Celebrating Women with Rio 2016

Here at Dansez we like to keep an eye on the latest health news and to look for new fitness trends that we both want to try and that we think our fitness clothes could be a really good fit for.

So we were saddened to see the latest news that shows that girls in the UK are becoming more unhappy, and that the growing pressure of social media is  reportedly playing a part in this. The Children’s Society’s annual report suggested that among 10 to 15-year-old girls, 14% are unhappy with their lives as a whole, and 34% with their appearance. Plus the gap between how happy boys are compared to girls is getting wider.

Now we love social media for many reasons. It allows us to engage with you for starters, as well as follow incredible sportsmen and women and find inspiration for our future collections. However, we also know that there are sides of social media that are projecting false, unattainable images of the female body. Use of flattering filters are one thing (Valencia anyone?) but when heavy use of Photoshop comes into play, young girls are being presented with completely unrealistic standards of beauty which are so prevalent that they start to feel like the norm.

This all feels particularly saddening in light of the recent Olympics and Paralympics, when incredible female athletes of all body types under the sun were excelling in their fields and were holding audiences in complete awe. Jessica Ennis, Jazz Carlin, Libby Clegg, Hannah Cockcroft, Jade Jones, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Ellie Simmonds, Sophie Hitchon, Nicola Adams, Kadeena Cox……. there were nearly 300 female athletes competing for Team GB in the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics, and the focus was (mostly) on what their bodies could do, not what they looked like.

And this is what we want to continue seeing, and at Dansez we will continue to use strong, powerful, realistic female bodies in our imagery. We want young girls to feel confident in their bodies and this starts with sportswear that they feel comfortable in, and that represent the kind of woman they want to be. A small step perhaps, but one that feels particularly important right now.