Standing at the checkout line, Sierra Sullivan’s spirits sagged as she looked at the women’s magazines on rack.
The headlines told women to do things like lose weight, hide their wrinkles, update their wardrobes.
Where, Sullivan wondered, were the magazines telling women they were OK the way they were?
It turned into a mission. She looked all over for a positive women’s magazine. Finding none, Sullivan had an idea.
She would start her own.
The RAY started as an e-zine and grew into a full-color, glossy magazine. Perhaps more importantly, it was Sullivan’s first step in embracing what she calls the modern women’s movement. This week, she took another huge step in that direction, launching the inaugural Saratoga Women’s Fest in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. The opening ceremonies were held on Tuesday, March 8. There will be closing ceremonies on March 27. In between, there will be lectures, movies and workshops, all aimed at spreading the ideal of `self-love.`
The idea is deeper than just rallying women for a month, though. Sullivan and other organizers hope the festival will spur lasting change in both big and small ways.
`We hope to inspire women,` said Celeste Caruso. She pointed to her own work with Sustainable Saratoga, an organization that promotes economic and environmentally sustainable practices. She hopes women who take part in the festival will be moved to tackle topics like the environment, create stronger bonds with their families, and to love and nourish their bodies.
Caruso acknowledged that it `sounds very lofty and grandiose.` But having been an active participant in the first women’s movement in the ’60s, Caruso thinks it’s an important time for women to re-evaluate, to `become more like women.`
That’s a common theme of the festival. In fact, while the first women’s movement may have been centered on giving women choices ` the choice to have a career, to have a family, to do both ` it created a lot of anger, said Lin Murphy, another festival organizer. This time around, the movement is `more loving and inclusive,` she said.
Sullivan grew up in a home with abundant female energy. A native of Oswego, she has three sisters, and her mom founded Harborfest, a celebration that has grown synonymous with the city. So when Sullivan was living in California and saw those magazine covers, they went against the strong sense of self she had developed.
The RAY, which stood for Real Authentic You, came upon hard times in recent years, like many magazines. So Sullivan came back to upstate New York to reconnect with her past and hopefully decide what to do moving forward. Her father lives in Troy, so Sullivan spent time in the Capital District, talking to women about her magazine, her philosophies and her wide-open future.
The ideas of self-love and acceptance resonated with everyone she talked to, she said. She started to feel like this area could use someone to promote those ideas. She had always vowed she’d never move back to New York, but suddenly, she was staring at a new mission, and she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.
`The calling was so great,` she said. `I hit the ground running.`
Sullivan started meeting with women around the area, just talking and trading ideas about `feminine power.` She wanted to do something to celebrate the centenary of International Women’s Day, but she wasn’t sure what. She and four other women met in a living room to talk about the possibilities. Then 10 of them got together in a coffee shop, then 17.
`I’m really excited about the way it happened,` Murphy said. `It’s taken off like wildfire. People are just throwing money at us.`
A large aspect of the festival will be looking at women’s role through history. Sullivan said women were held in high regard in Native American history, to the extent that when the settlers and Native Americans would meet to negotiate, Native Americans would wonder why the settlers hadn’t brought any women to the meetings.
That cooperative spirit has died out over the years, Sullivan believes. Today, women are competitive ` `We’re even competitive with our husbands and our boyfriends.`
There’s nothing wrong with striving to be the best, Sullivan stressed. But it can’t come at the expense of other things. She sees women getting burned out because they’re too afraid to ask for help. They don’t make time to share with other women or to connect with their families.
`We’re not taking the time to nurture ourselves,` she said.
She’s been juggling a lot trying to get the festival together, and she can fall into the mindset that `it’s easier if I do this on my own,` she said. In the end, though, she feels better reaching out for help.
`We’ve been conditioned to do things ourselves,` she said. `We have this Lone Ranger mentality that we can do it all.`
Murphy is a big advocate of stepping away from it all and just making time to sit down and talk. She frequently facilitates women’s circles, including one she was part of locally last year in honor of International Women’s Day. Everyone went around and talked about issues that were important in the community, about changes they wanted to see.
They wanted an end to domestic violence. They wanted more women to get involved in politics. They wanted people to support the arts.
Those are the kind of concrete ideas that organizers hope the festival will move people to take action on, with the idea that women will see these things ` and themselves ` as important.
`We need to reconnect with our intense power,` Caruso said.
Not every undertaking has to be life-changing, Sullivan noted. Women can benefit even by doing simple things like getting together for a book club, or by picking one topic and talking about it, like the challenges of being a mother.
By listening to one another, by exchanging ideas, women strengthen themselves and others, she said.
`You see how much alike you are,` she said. `It’s so profound.`
For more information, visit www.saratogawomensfest.com.“