Bare
“What I love most about my body is that it’s mine and I don’t let anybody chip how I feel about it anymore. I never fight with it anymore. My two siblings are models. So is my dad. I am far from it.”
“My dream is that women won’t have anything to battle against as a result of being women. That is, our would will have learned to embrace and love women exactly as we are and exactly as we are not.”
“I hope women will recognize the power of feeling all of ourselves, the power of touching every part of ourselves and being fully ecstatically embodied in is the essence of what makes a woman beautiful, powerful and confident.”
“My ability to be a sexual being after experiencing sexual abuse is the most courageous things I’ve done. It’s about building a background of self-love and I refuse to reshape any part of me to fit anyone else’s ideal.”
“I had an abortion at 17. I can’t change what happened, but thank God for giving me a second chance as a parent. At 21 I became pregnant again. Unsure of how I would raise a kid alone, I was determined to be the best mom I could be.”
“My dream and my legacy for the next generation of women, is for them to know that they don’t have to dry up and fly off in the breeze, but they can stay fun and juicy until the day they hit the boneyard.”
“I love being a woman. The older I get the more range I have, the more I can stretch into different parts of me. And as I do that I release the shame and shadows that I didn’t know I had.”
“I want the next generation of women to be free in their bodies and to know they are not their bodies. Their bodies are merely one aspect of them – their bodies do not define them, and they definitely don’t make them more or less “worthy.”
“I love that with everything that my body has gone through – surgeries, a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy, radiation and tow childbirths – that my body still keeps going and going. Its not an outwardly strong body, but inside it has tremendous strength.”
“Nudity is the great equalizer and when we can all get naked together we really realize the essence in one another, but mostly it’s about accepting our own beauty.”
“I chose to beautiful. The beautiful the mailman told me this morning, the beautiful my husband said to me when I was brushing my hair, the beautiful I said to myself when I was applying lip gloss in the rear view mirror, the beautiful my son told me when we went for a hike by the ocean.”
“I have overcome many things in my life, being the daughter of a single farm working woman I had to become the mother to my siblings, but in my adult life I’ve overcome being the victim of rape by a family member.”
“I love my legs, which have kept up the stride no matter what stumbling stones of life have appeared. I love my back, which has never broken under the weight of the pain of my past.”
“I love that my body is always at my service, its constantly performing miracles to keep me alive. I love my soft curves and womanly roundness, powerful hips!.”
“May all women love their bodies, feel comfortable in their skin and awaken sexy self confidence!”
“I would absolutely recommend this to anyone. It was a moving and powerful experience, and we all got to share in each other’s fears and help each other through. And I liked that it was empowering, yet very feminine.”
“My dream for the next generation of women is for them to know they are worthy and loved and make decisions from that place.”
“My dream for my daughter (17 yo) and the next generation is to fully love and embrace YOU for you. We are born into love and throughout our lives we are taught that we have to look a certain way, do certain things, and follow the right rules in order to be good enough.”
“I truly believe that every woman is inspirational, but how many of us actually acknowledge it?”
Photos by Anastasia Kuba.
About BARE
The BARE campaign was founded in 2011 by Michelle Fetsch, a 29 year-old woman who recovered from a 17 year struggle with eating disorders, body image, and self esteem issues.
BARE is an invitation to the world to allow all women to be seen, heard and free. We are honored to have the support of Super Model Carre Otis, well as other media personalities, models and activists.
The BARE campaign exists to empower women in having a healthy body image and self-esteem; to bridge the gap between perception and reality so women stop comparing and start supporting each other. Please read the courageous stories of some of the extraordinary women who have already dared to GO BARE.
“The BARE experience was certainly a turning point in my new identity after cancer. I had always felt like my body was strong and responsive to me, naturally. I was proud of my body – muscular and strong. Then Cancer came into my life and I felt so out of control with my body. Going BARE was more than revealing my current physical body, it was about revealing me without clothes to hide behind.” — Sharianne, Age 51
What We’re Up To
The goal of BARE Campaign is to provide realistic images of women in their authenticity and true power in the media. In empowering women we directly impact and affect the lives of the next generation; healthy women raise healthy children.
The Bare campaign launched publicly in May, 2014 and since has had over 1/2 million views and has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Shape, Huffington Post and other global media outlets for women. While it’s just the beginning, WE is committed to forwarding this message and women all over the globe are responding courageously by going bare and sharing their stories.
Alongside the BARE Campaign, Women Enough, (WE) plans to roll out a series of other campaigns to empower women and girls. “MY DREAM for the Next Generation” has hundreds of women and girls sharing their dreams and together, #WE are creating a new reality in media.
WE Believe a Woman’s Worth Goes Far Beyond Her Beauty
WE have gathered hundreds of women, between the ages of 23 – 80, of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages — together in community to share their stories — from their darkest times to their most proud moments. They are photographed in their true essence, completely BARE. By exposing themselves in such a confronting, vulnerable yet safe way — these women find freedom from the constraints that have held them from feeling enough.
“So liberating and so outside my comfort zone.” — Christine, Ontario
“I felt more safe in this group of women than I ever had before, and I’ve been in some wonderful groups of women.” — Bonnie, Age 61
Michelle’s Inspiration
A long-time lover of fashion, Michelle once dreamed of being a fashion designer or stylist. But there was one major problem: While she loved fashion and wanted to make it to the “big time,” she became increasingly aware of a disparity in advertising and media: It portrayed and perpetuated an industry that celebrated disease.
That’s when her vision shifted. For the last four years, Michelle’s dream has been to disrupt media and support women in healthy body image and positive self-esteem. She believes that women long to see a broader representation of women in the media and thinks it’s high time the rest of the world saw that too.
“The idea of creating Women Enough was in the summer of 2010 after realizing I was ruled by my own dark conversation of not feeling enough. After a 17-year struggle with eating disorders, body image and self-esteem issues — I was fed up and I declared my commitment to supporting women in owning their worth, far beyond their beauty.”
