Studio 5’s Brooke Walker tells us about the message women all over the country are embracing.
You could say something “beautiful” is happening on the campus of Brigham Young University.
“It’s not only promoting inner beauty, but outer beauty,” explains student CamiliaMalmar. “It’s about loving yourself, as a whole.”
This month, BYY Women’s Services and Resourced launched a campaign, titled: “Recapturing Beauty.” The goal is to help women discover the true meaning of beauty, and to accept themselves as such.
Dr. LaNae Valentine is the director of BYU Women’s Services and Resources. She says the most common struggle female college students face, is body image. She wanted to do more than just empower women with beauty – she wanted to help them experience it.
“We want to emphasize outer beauty does matter,” Dr. Valentine said, “but we get way too carried away with it, at the expense of developing our inner strength and sense of worth.”
It’s a message women are connecting with.
“As an advertising major, I see images of women all the time,” said Senior Carrie O’Dell. “I think it’s a great idea to focus on women the way they were meant to be seen, instead of objectifying them as the media often does.”
To help kick off this campaign, last week popular blogger Stephanie Nielson addressed the topic of, not just re-capturing beauty, but re-defining it.
Stephanie was badly burned in a plane crash two years ago.
On Thursday, she spoke to a crowd of more than three thousand women, sharing a powerful message of self-love and acceptance.
“She is burned very badly and yet she radiated beauty,” Dr. Valentine recalls. “I was thinking, ‘why is that?’ and I realized what she was radiating is courage, strength, persistence, gratitude and an amazing sense of humor. That became my definition of beauty.”
And it’s through speakers, classes and a series of beauty challenges, organizers hope other women will come to learn their own definition of beauty.
“You really have to, somehow, go through that process and come to grips with the idea that ‘I am different, and I value that,'” said student and participant Bianca Martinez. “And not only be OK with that, but love that about yourself.”
To learn more about the “Recapturing Beauty” campaign, and the 10-Day Challenge, click HERE.
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