Empowering Women
Beauty and Strength at a Glance
Beauty and Strength seeks to help create a better, and safer tomorrow for young girls. Through a partnership with Fire + Root Co, Beauty and Strength is able to provide free empowerment self-defense courses to the girls at Silver Creek High School.
​
According to the APPG, 97% of women ages 18-24 are sexually assaulted. This statistic is devastatingly high. Empowerment courses help to combat this percentage; participants are 63% less likely to be assaulted, and 46% less likely to be successfully raped. While this by no means completely solves the problem that is so prevalent in society, it does give power and confidence to women, consequently drastically reducing their risk of becoming victim to sexual assault.
​
Beauty and Strength aspires to not only provided these classes to girls, but to also encourage the embarkment, and encouragement of one another. By creating a community, both virtually and in person, via social media and the classes, this project helps provide a space that radiates positivity, love, and support.
Why "Beauty and Strength?"
Women are taught to constantly underestimate and judge themselves, and each other. We live in a world were we speak harsh, unforgiving words to ourselves that we would never utter to a friend; a world where you must fit a unrealistic mold in order to feel "beautiful." A world where we try our whole lives to be something better, something different, something unattainable.
​
Then, it is ingrained into society that women are weak. Damsels in distress. Creatures who rely on men.
​
This is simply, and completely untrue.
​
Women, all women, are beautiful. Their very nature is something remarkable, and striking.
​
Their strength is unmatched. Physically and emotionally women are born of steel.
​
Via empowerment, women can come to realize this beauty that they retain. They can acknowledge that it's not one or the other, but rather that they are the epitome of beauty and strength itself. This is the concept from which the name originates from.
​
In my courses it's been amazing to see girls break out of their shells and come alive in the short two hours that we spend together. They walk in slightly unsure, and leave feeling like the bada** individuals they are.
​