Motivational speaker and para-athlete (@zainab.aleqabi). Zainab Al-Eqabi is truly an inspiration. She has overcome personal challenges and champions self-acceptance.
Her traumatic experience of losing her left leg at age seven in a bomb explosion in Baghdad, made her realize that she is still blessed with other abilities in the face of what she has lost.
Through her involvement in several sports events and charitable initiatives, she is sending a message to the world that life doesn’t stop when you have a disability.
Al-Eqabi says “Self-love is being confident in your own skin, in your whole being. Loving, caring and showing respect to who you really are.”
The Body Shop, the activist beauty company, which has launched the global self-love movement, has been working with Al-Eqabi in the Middle East to inspire acts of self-love across the region.
When Anita Roddick founded The Body Shop, she believed passionately that beauty is an active, outward expression of everything you like about yourself. She understood the importance of self-esteem.
In 1997, she launched a self-esteem and body positivity campaign featuring a generously proportioned doll, Ruby, with the slogan: There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only eight who do. The Body Shop was the first beauty company to talk about self-esteem and importantly, the link between personal wellbeing and collective wellbeing.
Fast forward to today, the body positivity movement has gained much traction. Yet we live in a troubled and turbulent world, where inequalities continue to widen. The Body Shop believes the next frontier in creating positive impact in the world is increasing self-love.
The Body Shop aims to inspire 1 million acts of self-love in 1 year, to create more love and positive change in the world. It doesn’t matter how big or small, every act can lead to big change. Tips on acts of self-love will be shared on the The Body Shop’s online self-love hubs* and social media channels.
