Shella Michael arrived in Los Angeles in 1982 after fleeing the aftermath of the Armenian genocide and the Lebanese civil war.
She later had the opportunity to showcase her artwork at the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. However, her parents refused to allow the young woman to move to Italy, afraid she could not accomplish things alone. Michael’s daughter, Ariana Michael, is now a second-year communication studies student at UCLA and is inspired by her mother’s story.
“I have a lot of women like my mother in my life that were not given the chance to reach their goals, and I want to prevent that from happening in the future,” Ariana Michael said.
Michael decided to join Herstory at UCLA, an online campaign to celebrate women. The Facebook page, in the vein of Humans of New York, has paired seven photos of women with text explaining their story in their own words. Current Undergraduate Students Association Council President Heather Rosen and Internal Vice President Heather Hourdequin started the initiative in April to highlight feminism.
“At UCLA, feminism can end up being a one-sided issue where we speak academically about the movement but ignore what is happening today on the ground,” Rosen said. “It’s important to incorporate the experiences of students from different walks of campus.”
Hourdequin said the project began when she and Rosen were discussing the rarity of two women running for the top two positions in USAC.
During election season, Rosen noticed people on Bruin Walk would refer to female candidates as friendly and bubbly, while male candidates were characterized as confident and empowering.
Rosen said since the page delivers the unedited words and photos of subjects, the photoblog format of Herstory supports the idea that any woman should speak for herself.
Initially the pair had friends help interview female student government leaders on campus and design the logo, but when the project moved under the branch of the internal vice president’s office, a new team of eight took over. Rosen said the future of the page rests with the new directors.
Michael, a new member and former intern for the general representative 3 office, said the team hopes to release weekly stories as well as a monthly video highlighting an interviewed woman, interspersed with footage of her work and interviews with people she impacted. The group plans to find new subjects through a Google nomination form on its Facebook page.
Ryan Kageyama, the fourth-year statistics student behind Humans of UCLA, said a central part of Humans of New York-style photoblog pages is avoiding self-advertising.
“I always tell my team that I don’t want any of their friends on the page because it defeats the purpose,” Kageyama said. “This isn’t a place to advertise how great your friends are, but to show that nobody is alone in what they go through and to try to make this campus feel smaller.”
Michael said the Herstory team aims to get voices from different niches on campus by emailing club leaders. As of Sept. 15, six out of the site’s seven profiles are involved in USAC.
“We don’t want this to be another USAC project only featuring USAC members, so we’ve sent emails to heads of different clubs throughout UCLA to get their stories,” Michael said.
Vivian Giang, a third-year psychology student and editor in chief of the feminist newsmagazine FEM, said the page incites important discussion given the lack of women-centric forums at UCLA.
“I know a lot of people who have had trouble with gender bias and street harassment on campus,” Giang said. “A lot of it isn’t outright sexism but more pervasive ideas, such as gender studies being a useless major since you are studying women.”
Even though other Humans of New York-type pages exist at UCLA, Giang said they are generally geared toward a broader populace. She added that since women’s stories in particular have historically been ignored, she believes Herstory offers a necessary outlet.
Giang added that the photo-based format of the page increases the likelihood of it going viral and getting media attention.
In the future, Rosen hopes Herstory will not only include cisgender women, but also those who identify as women or support them, including men.
“I’m the first female USAC president in four years,” Rosen said. “We have to break that cycle.”