Meet our leading lights
At The Body Shop, we believe that self-love is our superpower that lifts us up to fight for change together.
That’s why we want to give a platform to the emerging global collective of fearless people who have been on the journey to self-love and feel empowered to step up, speak out, challenge what is broken and fight for a fairer and more beautiful world.
Read the inspirational stories of our Leading Lights here to discover how they started their journeys and shared that love with the world.
Tommy Dorfman, Actor & Writer
Tommy uses their platform to celebrate self-expression and to raise awareness around equality, injustice and discrimination.
When did your self-love journey begin?
I think I really started to practice self-love when I started to treat my body better and treat my mind better. In early college I got sober and that journey for me looked like a whole evolution of self-love practice from making my bed to calling my parents and being honest with others and thus finding serenity with myself because I wasn't living in a lie anymore.
What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love looks like for me reminding myself that I'm worthy of this life and even when people try to break me down, when people spew negativity, transphobia, and homophobia my way, that it is not a reflection of who I am as a person.
Larissa Crawford, Founder of Future Ancestors Services
Founder of Future Ancestors Services, mother and connector of generations, Larissa shares Indigenous, climate justice, & anti-racist knowledge around the world.
What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love to me means seeking to understand what holistically makes us us. What about our culture, what about our communities, what about the land we live and occupy, what about our ancestors, what about me makes me me?
Sara Mora, Immigrant Rights Activist, Storyteller and Poet
Activist and speaker, Sara founded PopulationMic, a media project that exists to shed light on unheard voices and communities.
Earlier in your self-love journey, what was it like to feel self-doubt?
My inner thoughts and my insecurities made me feel paralyzed. So many of my dreams and goals seemed further and further away the more I sat to overthink about the millions of reasons why I wasn't worthy.
How did you move from self-doubt to a place of self-acceptance?
I really saw myself begin to go from self-doubt to self-acceptance when I loved the hard moments and insecurities rather than shooing them away. I accepted those moments for what they were and allowed myself to feel the emotions in the moment.
Nora McInerny, Writer & Still Kickin Founder
Author and founder of Still Kickin Co, Nora has mastered the art of addressing life’s circumstances in a brilliant and most relatable way. Her foundation provides economic relief to those in need.
When did your self-love journey begin?
I think we're born loving ourselves. I think we are born knowing that we belong here, that we have a place here, that we are worthy. And the messages that we consume and the messages that we perpetuate within ourselves chip away at that overtime.
How has being isolated changed how you think about self-love?
I don't want to forget what this time has taught me, which is that what we have is each other. And if I want to be – and I want so desperately to be – a stable place for other people, I have to be a stable place for myself.
Char Ellesse, @GirlsWillBeBoys_ Founder
Char is founder of @girlwillbeboys, an online platform blurring the lines between gender roles.
What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love is choosing yourself over and over and over again, regardless of who is telling you that you shouldn't or who is making you feel like you shouldn't.
My wakeup call to self-love was shaving my hair around six or seven years ago. It was the start of me creating a platform which encourages other people to share their stories of self-discovery and the importance of self-love. I want to encourage women and non-binary folk to make that initial move that helped me.
With any experience that you're going through, to know that you're not alone is key to helping you move forward with your journey. I feel where there’s a collective or shared stories, it helps you to feel seen and it validates your experience.
What would you change about the world?
One thing that I would change about the world is to remove all the toxicity targeted at marginalised people.
I feel like, especially as a woman, especially as a black woman, especially as a queer black woman, me existing is defiance. Period. I feel like the world was not built for people like me. It's rebellious for me to do whatever I want to do and to thrive while I'm doing it.
Sophie Butler, Fitness Coach & Activist
Sophie is a fitness coach and activist who campaigns to support women and empower through education.
How can we learn to self-love?
The key to unlocking the power of self-love is questioning everything.
Throughout our lives we’ve been taught so much and we've picked up so many things subconsciously, so question why. If you wake up, look in the mirror and think, ‘I don’t like that’, ask, ‘Why?’. When you question yourself, you can move forward and start to unlock the mechanisms of overcoming that negative thought process.
I’d love to give more people the empowerment to question everything. That really is the most powerful thing. You can't make people love themselves, but you can help them to stop in their tracks and think why they don’t. Because when you think why you don’t fill your life with self-love, there really isn't a good enough answer.
How powerful is collective self-love?
I think self-love is really at its most powerful when it's in a collective formation and we're all really coming together with our own individual self-love. I think when we can go out into the world bold and empowered, we can then help raise everyone else up.