navabi marks the anniversary of Beach Body Ready with a celebration of plus size women
It’s three years since ‘Beach Body Ready’ hit the headlines. The campaign rightly sparked a major backlash, yet as we once again enter holiday season women are still subject to the same pressures to conform to a narrow beauty standard. To show that the world has moved on and all women are beach body ready whatever their size, online plus size retailer navabi has given the ad a body positive makeover.
navabi took the new mobile billboard featuring three influencers to the streets of the West End this week as well as launching the website www.BeachBodyReady2018.com.
“navabi is happy that plus size women and plus size style are more visible in the mainstream, and the small part we have played in that,” said navabi chief marketing officer Dan Barker. “Ashley Graham was in navabi’s first TV ad, now she’s on the cover of Vogue. We’re proud to work with plus size talent as art directors, stylists and models as well as authors. And we push to make fashion more inclusive for women every day.
“… but: the same ‘Beach Body Diet’ stories still fill women’s magazines, year after year, no matter how much progress we think is being made in the media. The same high street brands still only stock up to size 16 – which is the average UK size. And the majority of ads on TV, on the tube, in magazines, still largely show one female body size.”
Bethany Rutter, navabi’s social editor who features in the campaign, commented: “I was very keen to be part of the ongoing campaign to change the narrative around ‘beach body season’. It’s important to say unambiguously, that you deserve to wear whatever you want.”
Rutter, who blogs at BethanyRutter.com and has just published the UK’s first plus size street style book, added: “Whenever I post photos of myself in a bikini or swimwear on social media, I always get an overwhelmingly positive response because we’re still not used to seeing plus sized bodies on display.”
Co-star Lauren Tallulah Smeets is a fashion brand manager and is also known as influencer Curvy Roamer. She added: “This campaign was a way of giving insecurities the middle finger and shunning the original Protein World campaign – why should women feel they need to look a certain way to wear a bikini or swimwear? As a 28-year-old woman with a social media presence and voice, it’s my job to make sure young girls or other women don’t feel pressured to look the way we’ve been conditioned to believe is ‘the perfect body’. Every woman is different, every body is different and we need to champion that.”
NerdAboutTown blogger and creative, digital and PR consultant, Stephanie Yeboah is the third model featured. She said: “The original Protein World campaign was exclusionary and pushed the ideology that in order to be ‘seen’ on the beach, you had to lose weight and conform to society’s standards of beauty first. The truth is that every body is a beach body and that is why I’m so happy to be a part of this navabi campaign. It’s important for everyone to know that our bodies are fine as is, and that we don’t need to conform in order to be seen as desirable, or beautiful.”
About navabi
Online retailer navabi offers the world’s widest selection of plus size styles and campaigns for plus sized women to be offered the same fashion choices as non plus women. Previous campaigns have included putting plus sized influencers on mocked up covers of leading fashion magazines.
For further information contact Jo Jeffery: j.jeffery@navabi.de