There’s Something Ugly About The Beauty Industry
Rule 1: Create 'flaws' that make women feel insecure about their face and body.
Rule 2: Sell a miraculous cure to this 'flaw' that doesn’t do whatever it promises to do.
Rule 3: Repeat Rule 1 & Rule 2.
Today, brands talk about self-love and body positivity, while at the same time using flawless models and triggering before and after photos to demonise stretch marks, tiger stripes and blemishes. That feels a lot like having your cake and eating it too to us. We’re all for eating cake, but not if it means tapping into important social movements to sell products.
As women, we’re told to wax off, blend in, blow out. Cover, correct, conceal. Show less skin. You look tired. Give us a smile.
Bopo is for women who are sick of being told how to look, and how to think. We’ll never convince you of an impossible beauty standard, then lead you to products that promise to get you there. We’ll never champion body positivity, then edit, alter and airbrush women. We’ll never tell you to celebrate your stretch marks — then sell you a body scrub to remove them.
While other brands still push this outdated, harmful idea of beauty — their cleansers and creams all working to solve, fix and mask skin in the pursuit of perfection — Bopo spends its time deeper down: on the inside, where it counts.
My story of negative body image & an eating disorder unfortunately mirrors so many other stories.
I’ve seen so many women I love battle with self-hatred, all seemingly convinced that the key to overcoming it was shrinking or fixing. Slowly it dawned on me how similar our experiences were & I started to look outward for the source of the problem, landing on the toxicity of the beauty industry.
Beauty myths disconnect us from ourselves & allow us to buy into (literally) the greatest myth of all, that we aren’t already wholly & completely enough. Eating disorders & body hatred drain women of our energy & distract us from living our lives in the full embodied way we deserve to. I started thinking, what if there were beauty products that actually cared about women & wanted them to enjoy being in their own skin? What if self-care could be the truly radical antidote to the myths of imperfection we’re sold? And so Bopo Women was born.
From there, it’s become something so much bigger than me and now belongs to all of us. Our formulas are created with purpose & intention, our products are handmade with love & care by our amazing production team and our art is created by the incomparable Vanja Vukelic. The messages we receive everyday about how our products help you to find an oasis of body love & acceptance amidst a sea of toxic messaging are the greatest joy imaginable.
We won’t be satisfied until every woman feels safe, loved & at home in her skin. It’s time to come home to our bodies.
With love,
Bron Xo (Founder)
We treat your body nicely. And teach you how to do that, too.
Our products will never claim to change, tweak or fix you. Rather, they’re meant to cocoon you, care for your skin and create space for you to reconnect with what matters most. Inspired by the treasures shining bright in all of us, our natural recipes, shimmering oils and floral infused lotions are the ultimate act of self-love and appreciation. They’re beautiful beyond measure, and that’s the only time we put beauty on a pedestal.
