What I love most about my job is getting to meet interesting people who do amazing things—people like Jennifer Andrews.
Earlier this year, YMC helped to spread the word about the Dove Unstoppable Moms for Unstoppable Girls contest. Dove wanted to find four women, one from each region in Canada, who best exemplified women who were making a difference in their community. Jennifer, the winner from Ontario, is one of those women. Within moments of meeting her, two things were very clear: she is incredibly passionate about helping others and she is a doer who likes to initiate action.
In her contest submission, Jennifer wrote about how her 10-year-old daughter Kira was fearful of competing in track and field because she was feeling insecure about her body. It’s something many mothers are hearing from their daughters these days. In fact, research found that 6 out of 10 girls avoid doing things they love because they lack body confidence. But instead of simply talking about it with her daughter, Jennifer took it one step further. She and her daughter came up with the idea of creating The Girls Club—a monthly meeting where Kira and her friends could learn about things like body image and self-esteem, respect, confidence, and compassion, while participating in crafts and fun activities. “I want to teach them to be the kind of girls who build people up instead of tearing them down.”
The first step was to create a flyer inviting girls from Kira’s school to attend The Girls Club. Kira handed them out to six of her friends. On the first night, ten girls showed up.
The goal of the club is for the girls to have fun creating crafts and partaking in activities that all have a message. One particular night Jennifer spoke to the girls about what beauty is around the world and how what is considered an ideal beauty in North America isn’t necessarily what is considered beautiful elsewhere. This was followed by a craft where the girls created a tree using their fingerprints to represent how each of them is unique.
The fact is, from a very young age our girls are being bombarded with images in the media about so-called perfection and it’s taking a toll on their self-esteem. This became apparent when on another evening, Jennifer had the members of The Girls Club write out five things they liked about themselves and one thing they didn’t like. Four out of the ten girls wrote that they didn’t like their fat thighs.
Ten-year-old girls. Ten. And they feel that their thighs are fat.
That’s when Jennifer turned on her computer to show the girls images of celebrities before and after they were Photoshopped.
As part of Jennifer’s prize, $2,500 was donated in her name to one of three charities sponsored by Dove. Jennifer chose The National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC). This resonated with me because I had an eating disorder for twelve years, but as we talked about it, it became clear that it’s personal for Jennifer as well. Currently she has a family member who is getting treatment in the States because there was nothing available to her here. It was the reason she chose NEDIC as her charity.
One thing Jennifer said has stuck with me, so much so that I wrote it in a notebook that sits on my desk.
"To me, being an unstoppable role model means not just speaking out about injustice, but taking action.”
Jennifer saw a problem and took action.
All of us could be as unstoppable as Jennifer if we simply did the same.
This is proudly sponsored by our friends at Dove®
www.dove.ca
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