Body Image & Confidence
>>Mayowa Anthea Ade
Mayowa Anthea Adebiyi is a curvy model and the Founder of Enpower, a Social enterprise that campaigns for young people and helps them to develop confidence and work skills within the creative industries. Born and raised in London – she is of Nigerian descent; Mayowa has always been highly academic and creative.
As a woman with a naturally fuller figure (a UK size 14-16) issues surrounding her weight dominated a huge part of her life as a teenager. Faced with bullying and academic pressures, Mayowa placed huge amount of pressure on her weight to make her ‘perfect’. Her weight used to fluctuate through her carrying out extreme diets. This included purging (making herself sick) starvation, the excessive use of diet pills and exercise.
“Issues with weight dominated a huge part of my life, and fuelled my low self-esteem and feelings of self-hate.”
Her life and attitude to her body and food started to change when she started university. With new supportive friends, a new life and a new attitude, she grew as person, developed more confidence and learnt to love herself. It was by chance that Mayowa discovered the phenomenon that was plus- size modelling.
“I’ve started modelling whilst studying and found it enjoyable. I wanted to show people that beauty is not ‘a one size fits all’.
Growing up as a teenager I would look at the model in the shop window and think the clothes would only look good on me if I was her size. I thought fashion wasn’t for me because I wasn’t a normal size. I used to think that my size wasn’t normal.”
Although Mayowa enjoys working as a model she feels that currently in today’s society women from a young age are constantly bombarded with unrealistic thin images from the media. Women are lead to believe that to be considered beautiful you have to be a certain size, race and colour.
Her experience has inspired her to start The Red Alert Youth Beauty Campaign under Enpower. She wants the campaign to generate awareness of the lack of confidence in young
20 full on!
females, help them to regain their confidence, and help people to understand how self-esteem has lowered in the younger generation. She is looking forward to the opportunities the campaign will bring to young women. It will give them the chance to share
their stories and will testify that as young women we no longer have to feel inadequate.
The campaign will offer guidance. Mayowa has a real belief that being able to express and relate through creativity can help to boost confidence in young women today – so the campaign will feature expert advice, inspirational messages, fantastic poetry, great music and letters from young women about their thoughts and opinions on self-image.
“As a young person I used to channel my emotions into creative pursuits including art, poetry and singing. It helped me to deal with my emotions rather than bottle them up.”
Mayowa promotes fitness and healthy living as being more important than the thin ideal as part of the campaign. She wants to give young women/girls the confidence to be proud of their bodies rather than fight it off all together!
“Fitness and healthy living isn’t just about looks - it’s about mental health. It will help young women to feel happier about themselves.”
The campaign will offer health and nutritional advice that will help to achieve a happier and healthier lifestyle.
Find out more at:
http://redalertyouthbeauty.com/
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