The Body Shop Activist: Body Image

07 January 2010

Body Image

By Adam Valvasori - Values Manager.

Image: Fairfax

"Arguably, the ''real women'' concept began with Anita Roddick's 1997 Body Shop campaign featuring Ruby, the size-16 Barbie doll, and the tagline, ''There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do''. That year, then Cosmopolitan editor Mia Freedman instigated the mag's famed ''Body Love'' policy, allowing ''real women'' of sizes 6 to 16 to feature in fashion stories."

"Dye v Hawkins: a fatuous argument over slim women"
- CLEM BASTOW, Fairfax.

Thanks Clem for the nod. If anyone would like to find out more about The Body Shop's Real Beauty campaign, go here.

So, wow... lots has been happening on this issue over the summer break. I guess there's never been a better time for us to reinforce one of our core values of striving to activate our customers' positive self esteem...

BTW: The Body Shop does not use models who are very young or thin, nor do we extensively retouch our model shots. We always ensure our models look as natural and realistic as possible and do not digitally alter or distort the true image of the model.

The Body Shop doesn’t want to change the way you look. We want to change the way you feel about the way you look.

"Self-esteem is truly the route to revolution. We are not in the habit of making the connection between self-esteem and democracy, dignity, political activism and freedom of sexual expression – but in the future we will be."
- ANITA RODDICK 1997 Full Voice Magazine

For anyone reading this who thinks body image isn't important, listen up!

The above quote shows Anita knew just how vital self esteem is before all other issues. It hadn't clicked for me until I met with Julie Parker - General Manager of The Butterfly Foundation in 2009. Julie wisely pointed out that without a healthy self esteem, people find it challenging / impossible to focus on any other external 'global' issues such as human rights, animal welfare or the environment (topics we so passionately campaign on).

This is evidenced by Mission Australia's National Youth Surveys - where young people have been consistently rating body image as one of their top three issues of concern to them. At first I was surprised and frankly angry. How selfish of them to put their own vanity above other life and death issues like climate change and poverty. But I'm slowly learning and it makes sense to me now... if you can't love yourself, how can you love your fellow man, animal or nature? I think this is true regardless of age.

So, we're really looking forward to working with The Buttefly Foundation on a public campaign in May 2010 for positive self esteem, with a focus on body image. Who knows, maybe Ruby will even make a reappearance.

Read Julie's Blog; Beautiful You for more informed commentary on the debate. Check out this great Public Service Announcement I found by: Vianca Lugo from the USA... it touches on some interesting facts and more truths about Barbie and even G.I Joe. I love the quote at the end!