Junior Aydan Urias, creates website to give feminist writers a space to find their voice

After the election, Aydan Urias wanted to create a platform where girls could express their creativity. With the launch of her website, Can’t Grab Us, on Feb. 1, she has done precisely that, offering visual (photography, paintings), audio (music) and verbal (essays, interviews) content, a monthly theme and a group of diverse contributors. Can’t Grab Us received about 1,000 cite views the first day it was launched.
“A lot of girls have submitted me stuff that I didn’t have before,” Urias said. “So more people are wanting to join so that’s really exciting.”
Her favorite clothing brand and book, Nasty Gal and Rookie Yearbook, inspired her. Urias looks up to these successful young girls and draws inspiration from their creativity. She said that she hopes the website will offer an outlet for girls to express themselves freely and be just as creative.
“I am hoping to provide a voice to more girls,” Urias said, “and let them know they have this website as a resource if they ever want to creatively express themselves.”
After advertising her website on social media, many girls came forward wanting to contribute to the website. After asking all her contributors what they wanted to do, their decided to have submissions due at the end of the month.
The first month’s theme was Black History Month.

ROXANNE SMITH:
MUSIC CONTRIBUTOR

One of the website’s contributors is junior Roxy Smith, who specializes in the music section. Each month she comes up with a playlist of about 20 songs based on the theme of the month. For the month of February, her playlist was based off the concept of “letting go.”
“I have a huge music library that’s always growing, where I’ve saved pretty most every song that I’ve heard and liked, so every month when I hear the theme I comb through the library to find the songs that fit the best,” Smith said. “I try to mix songs by emerging artists with crowd pleasers that everyone likes. I also profile an artist or two to watch each month, so usually if I can find a way to tie in one of their songs to the monthly themed playlist, I’ll do that too.”
After Trump was elected, Smith felt like she needed a resource to express her emotions.
“After the election, it was really important for me that I and other girls had a creative outlet for some of the emotions that were arising,” Smith said. “And Aydan’s website seemed like a good place to make that happen.”
For her second playlist, Smith decided not to follow a specific theme: “This month is a little unconventional. The songs don’t follow a specific theme; instead, they’re just all songs by female black musicians that we admire. I usually make the playlists, but this month I asked everyone what artists they admire.”

HANNAH WHELLAN:
OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL CONTRIBUTOR

Hannah Whellan, a junior at LASA, liked the idea and concept of Urias’ website and submitted an essay last month.
“It’s really nice to see all these other people that are in your similar situation and feeling the same things as you,” Hannah Whellan said. “I think that as privileged white girls, there’s not a lot that is affecting us really, except for women’s rights, but there is so much we can do because we have so much opportunity; and Aydan made a platform for that.”
Whellan has always been interested in creative writing and short stories. Her first piece wasn’t a short story, but this has been a great resource for experimenting with her writing.
For the launch of the website, Whellan decided to amend Trump’s inauguration speech. After talking about how embarrassing and bad it was for Trump to say how bad our country is in front of our past president, Whellan decided to revise the speech to include all the great things America has to offer.
“I wanted to write a speech that appreciates all the great things that have happened in America,” Whellan said, ”including the increase in diversity, how important all of our citizens are, and how important globalization is for America.”
Whellan said that Urias’ website has been a great resource for her and that she has really enjoyed the opportunity to contribute.

CAL HURD:
WRITING CONTRIBUTOR

Cal Hurd, another junior at McCallum, is a longtime friend of Urias and first heard of the website directly from her. Hurd believes that men should be able to celebrate and contribute to an initiative that empowers women.
“I wanted to contribute because I love the idea of empowering people,” Hurd said. “It is specific to girls, but … I feel like gender does not have boundaries, and I think empowering anyone that feels disenfranchised is important. And I love writing.”
Upon its initial launch, the website had no theme, so they were allowed to contribute anything they wanted. Hurd decided to write about how his diet has recently changed.
“My biggest philosophy about dealing and feeling like you’re not enough for society and stuff is to channel that into doing things that are good for yourself, and taking care of yourself,” Hurd said. “So I wrote a piece about my journey to stop eating dairy, and I wrote about how that has affected my life.”
After editing his piece to his best ability, he sends it to Urias who then uploads it to the website. Hurd said he is looking forward to contributing to the website again.

GO CHECK OUT AYDAN’S WEBSITE AT WWW.CANTGRABUS.COM