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.
I’ve moved countries a few times from Aotearoa New Zealand to Zambia to New York to California and I have a terrible fear of settling down. My friends tell me this is really a fear of housework. It’s possible they’re right.
Professionally, I tell stories or help get other people’s stories in the media, especially young people from diverse backgrounds because young people have wonderful ideas (so do older people, no ageism here). I like to interview people doing things to make their communities and world better, particularly women. 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 having completed it. 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). Society tells women their beauty matters most, yet the standards of beauty are just out of reach. It’s why we buy gym memberships and paleo recipes and those creams that promise to make us look 28 by sunrise but that’s not what makes us happy.
I haven’t been to the gym since 1999 and I am quite happy about that.
This site was originally a blog and it dates back to a time when I lived with my young family at a camp 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 sex week man-hunt.
On the subject of body image, I’ve talked to Kathryn Ryan about it on Radio New Zealand, and written stories for Sunday. I’ve interviewed twenty other amazing people and they all sit on Fucking Awesome Bulimics I Know. In 2017, I gave 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 kids games selling liposuction and nose jobs to three year olds, and convinced Apple to remove them.
Ruby Jones, my friend and talented illustrator, and I worked with the amazing folk at Tūranga this year to bring to life an exhibition celebrating the intersection between body image and mental health – Like Bodies Like Minds. It launched in May, and you can see some photos here. We hope to take it to other locations around Aotearoa.
My day job involves working with the fine folk at the Y, and trying to listen with an open heart and unclogged ears to my two incredible children.
Here’s my favourite project I do every year – Y25, celebrating 25 women & gender-diverse trailblazers under the age of 25 doing kickass things.
Thanks for visiting this page, please don’t follow me here as you’ll never get an email from me (I’m such an influencer). But I like to connect with like-minded people and please do get in touch.
“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”
― Lewis Carroll
Angela Barnett 
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