F.E.A.R. – False Evidence Appearing Real: a phrase I stumbled upon in 2008 and a feeling I never felt more than ever in November of 2013, when I made a commitment to produce a lifestyle website for black and mixed race woman of excellence.
After years of conversations with girlfriends (of different races may I add), there was one common topic that reared its head every now and then: ‘What is a great website targeted at black British women?’ Being a journalist, many of my girlfriends expected me to roll off an entire list of websites that offered more than beauty advice for darker skinned women. So you can imagine the disappointment when I, like them, could not list one either.
So with not much to compare to, one may wonder what there really was to fear. Well, fear of failure. The fear of not making the target audience happy. But within the first few weeks of launch, I learned the harsh reality that I wouldn’t be making every single black British girl happy. And that was OK. In fact it's brilliant. Why? Because it means we were doing our job as a publication.
The same girl that reads Heat probably doesn’t read Vogue. The woman that needs her monthly fix of Cosmopolitan, may not download her Stylist issue every Tuesday at 5:30pm on the dot. Great publications are for a set demographic and if there is one thing society, the media and the internet fail to acknowledge is the diversity and difference that exists between black women.