Wellness blogger and personal trainer Nancy Chen is strong and athletic, but her tan skin and muscular body aren't ideal in the traditional Chinese culture that she was raised in which values fair petite women.
In this episode, Erin talks to Nancy about her journey of learning to love her body, walking in authenticity and truth, and celebrating the wonderful things her body allows her to do. With social media filters increasingly allowing us to change our faces and bodies to fit into an unattainable beauty ideal, there is more and more pressure to look a certain way and to hide what we perceive to be our imperfections. But, as Nancy argues, we are busy creating an extremely damaging society that promotes body-image issues, eating disorders, and feelings of inadequacy. That is exactly why she is on a mission to head in the opposite direction with her Instagram account, wanting to encourage people to be at home in their skins and to embrace their “flaws”, ultimately creating a world in which all shapes, sizes, and colors are appreciated.
Our email today (45:28) is all about which products to change up for fall as your skin starts to get more dry (spoiler alert: one of the products we talk about goes perfectly with a pumpkin spice latte!).
Call Outs from the Episode:
Tweetables:
“It had taken a lot from me to love that concept of my body instead of trying to fit into what Chinese standards deem as beautiful.” — Nancy Chen [0:05:38]
“I have built my entire mission around empowering people to feel good in their own skin and I’ve always tried to be as authentic as possible, and that means sharing my struggles; sharing those thoughts I have with the whole world. I just didn’t want to perpetuate that idea or concept of being so fake and not presenting something that is real on the internet, because that is super damaging.” — Nancy Chen [0:16:34]
“We can have well intentions but that does not mean they have positive effects all the time.” — Nancy Chen [0:33:59]
“You’ll never feel beautiful enough if you keep comparing yourself to other people.” — Nancy Chen [0:40:49]
Come have fun with us!
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