There will never be too many campaigns embracing women’s body shapes.
#ProjectWomanKIND, a YouTube web series founded by curvy model Jessica Vander Leahy, addresses a topic women speak about with their girlfriends on a daily basis: their bodies. It aims to “motivate women to recognize that they are more than what they see in the mirror,” according to its YouTube page.
Vander Leahy self-identifies as “curvy,” and has advocated for to rid media of the term “plus-size.”
Check out the full teaser for the first series below:
Leahy created the series after women sought her out for self-esteem advice.
“Those exchanges sort of made me feel like there is an important part of the conversation surrounding body image and how women feel about themselves here despite our culture’s obsessive body focus,” she told Mashable.
#ProjectWomanKIND’s founder Jessica Vander Leahy
Image: Isabella Moore
The first series of videos features Leahy along with models Olivia Langdon, Sophie Sheppard, Stefania Ferrario and Margaret Macpherson, discussing their personal body issues as well how they overcame past insecurities.
“Now these days, my mid 20s, I love my body but it’s taken a really long time to get to this stage,” Macpherson says in the teaser video.
The women also discuss how the modeling industry has helped them learn to love themselves after years of focusing on what they wanted to change.
“I spent so much time in my teenage years focusing on what I didn’t like about myself…I tried so many diets, so many different lifestyle changes,” Langdon explains in the video. “I would tell my 16-year-old self that your sense of self worth is not relevant to your size or of anyone else’s.”
“Women don’t feel 100% in their bodies all the time, if ever,” Leahy emphasizes. “The project is about trying to get women to recognize that everyone experiences those natural highs and lows and you just have to try and shift your focus on those bad days to what you are grateful for. Often that means turning away from the mirror and looking inside yourself, because that’s where the real good stuff is.”
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