It’s not often you’ll see a campaign and feel the desire to take off all your clothes and run through the streets in your undies, but the All Woman Project has done just that.
Launched by body positive advocates and models Charli Howard and Clémentine Desseaux to highlight the lack of diversity in the modelling industry and demonstrate that beauty isn’t the result of the retouching tool, it’s the diverse body positive campaign you’ve been waiting for.
There are bums and tummies that are flat and round, thighs that jiggle and those that don’t, models of all ages, sizes, shapes, races and backgrounds that all have one thing in common – they’re confident in their bodies and want every other woman to be too.
Howard may look familiar – the 25 year old caused a stir last year when she publicly denounced her modelling agency for saying her UK size 6-8 frame made her “too big” and “out of shape” to be in the industry.
After meeting 28 year-old French plus-size model and body positive blogger Desseaux, the duo came up with the idea of the powerful #IAmAllWoman project.
For the video, they teamed up with eight other models who have also spoken out as body-positive activists. It’s a retouching free zone and “despite” the women appearing “flaws” and all, they look incredible, confident, authentic and above all happy. Who knew such a thing was possible? *eye rolls*.
Compared to what we see currently in fashion, it is groundbreaking though and the creators hope it will get the industry thinking about the issue.
“We really want the media to celebrate women of all shapes and sizes and to stop training girls to think they have to be these white, skinny, tall, beauty ideals,” Howard told SELF.
“Everyone looks completely different, and we need to embrace that and start really encouraging it more in fashion images.”
She also admitted that she was nervous shooting for the campaign, which featured only female photographers, videographers and designers, which only goes to show how important diverse representation is. (Post continues after gallery.)
Inspirational celebrity body image quotes.
“When you’re in a room full of women who aren’t completely oiled up and Photoshopped and stuff, you just realize how normal your body is,” she said.
“So if you imagine if more brands and campaigns featured girls of all different sizes, more girls would realize that as well.”
What makes the campaign even more unique it it’s not trying to sell anything bar empowerment and body confidence.
“We just wanted to showcase as much diversity and as much beauty as we could in one single campaign, and it’s been really amazing seeing all the girls on set together,” Dessaux told Self.
“They really want to make the industry better and put out there this diverse image of beauty, not only for themselves and women but also for the next generation coming up.”
The team are encouraging others to get involved via social app clapit through post their own GIFs showing what makes them beautiful and “all woman,” using the hashtag #iamallwoman.
Let’s hope we see more of this, please.
Image: Screenshot/All Woman Project
Top Comments
Hope this makes a splash
I'm all for a more realistic portrayal of women's bodies, however some of these women would likely be classified as obese. As a health professional with a solid understanding of how carrying excess weight is a major risk factor for many chronic illnesses I think this is extremely irresponsible. You shouldn't be championing being overweight in the same way that the fashion industry shouldn't champion being underweight.
so anyone overweight or obese should just be hidden away? I fail to see how simply showing women who exist is "championing obesity"?! Honestly the first step to being a whole and healthy person is not fucking hating and despising yourself, being told that if you are obese you should not even be visible is just horrible.
I understand you are speaking about two extremes but I wanted to add I have noticed a disturbing trend. I have seen that deliberately thin women (yes start screaming at me now for saying it) are never given the scrutiny for being unhealthy. Repeatedly I have seen comments on this site bagging, condemning women who are considered obese. If anyone makes a comment about a thin woman and there is "concern trolling" and open comments about the preference to be thin rather than obese. What a world we live in where the obese women are constantly the punching bag for the "health professionals" and lay people alike. Either we ignore all "health concerns" for any size/shape of women or we have a balanced, inclusive discussion about what is and isn't healthy and then there is the added issue of who are we to say what is and isn't healthy and are we fair in applying it to all lifestyle/dietary/exercise driven bloggers/celebs etc. A thin person carrying little weight may or may not have health issues, ditto a person of "normal" bmi. We seem to general gloss over that and focus strongly on obese women and their risk factors.
As for the article --- Wonderful celebration of the beauty of women.
There are so many things wrong with this comment. A couple of women featured might be considered slightly overweight by BMI (outdated at best anyway), but it is very unlikely any would be considered obese. These are not particularly large women, and they do not have large deposits of fat around the areas considered to cause issues (waist/hip ratio for example is very likely to be considered healthy).
As already commented, often the first step towards anyone becoming healthier is to NOT hate themselves. These campaigns are not championing an unhealthy lifestyle, they are trying to undo some of the damage advertising/photoshop/requiring models to be size 0 does to ALL womens self esteem. You have to love yourself to be able to care for yourself enough to get healthy - and I absolutely do not agree with your assessment that some of these girls are too large to possibly be healthy. That shows an extremely poor and unprofessional understanding of health and size and weight and body composition and self esteem. There is nothing "irresponsible" about this campaign whatsoever.
I agree that for too long there has been a trend of ignoring the overwhelming number of underweight women in the media - fortunately there do seem to be recent steps taken to combat this e.g. the restrictions on BMI on models in France. The concern I have is that in trying to undo the damage there are times where women who are very overweight are held up as examples of "body positivity" - this article http://www.mamamia.com.au/t... is an excellent example. At the same time however it's vital to represent the worth of all women, regardless of shape or size. Celebrating a variety of attributes - rather than just appearance - would likely be a way of showing the worth and value of all, without portraying being under or overweight as a healthy lifestyle choice