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Angel More’s favorite meme of all time is mocking spongebob, a reaction photo of the beloved cartoon character with his hands on his hips, commonly used on Twitter to indicate someone’s wrong. Like most 16-year-olds in America, More loves Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and even Tik Tok. She uses them to connect, unwind, and laugh. “I love memes,” she confides through a sweet chuckle.
Although she has the typical social media savvy that continues to define Generation Z, More is not a typical teen in the slightest. As a 16-year-old activist, she’s been the acting spokesperson for Children International, a global non-profit organization which helps children and their families escape poverty. Before that, she made local news in her home state for completing the California Triple Crown at 15: swimming the whole of Lake Tahoe, the Santa Barbara Channel and the Catalina Channel. During any given season, she swims up to 25 miles per day to maintain her impressive abilities.
This manifests in a regimen not for the faint of heart. “Let’s say I’m doing an early morning swim,” More shares, “I’ll wake up at 3:30 a.m., swim from 4 to 6, then go to school.” After school, she completes her homework, spends time with friends, talks with her sister, settles in for the night, and repeats it the next day.
More’s keenly aware of the vital need for downtime; after all, we are creatures of the earth, not the seas. “Of course, there’s days when I don’t wanna do anything,” she admits, “If I don’t have energy, I’ll carve out ‘me’ time to not just focus on school or swimming.”
More is the child of Indian immigrants who moved to the States before she was born. Her family lives in the small city of San Carlos, which lies about halfway between San Jose and San Francisco. Her parents are accomplished athletes in their own right, taking More with them to accomplish their own goals in running and hiking.
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“We all just go out and do things we enjoy,” the teenager explains thoughtfully, “I think I got that ‘just go and do it’ spirit from my parents.” In an achievement she came about incidentally, More set her very first record with her parents: hiking to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro at age 10—the youngest person to ever do so.
Despite her propensity for advocating and record-breaking, More still desires to live her life with a semblance of normalcy. People at school don’t make a big deal about her burgeoning athlete-activist career because she doesn’t let them. “It’s just a part of me now,” she states.
The experience of being a 16-year-old, as many can recall, is wishing you were someone else, while also trying to figure out who you want to be. Even though she remains in public school, More knows that she is different from most of her peers—the crux of most teenagers’ angst. “I feel like I just have a different kind of lens in the world. I still think that I relate to my peers, we definitely still have the same problems,” she admits. But
she knows how to leave her worries out in the water. “When I swim, I have a lot of time to think,” she says, “I don’t know if I’ve become more mature because of it, but a lot of things to me don’t matter as much as they do to other people.”
With her eye for pop culture and indulgence in the internet, More also finds time to nurture her palpable interest in fashion. “Fashion-wise, I kinda go all out.” Somehow, she’s found time to start a fashion club at school and is excited by experimenting with her own looks. “Today I was wearing neon sweatpants and a blazer, so it’s kind of a weird combination, but I think it was good,” she gushes.
Real recognizes real. On the shortlist of people who inspire More are Childish Gambino, Tyler, the Creator, “they both do whatever they want to,” and Zendaya, “I’ve always really liked her, but in _Euphoria_, the makeup and outfits are cool.” These figures are all artistic embodiments of the same do-it-all ethos that the swimmer has incorporated into her own life.
If you perform a quick Google search of Angel More’s name, you will find her blog. It’s straightforward, untouched by parents or publicists, with diary-style entries along with pictures that document her swims. Her lifetime goal, plastered across the banner of her site, is to raise $1M for Children International, an effort to help end childhood poverty. She knows that this is a lofty goal for a teen—but for those that doubt, she knows they have no reason to. “I understand their concerns, but it gets frustrating,” More laments. “I’ve proven I can do things.” She’s already raised a staggering $58,000—an activist who talks the talk _and_ walks the walk.
More plans on moving to the East Coast in the near future for college, majoring in business, and minoring in environmental studies and non-profit administration. She’s always been intrigued by the other side of the country,
seeing it all her life on phones and silver screens alike. Her latest athletic endeavor, taken on a couple of days after this interview, was to swim around Manhattan island: 28 miles on the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers. She made it. “I’ve found that when I’m doing something I like to do, it doesn’t feel like work.” It’s a simple concept, but one we should all strive towards. Here’s to more freestyle, breaststroke, and butterfly.
* * *
Photographer: [Nolwen Cifuentes](https://www.instagram.com/nolwencif/?hl=en) at [The Good Brigade](https://www.thegoodbrigade.com).
Hair: [Avian King](https://www.instagram.com/avianking/?hl=en) using [R+CO](https://www.randco.com) at [The Rex Agency](https://therexagency.com).
Makeup: [Heather-Rae Bang](https://www.instagram.com/heatherraebang/?hl=en) using [Dior](https://www.dior.com/en_us/makeup/new-makeup) at [The Rex Agency](https://therexagency.com).
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