“Being unique is not a bad thing”
When you type her name into Google, more than 7300 results pop up. You might not have
heard about her yet, but she’s definitely a face you should remember as she may as well be
the one who once and for all breaks all those unrealistic beauty standards .
Leyah Shanks is a positive body image and mental health activist. She is also the founder of
The Body Confidence Revolution, a freelance blogger for Huffington Post UK, she appeared
on Channel 4’s Naked and Invisible and on top of that she’s a fulltime university student.
The words “plus-size” and “body confidence” have
lately been discussed all around the internet in various different contexts, what do you think caused
this sudden interest?
I think it’s partly to do with the huge growth of social media, the online world is massive now, we’ve
never known anything like it and the capacity it has
to affect the way people think is pretty scary but
if it’s harnessed in the right way it could be really
powerful, I think it’s just people aren’t afraid to use
their voice anymore because they have this outlet
that’s accessible to everyone, people aren’t afraid to
put their opinion out there. I think it’s really amazing because we have this opportunity now which
we didn’t have 10 years ago.
On the topic of social media, you are actually promoting your campaign The Body Positivity Revolution through it. What do you want to achieve by
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that campaign?
Ideally I would like to get to a place where I can go
into schools, colleges, unis, that kind of thing and
help to develop a mandatory education programme
because there isn’t anything like sex education, in
the UK there isn’t a mandatory part of that that
talks about self esteem or the way people perceive
themselves and anything to do with the media,
it’s really important. If I’d had something like that
when I was a kid then I really wouldn’t have felt
bad for most of my life. I’d hope to get to a stage
when I could do that, my main goal is to end up
founding a new magazine though, I want to edit it
and basically create something for women that isn’t
toxic to read. Things are starting to change, there
are a lot of people that want to speak about how
bad the world is in general and I just want to be a
part of that and help to change the stereotypes of
beauty and to preach a more diverse and accepted
message to what’s out there right now.
I’ve seen that you’ve featured in Channel 4’s Naked & Invisible (nearly) naked, how was that for
you and what was the purpose of your appearance
there?
It was really fun, so many people have asked me,
did you think you could not do it, did you find it
scary, and I said, no, I never thought about it like
that, I just thought, this is what I have to do, there
was never a doubt in my mind but it was so fun.
We were such a lovely crew, we had guys, girls all
ages in the crew, everyone was really supportive.
Also we didn’t get any bad feedback from the public as well because we were in such a public space,
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