Body Series #1
Show Yourself a Little Love
Over the next month or so, we are focusing on questioning and challenging the norms and ideals around women's bodies, working to change the narrative about what it means to look and feel beautiful and celebrate our bodies.
I'm sure so many of you reading this can relate to the idea of not being happy with your body in one or many stages of your life. We live in a world where young women are obsessed with body image and companies profit from our insecurities. It often feels like body hatred or dissatisfaction is part and parcel with being a woman.
As a team of women, this is something we talk about a lot.
Why do we look at other women’s bodies with love (or even envy) but not our own?
In most companies I have worked in the CEO (who has the final say) has been a man, they can not know what comfort is for a woman’s body, it’s not even a consideration.
We read recently that:
Children as young as 5 years of age express dissatisfaction with their bodies and display awareness of dieting as a means of weight control (Davison & Birch, 2001).
But why is that? And with "the ideal body" having so many iterations over the decades - what are we actually chasing and why does it feel so hard to say, "I'm happy with it all.
"Hearing a woman say “ I feel so ugly today.” or “I look so fat in this.” is a phrase we are all too familiar with and was coined by researchers over 30 years ago as ‘normative discontent’ suggesting that societally we consider it normal for women to be disappointed in their appearance. (Renee Engeln, Beauty Sick).
“I think back to all the ways in which I tried to change my body, or conceal it, when I was younger. Like even just wearing contoured or padded bras to ‘shape’ my boobs a certain way or hide my nipples. I am now so much better at embracing my natural look… I genuinely think our boobs look most beautiful in their natural state and shape!”
As a lingerie brand, body image and appreciation is something we think about a lot and we feel responsible to put a positive message out in to the world, especially to younger women starting to wear lingerie. We've said since the beginning that we want women to focus on how our lingerie makes them "feel" rather than how it makes them "look." With this being true, we also want our wearers to feel and know that they look absolutely perfect too.
What do you love about women?
OMG, We can literally do anything!!! I work with a team of women, most of them working mothers and it's amazing what we achieve in a short amount of time when we are all balancing so many different responsibilities. Communicating with women is the best!I recently moved the Videris office. Myself and one of my other female team members moved our entire storage unit - I packed it all up, we loaded a van, drove to the new space and then carried hundreds of boxes up 2 flights of stairs. When I returned the van less than 2 hours later the guy at the storage space couldn't believe how quickly we had moved everything!
We hope you’ll accept the challenge in loving on yourself as much as you do your female friends and family.
Repeat after us,
“I love my beautiful body.
Just as it is today.”
To read more about Young Women and body image we loved the YWCA Insight Report - Why should we still care about body image?
