How Active Truth #choosetochallenge: celebrating International Women’s Day
At Active Truth we are passionate about supporting and championing women. This year’s theme #ChooseToChallenge strongly resonates with us. Many women have been underserved by the activewear market and are excluded from the wellness and fitness space because of negative gender stereotypes and bias. We believe women deserve better. That’s why we started Active Truth and why we will continue to use our voice to challenge gender inequity and celebrate all women.
Inclusive products
The average size woman in Australia is a size 16, but she's lucky to find tights that fit and function well enough to workout in. Her choices are usually boring, black and poor quality. The same can be said for the maternity activewear market where pregnant women are offered inferior, or prohibitively expensive options.
We offer our regular and maternity products across a size range of small to 3XL in every single style. This includes bright prints and beautiful patterns. We are testing the market with petite and XS styles which we hope to incorporate permanently into our collections. And we are working on styles for tall women that will be released later this year.
Photoshop-free zone
Only one in five Australian women is satisfied with her body. Is it any wonder when every time we look at social media we only see one type of body – that has been filtered, facetuned and digitally altered. We choose to challenge the idea that “aspirational” images of the perfect woman (hint: there’s no such thing) is what women want to see when they are shopping. We refuse to encourage women to shop with Active Truth from a place of feeling not enough and buy exploiting their fears and insecurities about their body. One of the ways we do this is by refusing to photoshop our photos, ever, and showing our product on an array of different women.
Spotlight on our customers
We are proud to have built a community of women based on inclusivity, positivity and fun who believe in, and support us to achieve, our mission. So what better way to celebrate you then by including you in the fabric of our business. We love showcasing our customers on our social media — showing women of all shapes, sizes and abilities who are happy, healthy and active in so many different ways that bring them joy. We are obsessed with feedback and love to hear from our community through both informal messages and our annual customer survey to discover how we can best serve and support you.
Choosing to challenge at Active Truth
Our focus on championing women is reflected in a number of in-house policies and initiatives:
— Each year we support Share the Dignity, a charity that helps women in need to access sanitary items, through our limited edition activewear designs with money donated for each item sold.
— This year we are proud to collaborate with Indigenous artist Bobbi Locker to showcase her beautiful design on an activewear set. Also a talented photographer, Bobbi has shot images for the campaign against the iconic Port Headland landscape.
— We believe the words we speak are powerful and that language is important.
Using words about bodies — whether our own or others — with a negative connotation can be hurtful and triggering. Making jokes that play into typical female stereotypes ignores and continues the damage that these stereotypes cause.
— We have an amazing team of women working at Active Truth who are positive and supportive. We encourage and support training opportunities. Many of our team members access flexible work conditions. We strive to make Active Truth a positive, safe and inspiring workplace.
This year on International Women’s Day our team discussed women’s achievements and challenges we face over morning tea. We spoke about how we choose to challenge both personally and through our platform as a small business. We reinforced our commitment to positively representing a diverse range of women and including all women in the conversations around health, fitness and wellbeing. Because you can’t be what you can’t see.
