The Body Shop’s new campaign aims to share 1 million acts of self-love across the globe in 1 year. For the first time, their brand, products, communications, voices, and channels will work together to inspire customers with their vision of a fairer and more beautiful world. 

 

Since their foundation in 1976, their founder Anita Roddick had a revolutionary belief: that business could be a force for good. Since then, the brand has been following her vision, breaking the rules, and making change for 40 years. “The Body Shop exists to fight for a fairer and more beautiful world”. Activism is key to their purpose and it sits at the core of everything they do. 

In the words of their founder, Dame Anita Roddick: “Beauty is an active, outward expression of everything you like about yourself”. This is why, in 1997, they took a stance on body positivity with their self-esteem campaign, which featured a size 16 doll named Ruby. This year, they’re taking a stance on self-doubt, on flipping norms, and pushing through personal and societal challenges. 

The core of the campaign is based on the premise that “we live in a broken unjust world where society oppresses and controls us by profiting from self-doubt and insecurity”. Their solution to this: love; and love is an action that starts from within. The campaign is supported on a global level by British activist and actress Jameela Jamil, and Canadian-born Sara Kuburic, The Millenial Therapist. 

 

For The Body Shop, self-love means self-acceptance and permitting oneself to grow into who one is. Self-love has the power to left people up to fight for change together, hence their belief that self-love is action; and it’s time to act now. The intention is to share 1 million acts of self-love across the globe in 1 year. It doesn’t matter how big or small, every action leads to a big change. With the help of customers and their Leading Lights, their mission will be accomplished. 

The brand is giving its platform to the emerging global collective of fearless people who have been on the journey to self-love and feel empowered to step up, speak out, challenge what is broken, and fight for a fairer and more beautiful world; those people are the Leading Lights. 

Who are the Leading Lights?

Tommy Dorfman: actor and writer; uses their platform to celebrate self-expression and to raise awareness around equality, injustice, and discrimination. 

Larissa Crawford: founder of Future Ancestors Sevices; shares Indigenous, climate justice, and anti-racist knowledge around the world. 

Sara Mora: Immigrant rights activist, storyteller, and poet; founded a media project that exists to shed light on unheard voices and communities. 

They are some of the Leading Light of the campaign, and you can read their stories and meet the other members on The Body Shop’s website.