I noticed that no matter where I went in the country, there was this group of questions that got asked. I would track them and keep them in categories. Like body image, school, family, friendship, you name it, the emotional life of a teenage girl.
Every second, every day, every year, we fail to address demand for reproductive health and family planning services. Lives are lost, and girls' opportunities to thrive and contribute to their country's development shrink. These are real people.
I was kind of ashamed of my bourgeois family as a teenager, I guess - I had dreadlocks, shopped in thrift stores and pretended I had no money. At that time, I would have spat on a girl who was buying Yves Saint Laurent.
We didn't have much money. My whole extended family used to help us, and buy us books and food. It was hard, and there were things I didn't want to talk about. But at the end I was a happy girl.
My family comes from New Zealand, but I'm a London girl. I was born and raised in London, but I've got the blood of a New Zealander, so I always kind of felt like I didn't belong - in a good way.
My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.
My mother always called me an ugly weed, so I never was aware of anything until I was older. Plain girls should have someone telling them they are beautiful. Sometimes this works miracles.
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
When I was 11, I had an Ugly Sister birthday party. All my idea. Most girls want to be a fairy or a princess, but there I am with beauty spots and fur and fluorescent pink kiss-curls.
I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be rewoven.
I learned the business in about two months, and then made as much as the others, and was consequently doing quite well when the factory burned down, destroying all our machines - 150 of them. This was very hard on the girls who had paid for their mac...
When I was 16 the first girl I had a crush on wasn't interested at all. I liked her from afar for ages, and when I eventually got the courage and told her, and she wasn't into me.
I don't know if I was a poseur - I really did love metal, always - but I gave a lot of other things a chance. I wanted to meet, um, girls, so I would check out 'Depeche Mode.'
If I know I will be working with someone and they are not keen with writing with a girl, I like to be non-threatening and cool so they will trust me. It's a thought process of who work and how I want to present myself.
It was a very cool thing to be a smart girl, as opposed to some other, different kind. And I think that made a great deal of difference to me growing up and in my life afterward.
The plus size movement is not just about fashion; it's about body image, and if we're doing a shoot, they won't retouch us at all. That's the cool thing: there's no retouching at all because we want to give girls the truth, not a fabrication.
Melanie Fiona is a singer, a songwriter, she's a super-girl. I can be silly, goofy, really chilled. She's like your cool chill girlfriend, sister-friend. I'm just like everybody else.
I think we all attract troublemakers; I don't think it's particularly about anyone. I had it actually as an album title, and I thought it would be really cool to write a song about a girl that's a bit of troublemaker.
I would love to do a really cool romantic comedy, perhaps with Hugh Grant. I think he is brilliant. That's the kind of film I love to go to see. I love 'girls' films'.
My favorite part of touring is when I see girls that I've been talking to on my site and then meeting them in person. I can't believe how well the fans get along together. Everyone just seems to be really cool.
The Hollywood lifestyle was just overwhelming. A party here, an interview there, magazine and modeling shoots daily, your face everywhere and girls throwing themselves at you. As great as it felt at the time, I still felt something missing, and that ...
