Long before my time at Central Saint Martins, I had thought to create a collection of women’s stories that discussed what they had been labeled, contrasted with who they actually are. This would have been a powerful discussion about the perceptions of women as well as the constraints of labels. When asked the question, ‘Is rebellion dead?’, I thought back to this idea immediately.

It is rebellious, as a woman, to stray from the confines of a label or the things that people have said about her. Having had this idea, I could surely not persuade myself that rebellion is dead, nor could I think of a more genuine way to personally discuss the reason that I believe rebellion is not dead. I also thought that there may be more interesting ways to go about the same topic, but use a different book to depict women’s rebellion. When I thought about using humor, I realized that this would satisfy most strongly my intentions of the book as well as the brief.

It is time that we have a laugh about how silly women’s gender roles are and take these things back. Through my step by step guidebook on how to be everything everyone has told you not to be, I to remind women that it does not matter what others perceive of them. It does not matter the category that people put you under. At the end of the day a woman’s life is no ones but her own. Yet somehow it is still common for perceptions to be spewed at a woman from every direction.

I intend to show the power in doing the opposite of what you are told. We are criticized no matter what we do, so we might as well do what we want. A guidebook seems as if a very ironic way of saying do what you want, but it is meant to be, (in conceptual design) - a new version of the step by step process people have expected women to live by in the past. In this way, the book takes women’s power back in the most ironic way it possibly could.