Rosie Scott Blog about Women

In the 2006 film "The Devil Wears Prada," the imperious fashion magazine editor played by Meryl Streep champions the waifish ideal of female beauty, referring to her plucky new size-6 assistant as "the fat one."

It's that kind of unhealthy beauty standard that real-life editor Ravneet Vohra is working to challenge with Wear Your Voice, the online women's magazine and social media brand she's been publishing out of her Oakland, Calif., home for two years.

The publication's latest campaign, BeyondBeauty, features photos of 18 bra-and-panties-clad Bay Area women proudly displaying their various-sized bodies. Launched on Black Friday, the BeyondBeauty campaign was viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter in its first week and earned glowing mentions in Vanity Fair, People and Self. Even Vogue, the magazine that inspired the "Prada" book and movie, recently gave BeyondBeauty an online shout-out, and Huffington Post profiled Vohra as one of the "Women to be thankful for this year."

A former fashion merchandizer and the British-born descendant of Indian immigrants, Vohra says she was inspired to create Wear Your Voice because she, like a lot of women, feels the media has never been her friend.

"When I flipped through the pages of my favorite magazines growing up, I never saw images that I could relate to," said Vohra, 39. "I realized later in life that media had been the source for many of my insecurities, and I knew if I didn't see myself represented in the media, other women didn't see themselves either."

Discovering Oakland's diverse, eclectic population inspired her to channel her insecurities into a publication that would "revolutionize the media space."

'Loving it'

She remembers when she first came to Oakland, driving around downtown and "loving it."

"There's a soul and energy and creative buzz," she continues, "and I really wanted in on it."

In an interview at the Montclair, Calif., home she shares with her husband and two young children, Vohra sports a chic mini skirt by Oakland designer Harumi K and a pixie streaked with red hues.

Though she jokingly calls herself an "angry Indian woman," she wasn't always a rebel. She grew up shy and dutiful, she says, wore her hair long in the Sikh tradition and felt constantly judged for what she wore or for having "fat calves." While she dreamed of being an actress or doing something "big," she found her groove in her early 20s working as a publicist for a London-based designer.

Ultimately, she found the fashion industry to be ego-driven and backstabbing. Single at 26, she gave into family expectations and became a trophy wife in an arranged marriage.

For her daughter

When the marriage turned out to be an unhappy one, Vohra became the first person in her family to divorce. While visiting her sister in Berkeley, she fell in love with both the Bay Area and her current husband, Sumit Sharma, who was supportive of anything she wanted to do.

Vohra eventually worked as a personal stylist, where she constantly heard female clients beating themselves up for not looking like Vogue models. When she became a mother to her first child, a daughter, she realized the extent to which she also harbored self-hatred.

"I really didn't want my daughter to experience life in the way I experienced it," she said.

One thing she had to address was being molested as a young child by a family friend. Finally sharing that information with her family helped Vohra chip away at her self-hatred and find her voice.

"Wear your voice," the message of self-empowerment she always gave to clients, became her magazine's title. Though lacking editorial experience, she rounded up a team of enthusiastic local writers and photographers. Her initial mission was to celebrate her new hometown's arts and culture scene, but she and her writers morphed it into something more personal.

'Space for everybody'

Its convention-challenging focus comes at a time when a growing number of bloggers, "body positive" activists and celebrities are speaking out against beauty standards that experts say contribute to negative self-image and eating disorders.

Senior columnist Rachel Otis, who struggled most of her life with having a larger body than her peers, says she was excited by Vohra's "honesty and authenticity." The BeyondBeauty photo shoot was Otis' idea, inspired by the famous Dove "Real Beauty" campaign. Otis says Dove undermined its seemingly positive message by reportedly featuring only models under size 16 and using the campaign to market skin-firming and other products.

"There's nothing we hate more than a body-negative campaign disguised as a body-positive one," Otis said.

Even before BeyondBeauty, Wear Your Voice was garnering buzz, including a flood of disparaging online comments in Britain's Daily Mail, for DroptheTowel, a campaign that encouraged people of all sizes to be proud of their beach bodies. Another campaign very close to Vohra's heart, KilltheSilence, urged people to stop blaming domestic violence victims for their plight.

Vohra hopes to expand her magazine's international reach so that one day, women of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities, sexual orientation and gender identity will star in fashion spreads, including in Vogue.

"I'd like them to have a space for everybody."

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