There's a new face to body positivity.
Or should I say faces...
Each person sits, fully clothed, on a stool against a wall. Aside from the wall, the floor, and the stool, each person remains at the main as well as most extravagant focus of each shot. There, they begin to talk. Each person talks about the ideals and the stories that were the most important in shaping who they are today, and why there are unabashedly unashamed of their identities. As they peel back each metaphorical layer of human, a physical layer of clothing comes off until all that remains is a pair of underpants or lingerie. Each individual sits the same way they did as when they had clothes on five or ten minutes prior in each video: fully exposed and confident.
StyleLikeU, a channel on Youtube, features people of all shapes, races, genders, sizes, sexualities, etc. as they truly are. The goal, as stated in the first thirty seconds of each video is to show and "honor how style is not the clothes you wear." Instead, the creators shift the focus of style to be personal identity and confidence in that identity, especially in the face of adversity.
Charli Howard, a model from London, talks about how she had been dropped from her modeling agency because she supposedly put on weight. Out of anger, she took to Facebook, posting an expository post on her agency - not for revenge, not to change the system, but to ask "who are you to dictate to me what is and isn't beautiful?"
To each individual featured "style is not a facade, it's knowing who you are."
"You're going to be like '[life] fucking sucks because you don't fit the mold," Ryan O'Connell, a boy with cerebral palsy begins his story of identity. "But I know who I am, so I don't really need to tell someone who I am through my clothes," he retorts to a quick anecdote on being pressured to fit in based on his looks.
Freddie Harrel, a blogger with an infectious smile, opens up about the racism she faced growing up in France. (After watching her video, I spent some serious time perusing her blog http://freddieharrel.com.) "You're really aware you're different," she tells her interviewers from StyleLikeU, "and then you have to explain things to people that you really never questioned yourself...like someone asked me when I have a shower does the water go brown." Freddie even admits to how this racism affected her growing up, that her confidence dwindled and she tried to make herself as invisible as possible.
Each individual featured seems to make the same statement at one time or another, that they have to "prove" something to some social construct in the world, be it about feminism, homosexuality, transgender, disability, race, perceptions of beauty, etc. Why is it that in order to function in this world, we have to "prove" or "explain" any part of ourselves to anyone else? Who has the right to know? More importantly, why does anyone believe they have such a right to know or to tell someone else who they are supposed to be when we live in a world of vibrant diversity?
With each piece of clothing, viewers learn a lesson about who each of these individuals are and how every single insecurity or injustice built them to be stronger people today. It's when each of the interviewees sits exposed, in front of the camera, with no clothes on but underwear, that we see their true styles, identities, and selves. We become so comfortable with each person, that it doesn't matter what they look like because we feel as though we know and understand them.
That's how it should be all of the time. When we judge others based on appearance, we diminish them to merely objects, numbers, and other manmade constructs to asininely determine someone's worth. Using quick glances to confirm prejudicial stereotypes only perpetuates standards that we as human beings have been trying to correct since we created an "us" and a "them."
"Before I am a woman, before I am black, I am Freddie," Freddie tells her interviewers with a smile on her face. Clothes, size, shape, race, sexuality, gender, etc. are not supposed to speak for us, but rather we speak for them because in doing so we acknowledge their existences and we can understand each other a little better. For that, we can accept each other for who we are because we finally see what's underneath.
