#ImNoAngel and teaching positive body image

We’re sure that by now you’ve heard of Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign. At AdoptAClassroom.org, we’re proud to be partnering with a company that’s using their brand to promote confidence and positive body image.

The campaign, which plays off the Victoria Secret “Angels,” features six beautiful models who fall outside the “standard” model size. In the words of Pepa (of Salt n’ Pepa, who took part in the launch) the campaign is about :

Empowerment, self worth, loving yourself and bringing up women.

You may be thinking, you’re an education non-profit, what does a lingerie ad have to do with that? Teachers automatically become role models for their students. And now more than ever, they fall into a complicated position of balancing conversations about healthy living with conversations about self-esteem.

Teaching confidence requires having it, and a happy, beautiful-feeling teacher can do so much for students struggling with body image issues. Campaigns that bring all different forms of beauty to the screen are important to students, but just as important are the adults they see and learn from everyday.

So we hope that the teachers seeing this campaign will see the beauty in themselves and pass those positive feelings on to their students everyday! In the words of Ashley Graham, one of the #ImNoAngel models:

[In modeling] you’re reaffirmed every day: ‘Oh, you’re beautiful,’ ‘Oh, your body looks amazing.’ And that’s what I’m trying to teach young girls who don’t have that every day. You have to find self worth. You have to look yourself in the mirror, and you really have to tell yourself that you love yourself. It sounds corny and it sounds cheesy, but it’s totally necessary… change your words! Words have power. They go deep.

Interested in supporting the role models who inspire our children everyday? Consider adopting a classroom today!

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