Hi everyone, I am Alice Clover, also known as The Farting Feminist, a best selling self published children’s writer and creator of The Girls Love to Series, alongside the exceptionally talented Cheryl Lucas. I have always been passionate about women’s and girls rights and after twenty-two years of working with children, reading hundreds of books and seeing the repeated messages about how girls and boys are expected to behave I wanted to bring out something new and different.
The Girls Love to Series is all about normalising natural bodily functions and increasing body confidence, so that girls can grow up understanding their bodies better and also love and respect themselves too. In a world where girls and women are bombarded with the idea of the ‘perfect’ body, ‘perfect’ look and ‘perfect’ life, it is easy to look at our bodies and ourselves in general and think we aren’t enough.
I have got two daughters and they have been the inspiration for creating Alice Clover Stories and The Girls Love to Series and my eldest daughter also came up with the title for my book Princesses Don’t have stinky Bums. When I first wrote Girls Love to Fart my eldest daughter was aged three she was told that girls don’t fart and every time I tried to read it to her she cried and refused to listen. It was at this point that I realised just how needed these books are and how much literature needs to change because the messages girls are seeing and listening too are damaging them physically, mentally and emotionally, from early on in their childhood.
Toys, clothes, books and even stationary products are all gendered, reiterating the fact that girls should be kind, gentle, calm, pink, sparkly, unicorn loving, well behaved, voiceless, care giving individuals. This is infiltrated into all walks of life and unless it is challenged and the narrative is changed, then girls will continue to grow up with limiting beliefs, low confidence and a dislike of their own bodies.
I am on a mission to be the voice that girls need to help them see their own potential and learn how to love who they are entirely. Girls can be anything that they want to be, have huge potential, make fantastic leaders and have the ability to do so much good in this world.
