ZARE MAGAZINE.

Racial and Religious Discrimination in Women's Football. “Being on that pitch, with people that looked like me and sounded like me and genuinely just supported me in every way, I’ve never experienced anything like that in all my years as a football player. There’s nothing like it,” says Warda, a 22-year-old student and football player from East London. Warda is talking about being a player for Sisterhood F.C., a women’s football team based in New Cross, South-East London. However, Sisterhood F.C. is truly special in the fact that it is a team made up of solely Muslim women of colour. “We want to show young, minority girls that they are accepted and are welcome to take part in football, no matter who they are, ”   says Yasmin Abukar, the founder of Sisterhood F.C.  “ We’re determined to be a platform that raises important issues and helps in breaking barriers for Muslim women in football”.  Following years of quietly persistent discrimination in football, from the ...

By Ella Monnerat When I was packing my bags to go back home for this period of self-isolation, the first things I put into my suitcase were books. My friend asked me which ones I was taking, and when I read the titles to her, she said that “all of them are about bodies!” It was true. In this period of general uneasiness, reading about what ties us to the earth and the limitations and powers of our physical bodies helps in bringing me a sense of control and peace. If that sounds like you too, here is a list of five books about the body that you should read during quarantine. Particularly during this period of isolation, it is important to take a look inwards and reconsider the way we approach our physicality. Each of these books enables a different form of introspection, and hopefully one will fit your needs and desires during this quarantined period. If you're looking for a paranormal approach to the body...  Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado ...

By Saskia Capetti Photography by  Yossy Akinsanya Folayosade Akinsanya, better known as Yossy, is a 22-year-old digital PR intern, photographer and business owner from Hertfordshire.  ZARE met Yossy to chat about navigating business as a young black woman, her career intentions, future goals regarding photography, and the importance of showing support to other creatives. What got you interested in photography and how many years have you been shooting for? Rewind to about four years ago, my sister would force me to take her blog photos, and in all honesty, I hated it. But once I left for university and found out that psychology wasn’t what I had envisioned, I needed a creative release that wasn't my blog. Photography happened to be that release. How did you convince your parents that the creative path was one you wanted to take after graduating with a Psychology degree? It took a lot - there was a point where my parents told me to leave my camera at...

By Ella Monnerat Jay Bernard talks about information gatekeeping, queer and black activism, and their book ‘Surge’ at Tate Lates event.   Jay Bernard is a force of nature. They sing perfectly in tune, read with a passion rarely seen and make the audience laugh and cry. The queer poet and archivist, who read excerpts of their poetry book, Surge, at Tate Lates last month, captivated the audience with their every move. The room was crowded, and Bernard’s soft but intense presence filled it with raw emotion.  Bernard’s 2019 book, Surge, is a poetry collection that explores the 1981 New Cross Massacre, which killed 13 young black people and led a 14th to commit suicide. Society’s indifference to the deaths and the perception of the police led to protests that marked a turning point in black British history. Surge functions as an excavation of these events, and it blends together both political and personal memories, allowing the reader insight into...

By Chantel Lewis  “Hair is beauty, Hair is emotion, Hair is our heritage, Hair tells us who we are, where we’ve been and where we are going” – Octavia Spencer as Madam C.J Walker Self-Made is a limited Netflix mini-series that was recently released in March 2020 and is inspired by the story of Madame C.J. Walker the first-ever female self-made millionaire. The series follows the story of the main protagonist Sarah Breedlove, an African American washerwoman living in poverty and loses her hair to stress as she faces heartbreak from the passing of her first husband, she then makes it her life’s mission to make black beauty appreciated and cared for. The four-part series brings the story of Black hair advocate and businesswomen C.J. Walker for the first time onscreen. Being the firstborn of six children, Sarah combatted the blows of familial betrayal and the fight to revolutionize black haircare. The story is one of adoration, resourcefulness and strength against post...

By Jana Roumie  When you hear the word ‘gamer’, what comes to mind? A white heterosexual man living in his mother’s basement? Well, that’s no longer the case.  The   period of white male games for white male gamers has ended. Over the last two decades, there’s been a   huge economic rise  in the gaming industry which has caused the market to boom.   Statistics s how a specific   rise   in the female demographic of   gaming. Previously, female characters were extremely underrepresented in the gaming industry,   but today, women make  up 48% of the game buying audience .  Although we’re not nearly at the point where female characters are sufficiently represented in gaming, it’s important to   signify how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. The gaming industry is on the right path, however, we need more. In the past, the limited number of female characters were created specifically  rev...