If you feel like you’re underrepresented in the media, you’re not alone. According to research done by the beauty company Dove, 69% of women say they don’t see themselves reflected in media. Furthermore, their research found that 71% of women and 67% of girls wish media did a better job of portraying women of diverse physical appearance – age, race, shape and size. These results led Dove to create the Dove Real Beauty Productions, a new collaborative content studio that shifts the power of storytelling from Hollywood into the hands of real women.
Serving as their Creative Director, is the creator of “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder” Shonda Rhimes! Shonda is a woman I admire and you know that if she’s attached her name to something, it’s definitely worth watching.
“Dove and I have a shared passion in emphasizing what’s real. The characters that I write about come from the fact that I wanted to see real women on TV – the real and messy stuff that makes us human,” said Rhimes. “In working with Dove and Real Beauty Productions, we get to talk to real women and hear their own beauty stories. The idea that Cathleen defines beauty as self-love is a very mind blowing concept. I don’t think a lot of us, me included, define beauty in terms of self-love. And, to me, that is so empowering.”
For their debut film, you’ll meet Cathleen Meredith who is on a journey to realizing her own beauty through her love of dance. The 3-minute video you’ll learn about her and her dance group Fat Girls Dance- a body-positive modern dance movement who began challenging themselves to learn, perform and record one dance a week for a year.
“I don’t think we know how much we are told that there is something wrong with our bodies. I think beauty should be fearlessness. I think beauty should be resilience. I think beauty should be creativity,” said Cathleen. “I feel so lucky to have worked with a powerful role model like Shonda Rhimes on such an important project – one I hope will inspire every other woman out there to define beauty for themselves.”
Learn more about her story in the video below:
