Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 29 What a Former Model Learned About Beauty, Validation & Self-Worth (with Bridgett Brown)
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: What the actual human cost of the perfection we see on billboards and runways? We look at high-fashion models and see total glamour, but behind the scenes, the reality is a complex mix of incredible opportunity and intense pressure. I wanted to hear firsthand what is really like inside the modeling industry, so I invited Bridget Brown, founder of the Beyond Beauty Project, to talk. At 19, Bridget was launched into international modeling, living in Paris. Traveling the world, modeling for high-profile brands. Today we're pulling back the curtain on the modeling industry, but doing it with nuance. This isn't a blanket teardown of the fashion world. Bridget shared how much she genuinely loved the creative process, the deep friendship she made, and how much of the experience helped her grow. But we also look honestly at the pressure of fitting into sample sizes, the culture of physical restriction, and what it takes to stay grounded in an industry. Built on outside validation. Bridget shares her powerful journey of navigating profound personal loss, the exact moment she chose to walk away from her career, and how she's helping women today unlearn modern beauty standards. If you want an honest, balanced look at the reality behind the glamour, this is the conversation for you. All right, let's dive in. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough. And ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. Tell us where it all started for you. I think I'll start just from the beginning and kind of piece it together as we go along. I have a twin brother. I have three old had three older siblings. I have had some passing in my family since then. But my mother, she got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was five years old. And it came on pretty progressively, I would say. She started with a limp. But then she started walking with a cane and a walker. And then she was in a motorized cart probably by the time I was thirteen. At that time, my older sister had already moved out of the house, so I was the only other girl in the house. And we spent a lot of time, you know, in her bedroom, me helping her get dressed or doing her hair, 'cause like her arms would get tired. And I think at this really young age, I more subconsciously was putting together this piece that like my mom was 5'10. She was really beautiful, sort of known a little bit for her beauty. She started losing her body and in turn also like losing her appearance because that's something she always kind of had throughout the hardships in her life. And I saw how it affected her and I would help her try to Put her growing belly from her steroids into her pants and go shopping with her. So I watched that. And then I went into, I was really involved in dance growing up. So I was sort of in that dance competitive comparison world. And then I went into the modeling world at 19. And I always had a little bit of like a rebel feeling with modeling. I didn't like that they told me I needed to lose weight or you should cut your hair. This is what you should look like. It felt very controlling. It felt very, very like. patriarchal. And I didn't have the words for that then, but I just didn't like it. I c I was like, what's wrong with my body? You know? Because although I was in the dance world, I was very strong and I liked my body. I used my body to move. I was very grateful for my body at a young age because I knew my mom couldn't walk and I was doing something that I loved with my legs. You know, I was flying through the air leaping and winning competitions. And so I had this appreciation for my body pretty young. ⁓ and then I went onto the modeling world for a long time. You know, you can get sucked into that world. I travels all over the world. I made a lot of money. I made some of my best friends that I still have today, but I was continually the girl that was like the healthy one on set, like you look so healthy. And I was like code for like, you know, you're like a little bit bigger than the other girls and went through a like a little time of like disordered eating and probably early to mid-20s is when I really started diving into holistic nutrition. And I just got really curious about psychology and ⁓ how our emotions affected our body. And if I was gonna have to be a size four, how could I do it in a healthy way? And I had realized probably around that time, like 25, how disconnected I had become from my body because I was constantly conditioned through the modeling world to sort of just be living on the outside looking at myself, right? ⁓ that I was completely disconnected because I had never had really an issue with my weight or my body image before that. And then all of a sudden I couldn't get back to it. And it was because I was living so disconnected, which I explain this a little bit in the workshops I do with social media now. It's like even selfies, like everyone's taking these pictures and they're looking, they're examining their pictures. And they're living very disconnected from just living in their body. So fast forward to had a pretty successful modeling career. Did a ton of training. Like I got like my holistic health coaching. I had worked as a personal trainer for a while. I added on body image coaching, all that stuff. And I went on to have my daughter. And then I went on to have a bunch of miscarriages. And I lost my final miscarriage. I had I lost a baby at five months and then at 10 weeks. And then I lost twins at five and a half months. And it was very back to back and it had come off of just losing my mom, my dad, and my brother. So it was like trauma that was settling into my body. Then I had this pregnancy. Then I went into postpartum. I had really bad postpartum depression. And then I went into these like back to back losses that were affecting me obviously physically, but also mentally. I just sort of hit rock bottom around then. I was definitely I wouldn't say I was suicidal, but I was having a lot of suicide ideation happening. I would just leave my apartment and not want to come back. I lived in New York City then. And that's when I really like started reaching out for help. I was like, I think I need some help right now. And thankfully I had my daughter who was little that I had to be okay for and my husband who's incredible. And I tried to go back to work. I was like, okay, lost my mom, my dad, my brother. I lost these babies. I'm an I'm okay. Like I have this beautiful family. I'm gonna go back to work. Like I'll get that one thing. I'll get that one thing that's like been okay and it's still there. And I remember I went to lunch with my bookers that I had had for a long time. No one mentioned anything about like a pregnancy loss. I had just like been through like a war, you know. And I was just really told I needed to lose weight. And I went home and I sobbed. And I just said, What are we what are we doing? Like, and I felt it more then as like this collective feeling for women. Like it wasn't about me anymore. After I became a mom, it really shifted for me. Especially with having a daughter. I just stopped and I said, I can't I can't do this anymore. Like I won't be the person that's putting that out anymore. I won't change myself. I was a size six. I was not large. I don't think I needed to lose any weight. And I just I walked away. I had just taken pictures. They thought I was crazy. They're like, What are you doing? I'm like, I just can't do it. And then I just started writing and ⁓ I started a podcast, which that was what I started with for the Beyond Beauty Project. And I didn't really know what I was doing. I just had this faith and this thing inside me that I think was growing from when I was a little girl and in my mom's bedroom with her. And and then I remember myself walking around in Paris and listening to my Beatles Disc Man, being like, I'm gonna help women and girls with confidence one day. I didn't know what it meant, but it's like here I am, you know? And so I've had the Beyond Beauty project now for five years, and it's just grown into this beautiful community. Yeah. And I love it also. So that's a little bit of my story. Thank you for sharing all of that. And I wanna go back to the beginning of when you first got into modeling. And I'm curious, what drew you to it? What did your mom you know, you're saying your mom was the beauty in her community, or was she ever in modeling? What enticed you to go into it in the first place? So that's actually an interesting story. My mom never modeled. Even though I know she was beautiful and people thought she was beautiful, I was never really like thing so much. She but she was like a hairdresser. She was sort of in that world a little bit. She never encouraged me to do it or anything like that. She was actually upset when I started. She wanted me to finish college because I had stopped halfway through college and I was like, I'm gonna finish later, you know? But what happened when I was dancing, my dance teacher kept being like, You should model, you should model. I was so shy, so modest. I'm like, no. And I had taken pictures when I was fifteen through her guidance and I hated it. I'm like, nope, not for me. Cut to I was eighteen and I was going to school full time. I was working full time. I was paying for my college. My parents didn't have a lot of money. My dad worked seventy hours a week as a welder and my mom couldn't work. And ⁓ I just thought Hmm, what if I modeled a little bit around Michigan? I lived outside of Detroit and I made like an extra hundred dollars a week. Like that would be amazing. So I found a photographer who happened to be like the best one in the area. Didn't I had no idea. And I shot with him and my life changed. He was like, You could do this around the world. So we put packages together. I was working at the time for Big Boy Headquarters. It's like a restaurant chain. And ⁓ I was working there at the headquarters. I was the vice president's secretary of purchasing and ⁓ didn't even know how to type when I got that job, by the way. I would like go home like practice typing. And I we put together all these packages with my pictures and a note and sent them all over the world. And I walked into work one morning on a Monday, and this guy hands me like a stack of faxes, because that's when you fax. So I was like, When was it? Like nineteen ninety-eight or something? And he was like, ⁓ looks like you're not gonna be working here much longer. And it was from agencies like all over the world, like Paris, Australia, New York, Miami, and I was like It never, ever, ever came from like, I wanna be a model. It came from this place of wanting to make money, wanting to have a better life for myself, wanting to create opportunity. And then I wanted to travel and I was like I was growing, I was learning. It's like when you live in a foreign country, like I was living in South Africa, Australia. It's when you live in these places and you have to figure out, you know, how to drive and get around and speak to people. It's I grew a ton. I learned so much about the world and in beauty really. You know, I was seeing this beauty all over the world and just the way people even just gathered for like meals and made that a beautiful thing and made it about connection. And so that's really where it started. But I always had this like I said, this like rebel like push and pull like, I want to do it, but like I don't want them to tell me That I have to look this way. I don't want them to like boss me around and like it's my body. Like I always had that in me. Overall, it was a good experience for you. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say yes and no. Can I say yes and no? I can. Yes, there was a lot of I have great friends from it. I love some of my clients. I still think today, like, I wanna like go on set and get my hair and makeup down done and like create this piece of. This beautiful picture. I loved that part of it. ⁓ but you know, there was the creepy photographer. I I would get in such bad anxiety before I went into the agency because you go into the agency and they're just like, Hey, how are ya? ⁓ yeah, ⁓ you're looking good. Or it was like kind of like, they didn't think you looked that good. And when you're younger, you go in and they're like, We're gonna measure you right here in front of everybody. You know, so it was like there's a little bit of trauma there, but I have like the best memories as well. So it's like I would say a yes and a no. It's interesting with the like all the stuff that's coming out with the Epstein files. But I don't know if you follow the model alliance, but they're now doing a lot of digging into Epstein in the modeling world. Like we would get bust in from South Beach to Trump's house in Mar Margo Lago. Like this all these models, they would just bust us in. And I'm getting goosebumps. Like and I've been like texting with some of my friends. I'm like, we are so lucky. So there was like, you know, there's some stuff in there, but I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't be where I'm living today, have my husband. I wouldn't have the Beyond Beauty project if it wasn't for it. So I'm really that person that believes that all the things sort of connect together if you're If you're following your your heart, you know. I think especially the things that have been in a challenge in our lives are there for a reason because something comes out of it that's able to help us and serve. So it makes a ton of sense. My goodness, I I mean, I don't think at nineteen I was able to travel the world and figure my way out. Like I think I I just would have run back home. I don't think I could have done it. I can see how it grew you. Being able to have to then become self reliant and really resource yourself from within is huge. So I can see how it is tough, but also really fruitful for you in that respect. I'm really in this mindset right now of serving and being so grateful that I get to do it. And I was like, huh. Yeah. It makes it all makes sense. Wanna spend a little bit of time in the modeling industry world because I think that's gonna be of interest to people listening. But first and foremost, I I mean, I can't not go back to the fact that a whole bunch of models were bust to Mar a Lago 'cause people are gonna wanna know what the heck were you doing there? Just fed a lot of drinks and probably some drugs and just I have a picture with Donald Trump. He would take pictures with us and I'm like, thank God I didn't meet Jeffrey. Yeah. ⁓ my gosh. I mean, I remember there was like four or five. I'm talking like big greyhound buses. And like to us, we were young and naive and wanted to party. They gave you strinks on the bus. And like then you got there and there was like towers of sushi. It was very glamorous. I had just recently watched a documentary, a modeling documentary. following a model of her first year really living in Paris. and it was her and it was following her during Paris Fashion Week, going to casting calls. So watching, you know, just the lineups of girls around the building waiting to see, going for literally a 10 second walk, maybe getting their photograph taken if they were now Paired down to the po like the short list and just doing that like ten like ten to go to in a day. And it and I think she was definitely in that phase of this is lonely, this is hard. She's living with a roommate. She was talking about these modeling apartments. And I and I know somebody else who was a model. I don't know if you ever lived in a model apartment. I I and just how because of the pressure. Like the intense pressure, it was really just all about size. And yes, there was a look, but it was a strange thing of you need to meet the sizing requirements. Skinnier the better. But then, you know, the age it maybe being, well, you know, like not too skinny. We want you to be healthy, but kind of not really. It's just like we have to say that because we'll get sued if we don't, or something. But she really just was saying like, yeah, I s you know, this is why we drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. I don't eat very much. She talked about how a lot of models would turn to drugs and different things to keep their size down. And it's I found it really interesting when you were saying, ⁓ you look so healthy, as if that was a like, can we just pause for a moment and say in this world how that was a bad thing? So because when I was here, aga like I'm sure there might be some unicorns who could have been super thin and really healthy, but the requirements sounds so almost unattainable even for those who are already thin. Like it it's like you're thin and not thin enough. And so like what a distorted world we're living in that what we're being served up as beauty. Is sickness and suppression and restriction. Like there is nothing in a full and thriving life in that world. Like you can't. It's it's you have to keep yourself in a box. And to you were saying you had to be disconnect like you have to disconnect from your body. And I think, and tell me if I'm wrong, your soul in a way. Because your soul is guiding you to thrive and nourish. And you're literally being required to shut that part of you off in order to achieve the desired look. Does that resonate? Yep. Absolutely. You nailed it. Quick interruption. If you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance you spent years feeling at war with your body. Maybe you criticize how you look in photos or you fear putting on a bathing suit. Or you find yourself stuck in your head thinking about how you look instead of being present with the people that you love. I know how exhausting that is because I lived it too. And if you've ever had the thought, I should be able to figure this out on my own, you're not alone in that either. Most of the women I work with felt that way for a long time before reaching out. Body peace coaching helps you shift out of this pattern at the root so you can actually feel at ease in your body again, not just on a good day. But more consistently. This is one-to-one or small group coaching. So you're not trying to do this alone in a world that's still telling you to shrink. And if part of you feels like I'll never be able to feel okay in my body, I used to believe that too. And now I can say that's not true. So if you're ready to stop thinking about your body all day and feel more at ease in your own mind and skin, you can learn more about Body Peace Coaching in the description below. And book a free Body Peace consultation to see if it's a right fit for you. All right, back to the episode. And I you know what came up for me when you were saying that is even the girls, and they're probably if they listen, they're not gonna like that I say this, but even the girls that fits in the standard that the modeling world wants, and they think. In their head, well, I do it a healthy way. They do not. I guarantee you they're not eating enough calories, they're over exercising, they're they're doing something, but they have brainwashed themselves. I mean, I was doing it too at the ending. They have brainwashed themselves to think, no, but I'm healthy. I am healthy and this is okay. And that's where it's like when you're in that world, it's just like everybody almost has blinders on. Like I can see it now because I'm stepped away from it. Nothing has changed in the industry. Like people are like, ⁓ like curvy is allowed now too. I'm like, maybe it's also allowed to exist, but it all is also this very perfect package. And if you don't have the perfect curves and you don't have like no fat here and like you're still not good enough, maybe they have added that on. But this like extreme thinness restriction, ⁓ it's very, very, very alive in the industry. And you have to s note too, is like when they were telling me that I was healthy on set, and listen, I can remember like a stylist that would say this to me all the time. Finally, like I'm so glad to see that you're healthy. But because I was like, No, no, no, I need to be so thin, I would just spiral. Like I would just sit there and like wait to go on and just spiral and like, ⁓ God, you know, I need to lose weight. But I was a six four I mean when the standard is what double zero, like it's almost like I I it's insane when I think about this, I'm like, so is it to get you as small as possible to just barely exist? Because what's the limit? You know? Seems like just enough to exist. But not thrive. And ⁓ And I and so it was interesting because they were talking about, you know, what they're looking for in the model. Like you don't want the model to express too much personality because it's not about the model. It's about the clothes. And and and yet she was suppressed. Uh-huh. And yet the agency kept telling her, like, you need to be happier. Like you need to have more personality. And essentially, you know, s be small Don't show your personality but have personality. Like it was this impossible thing. And I say girls because also they're young. And I also so I learned a lot in this documentary because I feel they were really given a good behind the scenes that it's now illegal to have anybody under 18 walking the runways. But but they definitely would prefer that. Like it's they had they had like they had to put that. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Like they had to put that in place. So now as women in this society, we're being told that the ideal version of a woman is is a teenager, not even a woman. Not a a child, essentially a child. Like if they could get them at twelve, they would. I'm trying not to swear in this podcast. If it seems like a mind f it's so hard. I don't want hit the explicit button on the put on this episode. So I'm gonna censor myself. If it's like a mind you f feel insecure about your body, good freaking reason. Where do you think it's coming from? Like this is what you're we're being brainwashed with. And and then you're praised for it. And you're told, no, this is what makes you valuable and you're praised with attention. And so I wanna know. There has to be an allure too. And tell me if there is. Like, is there an allure for some girls, because not everyone, to feel like they're getting that external validation and attention through that industry? I think if you were the chosen one, you were successful. Like everything you were doing was paying off. You were like. fitting perfectly in the box. And then you got the money. And then you got the recognition and the like, ooh, you got the booking, you know? So and I mean, when you were talking about the ⁓ having to sort of show up and not be too much, there was a lot of that. Like, okay, this client wants you to like really like to have fun. I remember having to like go out with clients in the Bahamas and like pretend like I was doing shots, but then I would they would want me to wake up the next morning. And like, you know, it's like you had to kind of be who they wanted to hang out with, but then you had to chameleon yourself into like who they wanted in the photo or on the runway. And that part, talk about a mind F, like that started getting like really getting to me where I I didn't really answer your question. So we'll go back to it because now I'm going on this tangent, but I walked off a set in Miami one time because this photographer would not stop telling me to smile. He was like, More happy, more happy in his like Italian accent. No, no, you're not. And he was like, started yelling at me. Hey, that that's a way to make yellow. I'm like, but I was and I finally was like, lost it. I think I was like twenty one and I just walked off and walked down like Ocean Drive. And I was like, I just walked offset. I just told the photographer off. ⁓ God. And then my agency's like calling me. But yeah, I think when you were the good girl that showed up to a casting and you got the booking and you are the chosen one because you did all the right stuff. That's what gave you the validation, the stamp that like I did it, I made it. But it was temporary, right? Because then you would go and do the job and then you're back on the streets again, you know, going to the next casting. So there wasn't this like longevity necessarily in it. I mean, there isn't a way 'cause you like build up to a place where you're like, okay, I have like a solid career. Like I at the end when I before I walked away, you know, I had a very solid career doing. Like I was very like catalog y, lots of like lands end and that kind of stuff. And I was successful in that. So you do build up some traction in that. Of course, if you're like a supermodel, you know. But it's very temporary, but it's just the good, you did a good job. Like, you know, who cares if you're happy on the inside or you're anorexic and starving, but you got the booking. So it's it's again, it's that validation for we we end up picking up this idea. If I'm not myself, then that's what's going to get praised in that external validation. I was just talking to my husband about this. What did he ask me? He goes, I don't remember how go got brought up. He's like, but Do you ever feel like people in the fashion world just like think they're really cool? And I'm like, they think they're the coolest. Are you kidding me? Like they're the coolest of the cool. And that's what it was sort of always like. You know, you had to show up and you had to be cool and you had to be stylish and I don't know. It started getting cool to like be healthy healthy. I'm saying that in parentheses for people not watching. You know, and talking about like working out and holistic food and stuff, but You definitely You put on a little bit of fr of a front. You were definit I think everybody does. Yeah. Kind of you're reacting to And how many people do you think are really like insecure or suffering on the inside but are showing up a strong front? A lot. Yeah. A lot. I would say Yeah, because what you were describing to me when you were talking about girls who were convincing themselves that they're healthy, I'm like, ⁓ so you're describing people who have eating disorders. Yeah. ⁓ absolutely. I know so many people that have eating disorders. I feel if we lived in a culture where everyone just truly listened to their bodies and honored it and followed their passion, we would see definitely different looking bodies than we do right now. Like this is we're seeing curated bodies. We're not seeing what I would say are natural bodies for the most part. Yeah. It's so true. I I think that that's a hundred percent true too. And that's why my work is so rooted in embodiment and intuitive care, because that was the thing that I realized when I really started my project was I might have been getting told, like, ⁓ you're so beautiful, you're so beautiful, but did I always feel beautiful? Was I doing my passions? Was I following my heart? Was I using my voice to speak up for myself and say, like, that made me uncomfortable or I won't do that? And I had closed so much of that down from years of just conditioning and being the girl in the box. And I do a hundred percent agree with you. If we all would actually get back in tune with our bodies and our hearts and our souls. what a different world this would be and how different the bodies would look. You went through some very traumatic, a very traumatic experience with all of the losses that you experienced all at once. Did it shake you out of that disconnection in a way to help you kind of plug back into yourself? Absolutely. It forced me to because before I had my daughter and then went into the miscarriages, I was able to quote unquote control my body or I thought I was able to control my body. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I remember I dated this guy. He's like, I've never met anybody that knows our body better than you. And because I knew exactly what to eat, how to move, how to rest, to keep it looking in this certain way. And when I went through those losses I had a body that was so foreign to me. I was so uncomfortable. It was such a big body image disruption for me. And I felt the most out of control I've ever felt in my life. I was paralyzed from it. I was depressed. I was just like, I don't know what to do. Cause the things I did before that made it go back to this size, this appearance isn't working. So I had. No choice and I fought it for a long time, but I had no choice at some point to say, I surrender. Like I surrender to actually getting back into relationship with you, with all of you, and saying, What do you need right now? What do you need in this moment? What do you need tomorrow? Like, what do you need to actually take care of yourself and to feel feel good again? So I kind of had to throw it all away and it was humbling. It was not always fun. I didn't really like it all the time. But I just look at everything so much differently now. I appreciate feeling good the most because that is if you don't have that, you don't feel good when you look in the mirror. ⁓ would criticize themselves and think they didn't look good enough. Yeah, all the time. I mean, I think in the modeling world, you're never quite perfect enough. There's always something that you could do to be a little bit better. It's sort of this never ending chasing of this validation perfectionism. When you had mentioned that that boyfriend had said to you, you know, I've never met somebody who knows their body like you do. What stood out to me was more I I don't know somebody who knows how to control their body more like you do. Because as you were saying, I didn't really know my body. I was disconnected from it. We usually are embodied when we're children and then we get disembodied from it when we take on these ideas that we have to be different or we're not good enough. Even if you are the epitome of beauty, and if you don't feel good from within. Then you just can't feel good, even like you can't think you look good or feel good on the outside, no matter how quote unquote good you look. And your other point that I always talk about, it is a never-ending treadmill of fixing. You're always going to find something. And as we get older and our bodies change, and especially since the cultural idea of beauty is a teenager, not even a woman, if we, you know, if we hinge. our sense of okayness and validation on our appearance, well, then we're just on a slow march to losing all sense of value. Yeah. And that is the like that's the lie. That's how we've all been duped. Like we've been duped, I think, out of our true power as women. And we we have because of living in a patriarchal culture for centuries that has degraded women, we've lost this inherent sense of power within ourselves and what a woman's body looks like and how that is valuable too not because of the body but just because a woman is now as you've come back into more disconnection or not disconnection that the opposite of that connection with your body what have you noticed for yourself I I definitely had to relearn rest. ⁓ And stepping away from ⁓ the hustle culture. And I think I think the biggest thing, to be honest, that I've noticed is that I've had to re-this gonna sound silly, but I've had to relearn how to think for myself. I always say, like, we have to make sure we're actually in relationship with our bodies. I've noticed that. I can eat. I can like a lot of rest. You know, I need a lot of lone time. It feels really good to say no. You know, I've learned boundaries again. But I just think the biggest thing is just listening to like the rhythm of our bodies is magical. And getting in flow with that is I think that that's the point when it comes to correcting body image trauma. And you know, it's like if you can rebuild that part. Slowly over time, it's ⁓ you feel better. I feel I genuinely feel better. Like I feel radiant and alive and not every single day and every single moment, especially if I'm having hormone fluxes or whatever or real life, but yeah, I genuinely feel good about myself. I like myself. I could look at you and say, Well, you're still conventionally beautiful and in, you know, a conventionally small body. What about the woman who's not? Like what would you say to her? Well, I would first say, yeah, I get it. Society sucks. Unfortunately, our society has set us all up to think that way. ⁓ and I think it's our job to uncondition ourselves from that. And it is easier for me. I know there's a privilege in that. I'm I'm a hundred percent aware of that because of the way society looks at us. I don't think it's fair, you know. I don't I don't like it. It actually makes me like emotional because I think it's just so cruel and like we should all be able to live in our bodies the way they were, you know, born into this world. And we would never look at a little baby and say like something's wrong with them. And I think if I was coaching them, I would help them understand and just really get in tune with how they feel and try to stop the comparison. And can they understand that all bodies are different and all bodies are beautiful and that that's a lie that we've been told and that we've been sold and we're still sold. So can they learn to disconnect from that a bit and relearn what they knew when they were born is that they're beautiful the way they are. And they might want to feel better in their bodies. They might want to move their bodies more. They might want to eat less McDonald's or, you know, It doesn't mean you can't want those things too. Because I know I feel a lot better with rest. If I don't sleep, I'm a kind of a mess. And I'm not just a mess physically, I'm a mess emotionally. So I think it's going and then getting back to like, let's just focus on how do you feel in your body? How can you work with what you have and and feel really confident with that? I know we're getting close on time. So I want to wrap up with just two more questions. So you talk about beauty as care. And so I would love to hear your perspective of beauty as care. So that's something we just sort of started talking about a lot because I just launched a wellness collection with all of my sort of favorite products. And I ⁓ I think that beauty can be fun. And if we can think of it as this way of like, tenderly, intuitively embodied, caring for ourselves. I think it it's almost like if you really are if you're really caring for your body and you're doing the things that your body is craving for and asking for and wanting to, that sort of beauty of your essence comes through. So that's kind of how we're we're looking at it. And you know you were when you were talking about when you were ⁓ traveling, you saw so much beauty. And you weren't talking about all the different models necessarily that you were meeting. You were mentioning meeting just different people in life and people having meals and seeing beauty in the world. Like it it's not like, ⁓ I was surrounded by all the models and they were beautiful. You didn't say that. You were talking about beauty outside that. And so I think it's that realizing that that beauty is in everyone and everything. And we've just been so heavily conditioned out of seeing it. We've put it into this incredibly narrow box that really doesn't even exist. Like it's it's this made up forced idea that's not that doesn't exist naturally. Because as we know, the models are forcing themselves into it. Whereas if even models were just allowed to be themselves, we would see different body shapes too. For absolutely. And when I do workshops or I work with someone that's really struggling with their body image, I really dig into well, what are you looking at on your social media? When you travel, are you looking at all the people that live there and how beautiful this man is when he smiles or that woman's hair like expand your view of beauty? Because if you're only seeing that narrow little thing, that's you got your blinders on. So we have to open it up. So Bridget, can you tell everyone Where they can find you, if there's anything specific you've got going on right now that you want to share. Yeah. We're very active on social media. So it's beyond.beauty.projects, website beyond beautyproject.com. I just launched my coaching program. I've done a lot of like group coaching and workshops, but I just launched a one-on-one coaching program that I'm really excited about. ⁓ and I just started writing on Substack. It's called Collective Beauty. I just wrote a piece. on the documentary, America's Next Top Model. I love writing. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna expand it there. And yeah, we're really accessible on Instagram. You can email me, Bridget at Beyond Beauty Project. Yeah. And we have a podcast. I don't I don't record for it anymore, but I have this beautiful library. You are in it. ⁓ that lives there. And it's just these beautiful pieces that you can take if you're struggling with body image or ⁓ I have a lot of different doctors and holistic wellness coaches and stuff in that library. I have a bunch of stuff. ⁓ and I have a Deer Body collection. I'm not sure you guys have seen it on my journal. I'm a little journal. Yeah, I have a germ Deer Body journal and then I also have affirmation stickers and it has four different colors of shades of skin. Cool. And we have all kinds of it's really cool. Yeah. And it has little affirmations on it. Beautiful. Well, thanks so much for being here and sharing your story. I think there's a lot of people are gonna hear a lot of value in it. And I appreciate the work that you're doing. We need more of it. Well, thank you so much for having me and letting me share my story and Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved. Leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.