City Pulse People Issue 2021: Cameo King, founder of Grit, Glam & Guts

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A decade ago, Cameo King, 37, wanted to create programs to help girls 12 to 17 reach for their dreams and expand their full potential. To do that, she created Grit, Glam & Guts — a nonprofit dedicated to raising up young women and their voices. She also runs “The Good Girl Podcast,” which helps women talk openly and safely about flaws, faith, femininity and culture.

Tell me more about Grit, Glam & Gutz.

Our goal is to give young women the tools to ensure they can reach their fullest potential, and we do that in three simple ways: increasing their self-awareness increasing their self-identity and also ensuring that they’re engaging with the power of their voice. We’ve been doing work in Lansing and across the state for the last 10 years, and I’m just excited to continue this work.

Where did you find this voice to help empower women and girls to find themselves?

I think it’s rooted in being the best and the highest expression of yourself, and I think that comes with freedom. I think that comes with healing. The thing that it’s driven by, I think it’s just something that is innate in me, that it may have been developed and cultivated while I was at Howard University, but it’s essentially me seeking the truth, the truth in every situation.

Is that something that you try to share with the young women you’re working with?

You can know your truth, but you may be ashamed of it or society has told you that’s not good, it’s bad or it’s not good enough. The goal is to cultivate the environment where you begin to connect to your truth with your freedom. Getting to that level of the highest and best expression of yourself, because that’s where the joy is, where the peace is and where the greatness is.

Because you empower women of color in particular, how has the explosion of Black Lives Matter activism helped or hurt your process of helping women find their truth?

I’ll push back on that idea that the work is for women of color in particular. I center on the experiences of Black girls and Black women, but that does not mean the work is only for Black girls and Black women. I think that’s something that a lot of Black women who are creators and who are leaders deal with. It’s as though our content that we create — that our genius, that our intellect and that our programming that centers on black girls’ experiences — that it can’t be utilized for the development of all women, of all genders. That’s why I pushed back on that.

That’s fair. Thank you. That’s a really good observation and reframe.

Historically Black women, our stories, our genius have been at the forefront of most movements. In terms of it impacting the work, I think it has highlighted it for the rest of the world. But in terms of bringing it more to the consciousness of the rest of the world, in terms of how do Black women show up, how do Black women inform our practices, how do Black women affect the outcome of elections, I just think it raises the platform of the work that we do. When you center experiences of some of the most marginalized people, that’s when you really lift up everyone.

What’s that underlying story for you? That truth that drives you for this work?

I’ve been around women and girls my whole life. I’ve had really great experiences. I’ve had not-so-great experiences. They didn’t come together until I found myself working with Grit, Glam & Guts. When I did it the first year, it made sense. I loved it and I love it to this day.

For a lot of us, especially for women, we exist in places that don’t allow us to show up as our authentic selves. We do not reach our fullest potential. When the full version of Cameo shows up on “The Good Girl Podcast,” I’m a totally different person. People respond differently to my raw truth. I’ve also just had great experiences with women who have pushed me from one level to the next. And I want to extend that and create that and cultivate that for the next generation.

(This interview was conducted, edited and condensed by Todd Heywood.)

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