Picture Supply: Getty / Jamie McCarthyG
Julia Michaels is bored with the unrealistic beauty standards the media places forth, so she’s doing one thing about it. On the finish of August, the singer introduced by way of Instagram that she’s beginning a month-to-month digital journal cowl titled “You” highlighting the beauty in differences among people.
With this new mission, Michaels’s objective is to indicate her followers that they are lovely simply the way in which they’re and that they need not change to slot in with outdated magnificence beliefs; that the requirements want to alter to incorporate them.
“We stay in a society the place solely the right components of you’re proven, and in case you do not suppose you may have excellent components, it’s a must to make excellent components,” Michaels instructed POPSUGAR. “I need folks to know that stretch marks are lovely. Freckles are lovely. Crooked tooth are lovely. Physique hair is gorgeous. Scars are lovely.”
The thought to start out her personal digital cowl to focus on actual magnificence got here to her after having a revelation in regards to the societal norms she has conformed to. “It form of began with my armpits,” Michaels mentioned. Whereas touring in Paris, she forgot a razor, which led to her armpit hair rising out. “Once I acquired dwelling, I shaved, and I used to be like, ‘I do not like this. Why do not I like this?'” That is when she made the choice to cease eradicating the hair below her arms.
Nonetheless, her choice wasn’t met with out some pushback. Sadly, she obtained quite a few unsolicited feedback from folks on the web projecting their emotions onto her physique, like after her Grammys red carpet appearance with unshaved armpits. That have, plus numerous extra with focused magnificence advertisements and unattainable pictures within the media, made her take into consideration how a lot stress is placed on folks to alter themselves and conform to societal requirements.
Picture Supply: Courtesy of Julia Michaels by Raen Badua
That — plus the hundreds of pictures her followers put up each month on the thirteenth to the hashtag #gorgeousgems sharing what they love about themselves — finally sparked the concept for her.
“You” remains to be very a lot to start with formative phases, however Michaels is worked up to see this ardour mission “form up into one thing actually lovely.” As a result of she needs to focus on her followers, she’ll be taking submissions for the quilt photograph every month by way of an online form. “We did not understand that we had been going to get so many submissions and so many individuals desirous to share their tales, which was simply superb and overwhelming,” Michaels mentioned. Extra particulars are to return, however to date, her staff has already obtained over 5,000 submissions.
“I am hoping to simply normalize individuality — folks’s personal understanding of themselves and their OK-ness with themselves,” she mentioned. “I also have a arduous time discovering OK-ness inside myself, and I simply wish to encourage younger folks to seek out that, too.”