An author from Harrow has released a book to empower young girls to believe they are beautiful.
Shelina Janmohamed wrote BeYOUtiful to offer tips to young girls on how to navigate social media and be positive.
To help change perceptions, Ms Janmohamed explored the different beauty standards around the world and throughout history.
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One of the reasons Ms Janmohamed wrote the book was because of a conversation about beauty she had with one of her daughters.
She said: “As a mum of two girls, I know body image is central to mental health, and is shaped well before the sensitive teenage years. I wrote the book to give girls the knowledge and power to shape this positively, well in advance.
“This is a vibrant, fun, joyful book aimed at girls aged eight plus to give them the tools they need to decide for themselves what it means to be beautiful, to say ‘I’m beautiful’ and mean it.”
The book, illustrated by Chanté Timothy, explores how history and culture shapes people’s perception of beauty. It also explains the science behind different hair textures and skin tones.
As filters are becoming more and more popular and used heavily by social media influencers, concerns have been raised by many charities that young children are being given an unrealistic view of what people should look like.
Because of this, the book also explains that images are not always as they seem and advice on how to navigate social media is also offered.
Ms Janmohamed is a leading expert on female representation, and as a vice president of a major advertising agency was also chosen as one of the Top 100 Empower Executives on the first ever Empower Role Model List.
She is also running an event as part of Stoke Newington Literary Festival.
Stoke Newington Literary Festival
Day: Saturday 4th June
Time: 4pm
Venue: Grasmere Primary School, 92 Albion Road, Hackney, London, N16 9PD
Price: £4.40. Tickets can be purchased here.
BeYOUtiful is published by Welbeck Children’s and is available to buy from all good bookshops instore and online.
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