Beautiful You Movement Launches #BeautifulYou Campaign
Body positivity champion and photographer, Victoria Baptiste, has unveiled the first ever #BeautifulYou campaign which sees five female bodybuilders celebrating their own unique beauty.
Baptiste founded The Beautiful You Movement in 2018 to fight back against body shaming and online abuse. The movement works in partnership with Flux Photographic to offer unique photo shoots, story sharing and body positivity workshops.
This year’s #BeautifulYou campaign sets out to send the message that trolling and body shaming is not acceptable. It wants to encourage individuals to think about how they choose to speak to others and understand the impact of the opinions they share online and the profound effect they may have on the person in question. Having read some hurtful comments posted on a bodybuilder friend’s Instagram profile, Baptiste called upon a squad of female bodybuilders, powerlifters and strong women to help spread the message and share their own beautiful selves. A Google search revealed that 60% of all female bodybuilding images were glamour shots, compared with almost zero images of the same nature for male competitors.
The Beautiful You Movement embraces beauty in all its various forms and called on the invited body builders to showcase their own body confidence with body-positive portraiture.
Research conducted by the Mental Health Foundation in 2019 revealed that 22% of adults and 40% of youngsters worried about their body image due to pictures seen on social media. A further one in five adults have also felt shame due to their body image over the previous 12 months, with one in eight experiencing suicidal thoughts. Body shaming incidents are also on the increase, with bullyingstatistics.org reporting a huge 94% of women and 84% of men affected by body-shaming both on and offline.
Victoria Baptiste wants to change the game by calling out body shaming trolls and getting them to think about how their behavior towards others impacts their confidence and mental wellbeing. She says, “There are so many factors which can affect our self-image, often these factors are outside of our control and tend to be driven by others and what we think others think of us.
“The Beautiful You Movement is about self-acceptance, embracing who we are, allowing ourselves to exist unapologetically and standing together to support and empower each other. The #BeautifulYou campaign is an important reminder that this issue can impact everyone, no matter their age, profession or level of physical fitness. I invited five incredible women to showcase their own strength and beauty in a way that felt right to them. The images are powerful and empowering and I hope that’s just the start of things to come.”
To find out more and to join the Beautiful You Movement, visit https://www.fluxphotographic.co.uk/about-beautiful-you