Lauren Shields
Lauren Shields
About Me
Activist. Comedian. Somehow atrocious at mini-golf.
As a kid there were two things I promised myself I would never be, because they looked incredibly boring: a teacher, and a writer. I am both, and they are not. I believe in the power of speaking the truth in love, and if that doesn't work, speaking the truth a lot louder. I want to leave the world better than I found it.
Book
All I said was, "This doesn't feel great"
As a first-year seminary student, I was inspired by covered Muslim women. They said the hijab made them free. I designed an experiment: for nine months, I covered my hair, arms and legs and stopped wearing makeup. The result changed the way I viewed beauty, power, and faith.
I summarized the Modesty Experiment in Salon. It launched my career. The Beauty Suit (Beacon Press), the book that was born from that piece, is about my nine month modesty experiment and the limits of Kardashian-esque hotness as "empowerment." (Hint: it's just capitalism, rebranded to look like feminism.)
Find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound.
Articles
A mouthy Midwesterner walks into a CMS
You can find my latest work on my Substack, Constitutionally Midwestern.
Some published pieces I'm really proud of:
Coverage
Protip: Don't read the comments
Articles:
The New York Times, Piling on Clothes to Lay Herself Bare
Beacon Broadside, My Closet Tried to Hold Me Hostage But We’re Cool Now: What Lauren Shields’ “The Beauty Suit” Taught Me About Different Kinds of ‘Modesty’
Brown Girl Magazine, ‘I Cover My Hair—and I’m a Feminist’: An Interview with Author Lauren Shields
Interviews:"Sunday Morning: 'Lauren Shields: A Nine-Month Experiment in Modesty,'" a great live interview with RNZ (Radio New Zealand)'s Jim Mora
Voices, a podcast about progressive faith
Makin It Through Comedy: A podcast from Stanford's KZSU 90.1FM, on what it's like to be a working comedian in the Bay Area
Nonprofit Content Creation
Microsoft Paint + academia = some pretty cool work
Writing & drawing
For a short time, I got to use my writing skills against the wave of disinformation that floods the internet. (It was only short because nonprofit work is fickle.) You can see some of my work here and here.
I also remembered how much I liked to use humor to talk about difficult topics. I created Lou the Lizard, the embodiment of the "lizard brain" part of all of us that routinely gets tricked by nonsense.
Editing & journalism
