Her Story

You’re joining a very long story

Girls who grow up surrounded by other women soak up a lot of culture without noticing it. Mum’s old records. A grandmother’s stories about the war. The film everyone watched at sleepovers. Knowing why we say “suffragette”, who Coco Chanel was, or why pink is “for girls”.

If you missed out on that, it can feel like everyone else got a handbook. This bed is that handbook. It isn’t homework. Think of it as inheriting a family history you were always part of.

Why history matters for femininity

Here’s the most freeing thing history teaches: femininity has never stood still.

• In the 1700s, fashionable European men wore heels, powdered wigs, rouge and silk stockings.
• Around a century ago, some shops and magazines said pink was for boys and blue was for girls.
• Women wearing trousers was once scandalous. Now it’s so normal nobody notices.
• Makeup has gone from “only for actresses and scandalous women” to an everyday thing, and back again, more than once.

So when someone says “real women do X”, history quietly says: says who, and since when? Femininity is something people make and remake, together, all the time. That includes you.

Women made this world

Almost everything we take for granted (voting, owning property, having your own bank account, wearing what you like, working after marriage) was won by women who organised, argued, marched, wrote and refused to go away. Many paid a high price for it.

And not only cis women. Trans women have been part of this history all along, often at the very front: at the uprisings that started the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, on magazine covers, in courtrooms and in parliaments.

What’s in this bed

• 🌸 The history of pink, heels and makeup: how the “rules” of femininity were invented, and keep changing.
• 🗳️ Milestones: key moments in women’s rights in Australia, the UK and the US.
• 🌊 The waves of feminism: what people mean by “first wave”, “second wave” and so on.
• 🏳️‍⚧️ Our foremothers: queer and trans women who changed history.
• 💄 Icons: women in fashion, music and film who shaped how femininity looks.
• 🍿 Culture Club: films, books and music to catch up on the girlhood media everyone else seems to quote.

A gentle invitation

As you go, notice which women you’re drawn to. Maybe it’s a fierce activist, a glamorous film star, a quiet scientist or a punk musician. The women you admire tell you something about the woman you want to be. You’re allowed to borrow a little from all of them.