Cracks of Resistance

My doctoral research focuses on how young women in the United States construct their gendered and religious identities and how (religious) educators can best support their identity work. Thus, I am always on the look-out for resources that can better help me understand the lives and struggles and joys and stories of young women and support for my claim that one of the best things we can do for young women is to create safe spaces where they can tell their identities stories and be heard into being.

One such resource is Alive Magazine. It started in 2004 as the senior thesis project of Heather Scheiwe, one of the contributors to My Red Couch. Now it is just one component of Alive Arts Media, a non-profit organization based in Minneapolis dedicated to creating media by and for young women. All of the staff people and contributors to their website and e-zine (which you can sign up to receive via e-mail) are between the ages of 13-25.

Judith Okely, an anthropologist, coins the wonderful term "cracks of resistance" to describe where she looks to find examples of agency in conditions of subordination.* Alive Magazine is an example of a flower growing from a crack of resistance, as this grassroots group has worked together to create more fulsome alternatives to mass media products that all too often portray young women without agency.

*Judith Okely, "Defiant Moments: Gender, Resistance and Individuals," Man 26: 3-22.