Body Posi Avery

Born and raised in Arlington, North Virginia, Avery grew up with a little sister in tow, exposed to the same stuff of most girls. As she reached 13, her natural adolescent weight gain was spinning her into a tizzy; negative body image swarmed her psyche. By 15, she was obsessed with changing her body, breaking her back to lose weight, feeling guilty if she ate anything off her schedule, and locked in the vicious cycle of dieting. Love the Skin You’re In arrived at HB Woodlawn School in November 2016 thanks to a dedicated five-year effort on the ground by the Global Colab Network, a local youth-serving NGO. I met Avery for the first time when that collaboration kicked off with an assembly for grades six through twelve girls at her school.

An infectious smile slid across her round, rosy face when Avery found me in the hallway at a follow-up chat hosted in a local living room. I watched the crystal snowflakes glittering in the translucent blue of her irises as she confided her years-long struggle with body image, her chronic yo-yo dieting, before confidently insisting that today was her final push, that she was finally ready to abandon Weight Watchers.

When we connected again a month later, Avery was interviewing me for a project. I took the opportunity to turn the spotlight back on the embryonic potential I recognized in her. “Aves,” I coaxed, “You could really take this somewhere. I can see it in you, this woman yielding to her inner knowing, this unrealized leadership. You have so much experience. Why not take the things you know, and the example you want to set, and the fires you have walked through, and make yourself a lighthouse on social media. There’s a whole world of girls out there who need you; they need you desperately.” (Enter important caveat here: This was a year before Jean Twenge published i-Gen, alerting us all to the dangers of social media. It was a time when we believed the social media companies who promised us connection with their shiny wares. It was a moment in time before AI would have its field day and before we knew about the hot bed of sexual predation against which Instagram would offer girls no protection.)

When I interviewed the junior for my podcast a year later, Avery had taken her seat at the lighthouse and was beaming her light in technicolor. Body Posi Avery had sprouted into a safe, girls-only, Instagram channel in which Avery shared her vulnerability and her authenticity with her growing following. She had become a champion for girls of every shape and size and in no time, she had garnered over 2000 teen girl followers in the Washington, DC area. Girls loved being part of Body posi Avery. Together, it was a place where collective resiliency shone. A place where every girl belonged.

Avery became pronounced leader in her school community. She organized multiple body positivity days and led the charge to a new school culture free of fat-shaming. The new norm became mutual love as girls came together to lift one another up despite the caustic messaging of a world that was forever telling them they were never good enough.

Out of this fertile new eco-system grew Ellen Hart, a 13-year-old middle schooler who wanted to carry the message of love. Claiming the torch, Ellen created a stunning body positivity video with her friends. That’s right: edited, directed, and produced. At 13 years old. How’s that for wow?

That’s what we love most at Love the Skin You’re In – championing girl-launched media that challenges ubiquitous broadcasting by getting young women behind the camera. Watch Ellen’s two-minute short below and remember that while disturbing mental health trends abound, Ellens are everywhere. Her video below captures the transformation one grades 6—12 school underwent; their story is a reminder to us all of the power of young women coming together to change the world one girl at a time.

Nick Cholmsky

Nick Cholmsky approached me following my boys talk at Brentwood College in British Columbia in 2023. His youthful face was crowned by a crop of curly chocolate hair, and he carried light in his blue eyes. He was moved by what he saw onstage and he wanted to be a part of it. Nick left me to speak with the other young men who were circling and wanting to connect. I had barely made it through the cluster of remaining boys when Nick ducked back into the theater. “Is there some way that we can keep in touch?” he asked. I felt an intuitive nudge to listen to the urgency and sincerity in his voice and gave him my contact information.

Nick followed up to share his reflections and ideas. He opened up to me about the depression and suicidal ideation that had taken hold of him as an adolescent, how attempts to ascribe to Andrew Tate’s ideologies about suppressing emotions had only led him further to the brink, and how he had engaged his own recovery through therapy. He had recently won a national public speaking competition with a speech about Canada’s mental healthcare system and was going into first year in Psychology at McGill University in Montreal. I knew Nick saw himself speaking to boys and I knew that boys really needed to hear from a young male role model. His initiative and leadership made a mark and I told him I would love to keep percolating on the possible.

A few months later Nick reached out again for feedback about a TEDx McGill talk. He was going back and forth between speaking about motivational mindset or masculinity. I saw a big wide open space for him to become a young male voice about liberating masculinity. His talk about uniting masculinity with mental health was a hit and in the summer of 2024 I welcomed Nick to intern with Love the Skin You’re In. We spent hours cross-pollinating and polishing a talk that he would feel comfortable delivering to young men and in 2025, we embarked to Vancouver on our first tour together. Nick met with a standing ovation at his very first event at his alma mater. Watch his TEDx McGill talk below for a glimpse of this rising star!

Yuli Rodriguez

Sunlight filters through the leaves whispering above us, beyond them, an endless swatch of azure sky as I witness the woman I have watched Yuli Rodriguez become. A single braid falls casually across her shoulder, her dark eyes sparkling beyond lids now lined in coal; a soft pink lip and lovingly applied blush accent her warm, round face, and I exhale witnessing the confidence she exudes as she speaks about the Masters Degree in Public Health she is pursuing while she awaits word from the twenty-five medical schools she has applied to across the country, including Harvard and Stanford. Her chosen path of study illuminates the critical need for diversity in higher education. Who else but Yuli, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrant grandparents and a Dad who arrived on U.S. soil at twenty, would select breastfeeding in Pajaro Valley farmworkers as her focus of study? Her scholastic focus also speaks to the impassioned sovereignty of a young woman raised on a Central California strawberry farm who will soon claim her spot at one of the top medical schools in the United States.

I met Yuli at St. Francis, a Catholic high school in Watsonville, California. 15 at the time, she approached me following the talk expressing an intuitive understanding of the socio-cultural factors influencing female adolescent health and a desire to get involved. We emailed in the months that followed and I was impressed by her excellent communication skills and initiative. Always showing up and participating, she naturally evolved into the director of Love the Skin You’re In’s inaugural youth social media team. We together launched a soft, warm virtual chat where 13 team members got together to discuss the issues of the day while plotting how to engage other young women in our project. The team exchanged 4000 instant messages during our first year together.

On her own, Yuli launched our Instagram platform, immediately securing over 100 followers in a matter of days. While she was doing this, she also piloted our inaugural school club, designed to foster connection and well-being in participants. She did this by giving an address to her entire school about her role with Love the Skin You're In. Half the girls in her high school signed on as members of a mental health club Yuli imagined into being. She then led meetings, wrote and directed a promotional video to attract funding for school club initiatives, demonstrated adaptability and resilience in reaching out to problem solve about issues the club faced, and persisted despite a resounding lack of administrative support. Given her tenacious work ethic, I was not surprised when Yuli was accepted to undergraduate studies in nutritional sciences at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

When I took Yuli out for brunch after a Love the Skin You’re In event she had organized at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I found myself transfixed; the quiet leader I had met as a high school junior four years earlier had metamorphosed into a confident, highly social, self-expressed young woman whose easy laughter was as infectious as the bohemian scarf that held her locks was vibrant. Being a steadfast bookworm had not come at the cost of spending time with her friends. She could already feel life going by too fast and she was not going to miss it. In a living example of finding her voice, she joined the school choir, eventually performing her heart out at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In music, academics, and Yoga, she had discovered a perfect trinity of life balance.

Yuli pursued a Masters in Public Health. She is now at Med school at University of Wisconsin.

Jazmine Heka

Maori teen activist Jazmine Heka founded an initiative called Children Against Poverty in her home of Whangerie. The spark for her campaign ignited when she watched the documentary “Inside Child Poverty.” She contacted director Bryan Bruce with her idea to start a petition then set her small town ablaze with her activism. Jazmine contacted the clerk of the House at parliament and started her petition calling for free healthcare for all children whenever they need it, free healthy school lunches for all children, and a warrant of fitness for all rental houses. She then drew up a Children's Charter and launched the Facebook page Children Against Poverty. Jazmine grew up in a state house in Otangarei in a home that was so damp and cold that she developed respiratory problems. While food was always on her table, many of her friends went without. She was done with a government that wasn’t at the time addressing it. "Twenty-two per cent of kids in New Zealand live in poverty. I find it disgusting, it's not right. We're so rich in food, we have the resources to be able to care for our children. Every child deserves basic needs – food, a safe environment to live in, medical care," she told the New Zealand news outlet Stuff.

In February 2012, I was contacted by National Youth Week New Zealand about Love the Skin You’re In. They wanted to make it their the theme for their nation-wide campaign. A spark fired. I was moved to find a teen activist on the ground to join me. When I discovered Jazmine I was inspired by the fierce light of her activism.. I crowd-sourced funding for the two of us to together travel across New Zealand to address young women. Jazmine was naturally shy, and had to lean into taking up space. I helped her find her footing in a speaking capacity when she took to the stage. We educated young women about the realities of child poverty, especially in New Zealand’s north, collected signatures for her petition from young women across the country, delivered Love the Skin You’re In to hundreds of young women, and became fast friends. We together faced the bumps in the road that come with activism: some schools disallowed her petition on political grounds. We learned how to dust ourselves off and get back out there for the cause. I’ll never forget the pilgrimage of heart we together embarked on.