Canadian hockey gold medallist Sarah Nurse stars in new beauty campaign
PWHL Vancouver player battles back against unrealistic beauty standards
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The buzz:Dove #UnseenBeauty campaign stars Canadian ice hockey superstar.
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Why we love it: Canadian ice hockey star Sarah Nurse is no stranger to the spotlight.
The professional athlete and Olympic gold medallist is celebrated for her strength, skill and leadership on the ice.
But the 30-year-old admits she hasn’t always felt perfectly comfortable in her skin. In a new campaign for the brand Dove, Nurse shares her story about battling body insecurity issues as a teen.
And she’s not alone.
A study conducted by the company titled The Weight of Words found that three in four Millennial women in Canada say that “harmful beauty messages” from the early 2000s continue to impact how they feel about their bodies today.
“As the generation with the lowest self-esteem, it’s clear Millennial women are still recovering from decades of unrealistic beauty expectations around how their bodies should look,” said Divya Singh, head of Unilever Personal Care, Canada, in a news release.
Identifying with that lingering impact, Nurse signed on to star in a new campaign for Dove called #UnseenBeauty. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) Vancouver player is joining Canadian content creators to help build a more healthy depiction of what beauty looks like.
“Growing up in the early 2000s, hearing so much language that was very unkind to women’s bodies, it just resonated,” Nurse says of the campaign. “And as an athlete, being a little bit more muscular, a little more broad, a little taller, I didn’t necessarily see women like that represented to me. So I think the power of social media has been amazing because we’re normalizing normal women who are living their everyday lives.
“People are able to see how many different types of women there are in the world. And I think that’s really special.”
With fashion and pop culture references from the Aughts making a strong comeback, it’s a perfect time to revisit the conversation around body positivity and beauty standards.
“So many things that were on our TV screens and in magazines that we saw growing up were targeted around this, like very narrow idea and ideal of a body image and a body type,” Nurse says. “This is our opportunity to change the language when we are speaking about our bodies, so that the next generations don’t experience the trauma that Millennial women have.”
To learn more about the #UnseenBeauty campaign, visit Dove.com.
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