By Logan Doctson | Staff Reporter
Truth and Dare is the blog Lillian Roth wishes she’d had access to freshman year. Now in her senior year, Roth and a team of creators are bringing that blog to life for current freshmen and leagues of women all across campus.
Since launching on Oct. 3 of last year, Truth and Dare blog has been facilitating conversations. The founders of the site wanted to create a dialogue on campus, and to incite discussions – even the tough ones – among college women.
“I decided to start Truth and Dare after conversations with other female leaders on campus,” said Roth, the founder and editor-in-chief of the blog and former SGA president. “We all realized a need for a wider dialogue to inspire women to uplift one another and realize their highest potential. We wanted to create a blog we wish we’d had freshman year. Truth and Dare’s mission is to encourage women to start tough conversations, strive for progress and always demand equality.”
Roth, double majoring in public relations and political science, wants all women to know their own worth and to challenge them to never accept less than what they deserve.
“All women on this campus must realize that if we aren’t treated worthy enough for a seat at a football game, we will never be able to negotiate equal pay in the workforce or win a senate seat in the legislature,” Roth said.
Truth and Dare’s name easily came to life after Roth realized what she wanted the purpose and meaning of the blog to be.
“While on the way to the season opener in Atlanta with two of my best friends, I told them about my idea to start a girl-power blog to inspire college women, but I hadn’t settled on what to call it,” Roth said. “As we were brainstorming names, we discussed using this blog [as] an opportunity to dare women to seek their highest potential. One of my friends quickly said, ‘truth or dare?’ and I responded, ‘how about both?'”
From posts about fashion to music playlists, the Truth and Dare team is continuously thinking of new ways to reach its audience.
“T+D has a lot of awesome posts coming up in the next month,” said Katter Longshore, a senior majoring in speech pathology. “Readers can look forward to seeing posts about spring styles, the true explanation of feminism and a new playlist from yours truly.”
Katter serves as a music media contributor, which means she strives to speak to women through music with playlists and music posts.
“As music media contributor, I create playlists every month that range from my new favorite music to jams that I think will inspire women,” Longshore said. “I’ve always had a heart for music and I am so happy to be able to reach people with my musical obsession.”
Joshua Britt, a contributing writer for the primarily female content-driven blog, has seen the ways sexism affects the women in his life since he was growing up in Edmond, Oklahoma.
“I grew up in a house with a mother and two older sisters who all worked in male-dominated fields,” said Britt, a freshman with an undecided major. “I watched my mother work just as hard as my father and constantly get referred to as ‘Mrs. Britt,’ as opposed to my father being properly addressed as ‘Dr. Britt,’ despite the two of them both having graduated from medical school and being consistently self-employed physicians.”
Britt feels like his gender doesn’t affect his opinions about sexism.
“My favorite article that I’ve written would probably be ‘Feminism isn’t Attacking Your Masculinity, Dude,'” Britt said. “I had been getting tons of questions about what being a dude writing for a feminism blog felt like and I was just so over it. My gender doesn’t determine anything about the fact that I believe in equal opportunity for all.”
The blog has an array of different sections on their navigation bar. From “The F-Word” to “Check Her out,” Truth and Dare has articles on anything and everything having to do with girl power.
“My favorite section is our resources tab and I honestly think it’s the most important,” said Corrin Coleman, a senior majoring in political science and public relations. “We understand that it takes a lot more than articles we write to go and affect real change. Here we come up with organizations that empower women both locally and nationwide. These are places you can volunteer or use as a resource for things going on in your life specifically. I think a push in the right direction can encourage women to find their inner girl boss and that’s really what T+D is all about.”
Coleman’s role for Truth and Dare is serving as issues director.
“As issues director, I am responsible for generating content focusing on breaking news, social issues and politics,” Coleman said. “Not only do I help with the writing and editing of pieces for the blog, but I also build and maintain healthy relationships with our contributors, so that they can be successful in fleshing out their own ideas to be featured on the blog.”
The Truth and Dare team wants all women to realize that they must start with themselves first to begin to see change in this world.
“I know it’s a little cheesy, but if you want to see change, be the change,” Britt said. “Who would’ve thought that a few students in college would develop such a cool thing. Lillian, Corrin, Maggie [Draughn], Sara [Massey], Madeline [Anscombe], all the other young women and I wanted to see change. So we did something about it.”
Truth and Dare can be found at www.truthanddareblog.com.
