Eunsun Lim

“It was an extraordinary experience. In the Girls’ Picture Books workshop, we talked and found that we, girls, can have much desire not just for equity but for ourselves.” (Jinsol Choi, participant)

The Girls’ Picture Books is Eunsun Lim’s research and advocacy project, aimed at a target audience of early teenage girls. It offers multiple methodologies: a workshop, a picture book, a game, and a documentary film. The work’s basic premise is the feminist idea that women need better female role models in female solidarity.  The project aims to be a pivot to unite and empower women who survive in the strict patriarchal society which is South Korea.

This idea is succeeded by the 10-11 year old girls in the workshop that Eunsun runs. It challenges their stereotypes of women by testing their favourite picture books with the game, and parodying them from expanded perspectives along with the picture book. What the participants found resonates with the experience of female adults who already felt the emotion in the feminist movement.  

In the resulting documentary film, sketches of the workshop are intercut with interviews of participants, a feminist publishing editor, a female community leader, and a primary school teacher, revealing the connection between the direct experience of the workshop, the daily experience of the young girls, and the wider feminist experience.

By highlighting the power of better role models, Eunsun encourages women to keep sharing and expanding their imagination about women.