coventry welsh ladies rugby team bare all in the name of body confidence for young women

Why we stripped for the camera:
Earlier this year, one of our ladies had a conversation with her 11 year old niece. This beautiful 11 year old stated she wanted to loose weight. She is a perfectly happy, healthy young girl who has been influenced by the media into thinking she is not good enough. 

We want to help break this mindset.  We want our young women to know that they are beautiful exactly as they are.

On the day this young woman said out loud that her body wasn’t good enough, we made a pact to show all women the opposite message. We want to show them what real, healthy, badass women look like and to let them know that loving and accepting what you have is king. That day, after our training session, we took a photo of some of our team in sports bras, all sweaty and muddy and REAL. We posted the photo on social media with a heartfelt message to try to inspire confidence in our young ones (the original post is below).

Within 24 hours our post was viral. It currently has 29,000 shares and has reached over 4 million people. This is a testament to how strongly our country feels for changing our young women’s mindsets.

The many messages and comments we received about this post were heartbreaking; Mothers who had lost daughters to suicide because of body image issues, people who had been struggling with eating disorders for years and families that were worried sick for their children - the list goes on. So many people thanked us for making the post, saying they and their young women needed to see it that day.

This made us think, what if they could see it every day? And so the idea for our calendar was born... A team of female rugby players, photographed naked doing what we love doing best; playing rugby!

The funds we raise from the sale of this calendar will be halved between Mental Health UK and our own rugby club.
The half used by our club will go towards much needed improvement of our ladies’ facilities. Hopefully encouraging more ladies to play with us and reap the benefits that rugby has to offer.

The remainder will be donated to Mental Health UK; a charity that helps our young women deal with these issues.