Girls Aloud

Five women don the same white shirt dress and #ShowUs that size no bar, shape no bar, we can pull off anything.

- Tanya Mehta

For years, women have shared a complex relationship with their clothes. How many times have we heard our friends, sisters and mothers utter sentences such as “that blouse makes my arms look fat” or “those jeans make my butt look flat”? The truth remains that the shape of every woman is unique and can’t be confined to societal stamps or the size tags on your clothes. We often use clothes to conceal, but what if we used them to empower, to liberate and comfort? We live in a world that’s bound by beauty stereotypes which influence the way we perceive ourselves. That’s why Dove is taking action with women everywhere to create Project #ShowUs – the world’s largest stock photo library created by women to shatter beauty stereotypes and offer the most inclusive vision of beauty the world has ever seen. In support of this initiative, we called on a group of five strong, independent, and talented women to style themselves in a wardrobe classic as they recounted the journeys they’ve had with their bodies, and how they wear self-confidence on their sleeve.

KRITIKA GILL, MAKE-UP ARTIST

For Gill, her teenage years were far from easy, “It’s unfortunate how in Indian families fat-shaming is so deeply ingrained, it’s casually conversational. I started working out when I was very young, my mother was very hard on me, and in my form of rebellion I used to eat more. I was always made to feel like I wasn’t the ideal size, it was only a few years later that my mom stood up for me against others and that’s when I finally stopped seeing myself as, for the lack of a better word, ‘ugly’.”