a whole world of possibilities. I was drawn into this newly imagined reality where nothing was as it should be.

  For T.S. Eliot, I was thinking of how poetry goes straight to the heart, touches your soul and changes you in a very deep way. Looking at both books, now, my annotations evoke an entire emotional journey – that’s why physical books are so important.

  BARONESS GAIL REBUCK DBE

  Chair of the publishing group, Penguin Random House UK

  NIMCO ALI

  Nimco Ali was born in Somalia and grew up in the UK, where she studied at Bristol University and went on to work as a civil servant and an independent training consultant. She is the co-founder, with psychotherapist Leyla Hussein, of Daughters of Eve, a non-profit organisation set up in 2010 to support and protect young women from communities that practise female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM is a set of procedures that involve partial or total removal of external female genitalia, including the clitoris and labia, and sometimes also infibulation – narrowing of the vaginal opening by creating a seal by sewing up the labia. It is carried out before puberty, and often on girls very much younger. FGM, which can prove fatal and often leads to medical complications, has been illegal in the UK since 1985, but was formerly considered a mainly cultural issue. Nimco Ali and Daughters of Eve have successfully campaigned for it to be recognised as child abuse.

  * * *

  I had FGM as a seven-year-old, and later saw girls who could have been my younger sisters going through it. I listened to people talking about it, and realised they just didn’t get what was needed, but I didn’t join in the conversation. Then I started to see my silence as complicity.

  It was around early 2011 when I first said, ‘I’m Nimco and I’m an FGM survivor.’ A lot of people were shocked.

  Around 2010, I moved to London and came across a lot of people working around FGM, but there was no strategic planning and I couldn’t see what they were trying to achieve. I wanted to educate people, yes, but this isn’t a question of ignorance – it’s organised crime. I got together with Leyla Hussein, who was working on FGM with the community and young people, and suggested, ‘Let’s frame the work you’re doing around policy.’ So we started to do more around working with MPs and policymakers.

  It was around early 2011 when I first said, ‘I’m Nimco and I’m an FGM survivor.’ A lot of people were shocked. Their reaction was, ‘But you’re so together!’ and I said, ‘This is what an FGM survivor looks like.’ I didn’t want to be treated with a lot of sympathetic ‘poor you’ comments. I wanted to talk about survivors, not victims, and I wanted to prevent it, not just talk about it. This was about protecting girls who were so very, very much ignored. I remembered conversations I was hearing at 11, 12 years old – now I was an adult I could do something about it. I was coming from a UK perspective and once I started using language such as child abuse, a lot of stuff I got back was very hostile. A lot of survivors were horrible to me at the start. I can understand them; it’s a very personal thing. Many of them are supportive now.

  I want to place the responsibility firmly in the hands of those in the state or public sector who have a duty of care. I had seen community work being done for years, and I knew it didn’t work. I remember meetings where the question ‘How can we deal with this?’ was asked, but the conversations were with men from the community who benefited from FGM in terms of having the power, or with women who were themselves cut, unable to deal with the circumstances, silently complicit, with no way of doing anything about it. It’s not up to those communities to police themselves. We had legislation, but no one was using it. People were saying, ‘How can mothers allow this? How could people do that?’ but I was saying, ‘How can you, as a citizen of this country, know a five-year-old is about to be cut and stand by because you’re afraid to offend her community? You’re telling that child she doesn’t matter, you’re saying, “That’s what happens to girls like you.” ’ And that’s more painful than the cut itself. No child should feel nobody cares.

  My work was always with the police and with the departments responsible for protecting children. First came redefining FGM with the Home Office as an act of violence; then came defining it as child abuse. It was a way of saying to these girls, ‘You’re British and we care about you as much as we care about anyone else.’ My vagina is British; it doesn’t have a different passport! I think that’s why a lot of community members were pissy with me. I didn’t bother with them. You have to be within the system to understand it. I was saying, ‘This is about children. The NSPCC needs to get involved.’ I think the NSPCC FGM helpline was the most successful thing we ever achieved. Once the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) was involved, we stopped having to keep explaining, over and over again, that this was child abuse.

  The first time my picture appeared in a newspaper, I had death threats. I remember thinking, ‘They really are going to do this.’ I stayed in bed for two and a half days, wondering, ‘Is it really worth it?’ But I felt guilty and that got me out of bed. I found the strength somewhere to resolve, ‘Fuck these people.’ If a girl goes through infibulation and something goes wrong and she disappears, we never find out. If something happens to me, at least someone will know.

  I think the NSPCC FGM helpline was the most successful thing we ever achieved. Once the NSPCC was involved, we stopped having to keep explaining, over and over again, that this was child abuse.

  Some people still blame me but I now think that’s their problem, not mine. Having friends I can talk to, people who just listen, has been an immense help, and girls telling me how proud they are is a very humbling experience. A girl came up to me on the Underground, on the Victoria line, and said, ‘Are you Nimco, the girl who talks about FGM?’ And I thought, ‘This is where I get spat on and told I’m a disgrace.’ But she wanted to thank me for talking about it.

  Women who have influenced me include my mentor Efua Dorkenoo. I really respect the work she has done. And I love Caitlin Moran, who is able to talk about things in a way that doesn’t freak people out but gets them to understand that FGM is unacceptable, ridiculous, makes no sense. I don’t think of myself as a leader but as part of a chain. If it wasn’t for all the amazing women who came before me and the women alongside me, I wouldn’t be able to do any of these things. I’ve never used the word leader; humility is the key thing. If you campaign on a personal level, it can become problematic. I’m just playing my role in a bigger conversation, a bigger fight.

  Nimco’s Object

  My grandmother’s wedding necklace. My grandmother is the woman I look up to the most and she wore this necklace on the happiest day of her life. It’s a sequence of peacocks, attached to each other, made of gold, with green and red jewels. My grandmother lost her mother when she was really young and ended up not going to school as she had to look after her brothers, but none of that stopped her. She’s the foundation of how all the women in the family were raised. She’s fearless, and believes in equality. I have so much respect for her. I hope one day to have the faith to get married and be in a loving relationship that lasts as long as hers did.

  NIMCO ALI

  Activist and co-founder, Daughters of Eve

  KARLIE KLOSS

  Fashion model Karlie Kloss was first approached by talent scouts at the age of 13 in a shopping mall in St Louis, Missouri, where she was brought up. She became famous following her first catwalk appearance for Calvin Klein in 2007, when she was 15. Since then, she has appeared on magazine covers and in advertising campaigns, as well as in numerous fashion shows. Proceeds from sales of the Karlie’s K
ookies she devised are used to provide meals for children in need all over the world through the FEED Projects charity. Her Kode with Karlie scholarship programme, launched in 2015 in partnership with the Flatiron School in New York, helps teenaged girls learn to code. She also launched the Klossy YouTube channel in 2015, and began a course at New York University.

  * * *

  My family is the reason why I’ve been able to take this journey, to have this adventure. They’ve been supporting me and believing in me since long before this career started – and they have been with me for a lot of it. We’ve travelled the world together. For the first five, six years of my career, when I travelled to shoots and shows, I would always have my family with me – my parents and my three sisters. I would take trips to Paris and have the whole family come. We’d rent an apartment and all stay together. I would come home from work after a long day at fashion week and my mom would be cooking and my sisters would be there.

  We still take trips together. The best experiences I’ve had in my career, I’ve been able to share with the people I love. We also held family meetings any time I had to make big decisions about my career. It was very important to my family and me that everyone was on the same page. Their constant love and support helped keep me grounded and motivated.

  Early on in my career, balancing the life of a high-school student and working model was both overwhelming and exciting. I had a very normal teenage life, even though I was travelling to Europe, Asia, New York very, very regularly. I would go home and have normal family dinner with my parents and my sisters, normal Friday-night sleepovers with my friends, normal cafeteria lunch. I just had very special experiences in addition to that normal life. I just happened to be travelling to Paris on the weekends. It was kind of crazy. I had to turn down a lot of jobs because I needed to be in school at least half the time. There was never a question of me stopping high school or stopping my studies.

  Even after I finished high school, I never stopped learning, even though I wasn’t in a traditional school setting. Part of travelling for me is about learning – seeing, tasting, experiencing, meeting people, hearing different languages. There’s so much that I learn simply by doing my job. I am a student now – I still work and travel, but I take class in the morning two days a week. My mind is being challenged in new ways. While you can be a student with or without a classroom, I knew I wanted to be back in the classroom with other students to continue exploring big ideas.

  Travelling for me is about learning – seeing, tasting, experiencing, meeting people, hearing different languages.

  I don’t know why I’ve had this kind of success! There are so many beautiful girls and so many models have come and gone, even during my eight-year career. I still feel like I’m at the beginning, for which I’m very grateful. Building a voice and building a platform is a big part of my motivation, because I want to do meaningful things. I think it’s a responsibility that comes with success, and also it’s just genuinely who I am, how I was raised. My dad is an emergency-room doctor. He’s very smart and has always worked very hard for his family – 12-hour shifts, overnight or all day. That work ethic and that discipline and drive had a huge impact on me. My mum is a very creative artist. She paints and draws and takes photographs – she’s very, very special. They raised my sisters and me with good values and good hearts, I think. I’ve always really valued and respected, in myself and in others, what’s on the inside.

  Math and science have always fascinated me. I’m very curious about technology and when I started learning about coding, my eyes were opened to how extraordinary it is and how important it is to learn. I quickly realised that understanding code opens doors, especially for women, and there are so few women in STEM – science, technology, engineering, mathematics. I wanted to share what I was passionate about, hopefully excite other girls about coding, and also offer them opportunities to learn. So I made a little video and put it out on my Instagram to say any girls who are interested in coding, send me a video telling me what you would do with this skill set, and we’ll pick 20 girls and write scholarships for them to learn how to code. We had hundreds of girls apply and I wish I could have written scholarships for all of them. The hope is that I’ll be able to write many, many more scholarships. It’s really all about igniting that excitement and passion for learning, specifically in computer science, which I think is often overlooked by girls. I’m biased, but I think girls are better at just about everything! I have three sisters, so I’ve grown up in a house of girls, and my sisters are brilliant. I think there’s nothing we women can’t do.

  Building a voice and building a platform is a big part of my motivation, because I want to do meaningful things.

  I also like learning about businesses – reading the paper and understanding economics and different industries, especially the technology industry. I have yet to start my own big company, but some day I will, I hope. I have a lot of small projects that I’m really passionate about. Each one starts off as an idea jotted down in my notebook – for me, it’s important to get it out of my head and down on the page. As I share these ideas with my team, friends and family, they begin to grow and we ultimately pursue opportunities that allow me to do things I’m passionate about and that create opportunities for others along the way. I hope to have a career in fashion for a long time to come and to be a model for as long as anybody will take my photo! But I also want to do much more learning and working on projects that help other people – as well as enjoying life.

  When you’re passionate about something, and you’re really fulfilled on a personal level too, I think it enables you to be more focused and enjoy every other aspect of your life.

  When you’re passionate about something, and you’re really fulfilled on a personal level too, I think it enables you to be more focused and enjoy every other aspect of your life. Whether you’re an artist, a cookie baker, a doctor, a student, or a model, what enables you to be successful, I think, is when you really love what you’re doing.

  Karlie’s Object

  My K necklace. My sisters all have K names and we each have one. We all currently live in different places, but whenever I wear my necklace, I feel closer to home.

  KARLIE KLOSS

  Model and entrepreneur

  MINDA DENTLER

  Born in India, Minda Dentler contracted polio as a child, which paralysed her legs. Her birth mother was unable to look after her and left her in the care of an orphanage. She was adopted by an American family, and surgery enabled her to walk with leg braces and crutches. She gained a management information systems degree from the University of Washington and an MBA in finance and marketing from Baruch College, the City University of New York, and works for a major financial services company. Minda discovered handcycling – cycling powered by the arms rather than the legs – at the age of 28, then progressed to triathlon. She won two USA National Triathlon titles, in 2009 and 2011, and completed her first Ironman Distance Triathlon in 2012. In 2013, at her second attempt, she became the first woman handcyclist to complete the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii – a feat that involved swimming 2.4 miles, handcycling 112 miles and pushing a racing wheelchair 26.2 miles. Minda now speaks regularly about her experiences, and actively supports the worldwide campaign to eradicate polio.

  * * *

  I have three siblings who are all around the same age as I am. My parents did a great job of trying to make sure that we are all independent individuals – and they didn’t give me any breaks growing up. I had the same chore chart as my siblings, and I had to learn to play a musical instrument, as they did. Although I had a disability, no one ever said, ‘You can’t do that.’ They didn’t limit me in terms of my goals.

  Growing up so different from everyone around me wasn’t easy, so I had to focus on things I could control.

  My parents have great drive of their own. They adopted two children and had two of their own, and their example gave me some of that drive. But I think it’s internal,
too. Growing up so different from everyone around me wasn’t easy, so I had to focus on things I could control. I focused on being a good student because I knew my ticket to life was education and going to college. I dreamed of living on the East Coast and being part of an international business.

  I think having a plan for success is really important. I had a goal of completing the Ironman World Championship in Kona. The first time I went there, in 2012, I failed – and because of that failure, I had to go home, regroup and figure out what I was going to do. I had to change my approach to my training. I found a swimming coach to help me improve my technique, and I found myself some mentors. Triathlon is an individual sport, but as a disabled athlete, I need a lot of support, not just in terms of training but also for things like carrying me in and out of the water. It’s not just about your own plan, but also having people to help you – a good team. And on top of that is believing in yourself. In this instance, I was an athlete working towards a goal, but what I did translates into all relationships – work, family. It’s about creating systems, then being able to execute them to get to your goal.

  There will be times when things are difficult – then it’s about mind over matter. Giving up on the Ironman certainly went through my mind, but I have some great friends that inspired me and helped me think about whether it was worth another try. And I didn’t want to regret not trying. My mind-set was: ‘What can I change, how can I get a better result?’

  When I completed the championship, I was ecstatic. I remember having a huge beaming smile on my face. I was in pain, but it didn’t matter. I had done it. I thought about all the women who had tried before me, and my own failure the year before. It meant so much to me finally to get it done. In the wider context of my life, it has opened new doors for me. I had the opportunity to meet triathlon champion Chrissie Wellington. She said, ‘You have a platform now, you need to use it,’ and that really stuck.