Hi! I’m Mima, AKA Mimzy. Welcome to my blog.

Growing up, I was inspired by countless women in films and TV shows, who always seemed to be writers. Andy Sachs, Bridget Jones, Andie Anderson, Jenna Rink. They were all living my dream. Then, as I ventured into my teenage years, I learnt to feel embarrassed by them. Society had dismissed my love and admiration for these women as “silly” and “unrealistic”. They were seen as unserious because they worked in fashion or magazines and apparently that was not ‘proper’ journalism. I carried that belief with me and channelled my passion, my creativity, into another art form instead. I chose to do a degree in Fine Art, where women were not shunned so much as ignored. We’ve all heard of Frida Kahlo, but I’d bet that your average Joe would struggle to name another female painter, whereas they’d be able to reel off Vincent Van Gogh (with questionable pronunciation), Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet in a heartbeat. It was the lesser of two evils. I graduated. I got a job. But I couldn’t shake my need to write.

That has been one of the biggest barriers for me: learning to take my own interests seriously. I have often felt that, in order to be respected as a writer, I needed to write about something darker or more traditional. But the more I write, the more I realise how important and inspiring women’s everyday lives are. Topics such as fashion, beauty and dating are not trivial. They are mine, and so many women's identities.

So I did a Master’s in Journalism. 

It was part-time, in the evenings, for two years. I was so desperate to write. On my first day, as an icebreaker, we were asked what had drawn us to the course and what we hoped to get out of it. For the first time, I was honest, both with the class and with myself. I said I wanted to be just like Carrie Bradshaw. 

This opportunity matters because I want to build the confidence to write in my own voice, not the voice I think or have been told, will be taken seriously. I want to write about women’s lives and interests with warmth and honesty, and prove that the subjects often dismissed as unimportant deserve their own space.