Dr. Jill Andrew
Co-Founder, Body Confidence Canada
Aisha Fairclough
Co-Founder, Body Confidence Canada
We will be celebrating Body Confidence Awareness Week once again during the 2nd week of October. Body Confidence is our effort to move in this world proudly (re)claiming who we are.
We do not have to break the bank to purchase body confidence, self care, and women’s empowerment. Consuming products does not guarantee self love.
In the workplace, women working full-time and part-time on average continue to make roughly 89 cents for every dollar made by a man and believe it or not it’s even less for Black, Indigenous and racialized women who clock in at 59% of the average earnings made by white men, and women with disabilities, single parent moms, trans women, and non-binary folks.
While all these facts remain true we are still living in this beauty industrial complex that continues to chant, “buy baby buy…invest in yourself. You deserve it,” when in fact what it’s calling on us to do is to invest in corporation’s bottom line. And look, we all do it and it doesn’t make us bad people but it’s important for us to be reminded every now and then that we can take back some of that control, our spending power, and we can find body confidence, self care, and our empowerment differently.
Many of us are feeling the squeeze of an affordability crisis. When’s the last time you borrowed a book from your local library? You’d be surprised how many of those national bestseller gems are sitting there free for the borrowing. The trip to the fancy 5-star spa not in the cards? Maybe a hot tub bath at home might be the ticket to relieve some stress. Investing in good friendships with reciprocal benefits (run to the hills if they are one-sided!) can really help boost our self-esteem and our sense of connection. That’s priceless. Gym memberships. We could write a book on those. If it works for you fantastic but if it’s not your jam that’s okay too.
Movement plays a significant role in feeling ‘body confident’ whatever that may look like for you and your ability. Sometimes silence is your best friend. Enjoying a packed lunch or dinner outdoors can help you find a moment of solitude just for YOU. Or even a simple walk can be a low- carbon way to revitalize yourself.
Whoever said blondes have all the fun never met a resourceful woman who knows her inner value and doesn’t need stifling beauty and gender norms, a pink dress or pant suit to help her actualize it! No matter your hair color, texture, length or the size of your waistline or wallet you are worth all of this.
Our self worth and our confidence is inextricably linked to our ability to access community and supports when we need them free of stigma and shame. That’s how we (re)claim our time for self-care and empowerment. We are all interconnected works in progress. When we use our voices for collective change we can redefine beauty, we can reimagine body confidence as existing outside of bottles and brands and we find ourselves moving the dial one step closer to that radical not-so-radical self love we all deserve.
