In April 2015 TV presenter and ex-singer Jamelia commented that she thought the high street should only stock sizes 6 to 20. Anyone outside of this should be considered extreme, made to feel uncomfortable and only able to stock in specialist stores. I, of course, disagreed.
Over the course of a few blog posts, #WeAreTheThey was born. I explain here that it was about putting a face to the ‘they’. I felt it was/is too easy to talk about a group of people in that way, when you don’t really know who they are! I wanted to show that those under a size 6 and over a size 20 are real people with families, friends, jobs, lives etc.
Dear Jamelia (an open letter) and We Are The They (inital post)
What Happened Next?
It became a much bigger story that Jamelia and now is the chance to stand up to anyone who makes sweeping statements about groups of people. Over the first few days of #WeAreTheThey the tag was used over 8000 times. We appeared in The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Metro, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Plus Size Model Magazine, The Huffington Post and so many more. We were on the radio and brands such as Boohoo and Oxfam began to use the tag on Twitter to boost their social media presence. The response was phenomenal and I literally would not ask for better.
This page should have links to everything that you need to know regarding #WeAreTheThey but if you want to know more then please get in touch. I am very keen to see the campaign grow so if you have any ideas, collaboration suggests etc then please do get in touch!