This week Instagram is doing its part to celebrate diversity in fashion with its #RunwayForAll campaign. Each day the company is featuring a different model’s story, each challenging and redefining traditional standards of beauty.
First up was Mama Cax: a Haiti-raised, New York-based model whose fight with bone and lung cancer at the age of 14 resulted in her right leg being amputated. In the post she reflects, “One of the greatest barriers is not belonging. Through modeling I hope to show that beauty does not always wear a size zero and beauty does not always walk on two limbs.”
Mama was followed by the multi-talented Shaun Ross, who opened up about his experience as the first male model with albinism. He wrote, “I remember when I first entered the industry all I saw were models that looked the same.” Continuing, “Now here we are almost 10 years later, and I see the choice I’ve made has helped the industry to see beauty in many ways, such as casting models and rising icons like @winnieharlow, @jilly_peppa and more to help lead the fight with me to diversity.”
This initiative follows recent efforts such as #WhyIMove, that highlighted dancers and athletes around the world and #MyStory, a profile series of inspiring women.
Credits
Text Kasumi Borczyk
Image via @instagram