How Body confident are you.
As you may have noticed (from all my social media spamming) I have been *doing some work with New Look and just this week I was filming a really cool video to promote their plus size range Inspire. I am really pleased that New Look have decided to put in some time for Inspire by working with plus size bloggers. It's great to see a brand really wanting to improve things for plus size women. One thing that I thought was pretty cool was that New Look took it upon themselves to do an independent survey on understanding body confidence and how women in the UK really feel about their bodies. I was asked to take a look at the Survey and here are some of the questions and results that stood out to me most:
On a scale of 1-10 how confident do you feel in your body? With 1 being not confident at all and 10 being totally confident.
The national average for this disappointingly was 5. West Midlands had the highest average at 6
What situations make you feel the most unconfident about your body?
The national average for this was overwhelmingly ‘on the beach’ with a 57% response rate.
‘On a night out with girl mates’ was the third highest respondent rate for the nation at 23.5%
Do you have an 'ideal body' that you would like to achieve?
The national average overwhelmingly said yes to this with 74% saying yes.
I have to say I wasn't really all that shocked at the findings, having been a person that spent a lot of my adult life hating my body and on diets I can fully relate to the findings above. It really did make me sad to think that a good percentage of women found it uncomfortable on a night out with friends. The fact that in this day and age women can't even feel comfortable enjoying a night out with their nearest and dearest is really saddening. I look back at the 'old me' and wish I hadn't wasted so many years feeling that way about myself. I wonder really who is to blame for this. The multi billion pound Diet Industry? Our obsession with Celebrities? Or the all important Media. I personally think they all play a part in keeping young girls right where they want them, as low in self esteem as possible.
I thought I would share with you a photo of myself from my Volup 2 magazine shoot where for the first time I had my photos taking in Lingerie. I wanted to share it because I never dreamed that I would ever be able to feel sexy whilst being plus size. I am so happy to have found some kind of solace and happiness within myself. I want to show girls that it is okay to be exactly who you are, it's okay to want to lose weight or not lose weight, it's okay to not wear makeup and it's okay to wear lots of it. We are all fighting the same struggles so I hope that as women we can unite so that next time a survey like this is created the findings will be very different. So tell me what are your thoughts on the Survey can you relate?
