The first time I met Monika, the 15-year-old from Hutup, a village in Jharkhand, she was defying societal norms by playing and coaching soccer and paying her way through school. She had told me she wanted to design clothes for small town girls like herself — fashion that would be acceptable in their conservative society and yet be stylish enough to enable them to feel confident when confronting city girls. Some time ago, when a Muslim girl in her team wasn’t allowed to play by her family because it meant wearing shorts, Monika’s innate fashion sense came to the rescue.
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