Equality Culture Club: Meredith Walker on writing, life advice, and feminist media

In this edition of the Equality Culture Club’s interview series, we speak with Meredith Walker, author and co-founder of Smart Girls, an online community created to help girls learn more about themselves and the world around them. Through a series of questions and answers, she addresses her writing style, the advice that can often feel like a trap, feminist media recommendations, and more.

Q: Was there a specific moment or conversation that made you realize Be Yourself and Other Bad Advice needed to exist?

A: Through years of listening to girls in schools and communities, a pattern emerged. Teens and young women told me how stressful it was to feel so much pressure to achieve and to have their lives mapped out before they even knew what they really wanted or were good at.

That pressure isn’t anything new, but social media has added another dimension. Now it’s continuous, hyper-targeted, and carried around with them all day. There’s a constant stream of content telling them what life should look like and all the ways they could be improving themselves.

It became clear to me that girls need more tools for questioning all of those expectations and pressures. They need some help figuring out what they actually think and want. Getting to know yourself and learning to think for yourself are skills. This book is a way to practice them.

Q: What’s a piece of advice that sounds empowering but can actually be a kind of trap?

A: “You can have it all.”

It was meant as an expansive message that women didn’t have to accept all the old limits on what their lives could look like. But it can easily become another source of pressure. We’ve turned it into: “You should have it all, and what’s wrong with you if you can’t pull it off?” A great career, meaningful relationships, financial success, a comfy home—and somehow hold it all together without much of a social safety net. Good luck!

We can have an interesting, meaningful life, but probably not every version of it, all at the same time. And that’s okay. 

Q: If you could put one line from Be Yourself and Other Bad Advice on a poster in every school hallway, what would it be?

A: “No matter where you go, you’ll always bring you with you—so make sure you like who that person is.”

Q: How do you balance humour and vulnerability on the page?

A: I wanted readers to know the book was going to be honest, and I was willing to be honest about myself, too. I struggled my first year of college, made mistakes, had boring jobs….and had the emotional intelligence to once throw an egg at my brother. Not when I was a toddler. When I was 20.

For me, the balance is being vulnerable (and ridiculous) without making the reader the joke. A little humour lets me write honestly about my mistakes and what I learned the hard way without sounding preachy.

Q: For anyone unfamiliar, how would you describe the mission of Smart Girls?

A: Smart Girls was created to help girls know themselves better and become more curious about the world around them.

We offered web shows, interviews, workshops, summer camps, journalism boot camps, and a friendly digital community. The idea underneath all of it was pretty simple: girls are totally interesting, their ideas matter, and the world is worth being curious about.

Q: Can you point to a moment that confirmed you were doing something important?

A: Well, it was pretty rad when we started Smart Girls Ask. We showed up on red carpets and, instead of asking women what they were wearing, we asked them substantive questions about their craft, their ideas, and what they cared about.

Women standing on a red carpet had interesting things to say. We decided to ask them. Our community loved it—and so did the women we interviewed.

Icons, inspiration, and imagining equality

To close, we ask every Equality Culture Club guest about the people, stories, and ideas that shape their vision for a more equal world. From the future they hope to see, to the women who inspire them, to the books and films that have stayed with them, these reflections offer a glimpse into what fuels their work and optimism.

Q: What excites you most about the prospect of a gender-equal future?

A: Under what circumstances is gender inequality acceptable? None. Zero. Gender equality should be so fundamental that we no longer have to make the case for it. It should simply be the baseline in our workplaces, our policies, our communities, everywhere.

Imagine a world where gender has no bearing on who gets to make decisions that affect all of us. Think of what we might notice, fix, or understand differently if everyone actually had an equal say.

And oh my gosh, HALLELUJAH! When the day comes that gender inequality disappears from laws and policies affecting women’s bodies and healthcare, we will dance in the streets!

Q: Who is your favorite feminist icon and why?

A: I can’t pick just one, so I’ll give you three: Barbara Jordan, Kathy Valentine, and Linda Ellerbee.

Barbara Jordan was a brilliant congresswoman from Texas who blew everyone’s minds during Watergate. During the Nixon impeachment hearings, she explained what the Constitution required of us in a way that still makes you want to be a better citizen and a better person. I have a T-shirt with her image on it, and it’s so awesome when someone says, “I love your shirt!” They get it.

Kathy Valentine is a writer, musician, member of the Go-Go’s, and very punk rock. But what I especially love about her is that she keeps challenging herself. She writes music, books, and essays, goes on adventures, and pushes herself out of her comfort zone. She’s just so cool.

And Linda Ellerbee is an award-winning journalist and producer who broke barriers in broadcasting and created Nick News, a model for how to talk with young people about what’s going on in their world. She respected her audience enough to tell them the truth about complicated things and trusted them to think for themselves. She also mentored me and gave me my start in TV, and I love her.

Q: Do you have feminist media recommendations?

A: Yes Please by Amy Poehler, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, This Book is Feminist: An Intersectional Primer for Next-Gen Changemakers by Jamia Wilson, Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, Ginger Mancino, Kid Comedian by Wendi Aarons, and All I Ever Wanted: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir by Kathy Valentine. 

And watch Somebody Somewhere. It’s so good at showing what can happen when you discover more about who you are and find your people.