A group of Norfolk women are hoping to change the conversation around body image by helping others feel more confident in front of the camera.
The five women behind Self Love Socials have held their first event, bringing together professional hair styling, make-up and photography with the aim of encouraging women to celebrate themselves as they are.
The team is made up of salon owner and hairdresser Megan Kilgour, 29, from Drayton; hairdresser Leah Bowen, 24, from Smallburgh; hairdresser Ellie Napier, 25, from Ingham; photographer Penny Barton-Byrd, 31, from Rackheath; and make-up artist Megan Mayhew, 26, from Poringland.
Ms Kilgour, a body-positive campaigner with more than 45,000 followers on Instagram, said the women had brought their different skills together with a shared aim.
She wants to normalise the bodies women rarely see online, where gym-honed physiques and carefully filtered images can leave people feeling they are not good enough.
By celebrating a wider range of shapes and sizes, the team hopes to show women they do not need to change their bodies to deserve confidence, visibility or a photograph they love.
“We are a team of five women who have come together with one shared goal: to change the conversation around women’s bodies and help women see themselves in a completely different light,” Ms Kilgour said.
“We recently held our first Self Love Socials event, and the day was about so much more than simply getting dressed up and having your photograph taken.”
Women attending were treated to professional hair styling and make-up before taking part in a photoshoot with Ms Barton-Byrd.
But while the pictures provided a lasting reminder of the occasion, the organisers wanted the experience itself to offer something valuable: a few hours in which women could put their insecurities aside and enjoy being themselves.
Ms Kilgour said the intention was for participants to leave with photographs they could look back on and think: “Wow, I look beautiful. I am enough.”
And organisers say the impact has lasted beyond the day itself, with participants getting back in touch to explain what their photographs now mean to them.
“Since the event, the women who attended have been getting back in touch with us to tell us just how much the experience has meant to them,” Ms Kilgour said.
“One woman told us that when she has a bad day, she gets out her photographs from the event and looks at them to remind herself that she is enough exactly as she is.
“Another told us that every time she looks at her photographs, she gets butterflies and still can’t believe how incredible she looks.”
For Ms Kilgour and the rest of the team, those responses reflect what they hoped to achieve when they created the events.
They want Self Love Socials to encourage a wider discussion about the way women view their bodies while also creating opportunities for them to come together in a supportive setting.
Their ambition is to build events around acceptance, allowing women to celebrate who they are without feeling they must first change something about themselves.
“For us, that is the whole reason we created Self Love Socials,” Ms Kilgour said.
“We wanted to give women more than a nice photograph. We wanted to give them a moment where they could see themselves through a different lens, one without criticism, comparison or judgement.”
Following the response to the first gathering, further Self Love Socials events are already planned.
The five women are also exploring opportunities to work with Norfolk businesses on events with different themes, expanding the idea while supporting others in the community.
For now, the feedback from participants has provided encouragement that a day centred around photographs can leave women with something more enduring than the images themselves.
“We are a team of five women who believe there needs to be a bigger conversation around how women view their bodies and themselves,” Ms Kilgour said.
“We want to create positive, supportive spaces where women can celebrate who they are, rather than constantly feeling that they need to change.”
More information about Self Love Socials can be found on Instagram at @theselflovesocials
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