A Note on Femme Verve
Fifteen-second videos can reach a lot of people, but they also disappear quickly. There’s very little room for nuance or for holding complexity. And when the work is rooted in mental health, that lack of depth can start to feel at odds with the message itself. I didn’t want to build something meaningful in a way that wasn’t sustainable.
I’ve never written a blog before. I’ve written informative pieces for my research job in psychology, and I’ve written songs and poems that will probably never see the light of day, buried deep in my notes app. But despite my professional and artistic shyness, I feel like it’s important for people to know that behind content live very real people. Femme Verve is slowly becoming her own little business, moving away from being solely a content account — but the business idea was built from an ethos that came directly from a collective of women.
When I took over this account two years ago, it was posting content related to mental health and relationships. I started sharing repurposed content that I felt obtained important ideology for people to hear. I have a deep love of psychology, sociology, and feminism, but I also love pop culture, art, and content that feels fun. I wanted to explore what people resonated with.
Very quickly, I noticed themes emerging that would go viral. Women’s friendships and how vital they are to women’s mental wellbeing was by far the biggest one. Women not being angry at other women for following beauty ideals, but being angry at the systems that created those ideals. Women choosing to walk away from unhealthy relationship dynamics and looking for healthier love.
The themes would repeat and go viral in different forms. It started to feel like we were all naming the same feelings, even when we were geographically very far apart.
As much as I loved posting content, I quickly realised that running a social media account solely for content isn’t for me. The dopamine spike of a video reaching millions of people. The anxiety of posting the wrong thing and feeling like I’d let people down. Fifteen-second videos can reach a lot of people, but they also disappear quickly. There’s very little room for nuance or for holding complexity. And when the work is rooted in mental health, that lack of depth can start to feel at odds with the message itself. I didn’t want to build something meaningful in a way that wasn’t sustainable.
So I started working quietly in the background. Setting up a shop. Collaborating with artists who live thousands of kilometres away. Thinking about how to turn Femme Verve into the cool, smart, caring girl she already was — just in a more tangible form.
By that point, I had the data to know who she is and what she cares about. Not from analytics alone, but because an audience of thoughtful, generous women had told me.
What a privilege it has been to have the time and space to trial, to make mistakes, and to let something take shape slowly. We’re still very much in that trial-and-error phase.
My hope is that Femme Verve becomes a place for things that last longer than a scroll — and becomes ideas, and art you can return to. To me, that feels like something worth building.
Love,
Penny