Gratitude Monday: What you do makes a difference

 It’s Gratitude Monday, and today I’m grateful to have found this story about Austin, Texas, photographer Jamie Moore.

For her daughter’s fifth birthday earlier this year, Moore shot a series of pictures that honors both potential and achievement: the anti-Disney-Princess approach to what a young girl could look forward to.

She chose icons like Earhart, Chanel and Goodall, and made some amazing images. One example here:

The rest are on Moore’s website on the “Not just a girl” page.

What I like about these choices is that the subjects are not perfect by any means. They are tough, confident women whose dreams took them to places many others didn’t want them to be. They flew—literally and figuratively—against the winds of their times; they occasionally crashed and burned. But they kept on.

Since the original story broke (I found it in The Guardian), Moore is looking for contributors to expand the project by photographing girls from all around the world in conjunction with other female role models—Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Josephine Baker, Doris Lessing, Christine de Pisan, Phyllis Wheatley. Well—the list could include hundreds. It's a great project.

Look—I’m not unalterably opposed to Disney princesses. In fact, I quite like Mulan. But the notion that little girls can learn about and aspire to be more than an all-singing all-dancing Barbie is refreshing. You can fly against the prevailing winds in ways large and small, and maybe start with a photograph and the knowledge that others have done the same thing.