Tēnā koe. I’m a mother of two, daughter, sister, and aunty from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. I’m pākehā and whakapapa to Denmark, Whales, Scotland, England, Ireland and Iceland.
Professionally, I tell stories or help tell other people’s stories in the media. I like to interview people doing things to make their communities and world better, particularly women. Or people being real about how hard life can be sometimes. I’m not into perfection.
Living in Aotearoa, a colonised country, I’ve been working to uncolonise my mind but it’s ongoing work and I don’t expect I will ever arrive at a point of completion. The more I learn the more I have to unlearn. Toitū Te Tiriti!
Personally, I write about the struggles we all have to exist peacefully inside the bodies and minds we’ve been given, especially in a world loaded with deep-rooted intergenerational bias (racism, weight discrimination, ableism, whiteness, the patriarchy).
For over a decade I have been waving my arms about body acceptance. I’ve talked to Kathryn Ryan on Radio New Zealand about body image and bulimia and written stories for Sunday. I’ve interviewed twenty other amazing people and they all sit on FABIK including Glennon Doyle. In 2017, I began to give talks in schools about the relentless messages bombarding young women through advertising and socials. It was called Pretty Smart and ran until Covid. I’ve also campaigned with the global group, Anybody, and a few years back we petitioned to dismantle games selling liposuction and nose jobs to three year olds. Apple removed them.
Ruby Jones, my friend and talented illustrator, and I have created Like Bodies Like Minds, a project celebrating the intersection between body image and mental health. In 2025 it became an exhibition and launched at Tūranga in Christchurch. Photos here. We hope to take it around Aotearoa.
Every year I get to work with the YWCA on my favourite project – Y25: celebrating 25 women & gender-diverse trailblazers under the age of 25 doing kickass things.
This site was originally a blog and it dates back to 2010 when I lived with my young family at a camp for children in a redwood forest in California. I don’t post stories here anymore and I keep thinking I should delete this site but it captured a part of our history – including a time when a murderer was in our camp and the SWAT team were called in to embark on a six week man-hunt. True story!
Thanks for visiting, please don’t follow me as you’ll never get an email (I’m such an influencer). But I like to connect with like-minded people so get in touch if you have a story or project in mind.
Ngā mihi nui
Angela
“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”
― Lewis Carroll
Angela Barnett 
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