Dear friend,

We are conditioned to believe that there is only one standard of beauty.

Out now: https://youtu.be/V1mVFDtCjCU.

In my latest interview for the School of Social Justice, I interview Kat Tchernavskikh. Kat is a fashion photographer, former model, product specialist, and co-founder of Shoott, a photography company featured in Elle, People, and Forbes Magazine.

As a child, Kat was discovered by a modelling agent, and was brought into the fashion world. In this interview, she shares her thoughts on how the portrayal of beauty impacts our perceptions of what is good, and what we strive for. She suggests that the media and advertising industries have conditioned us to believe that there is one standard of beauty. Why? Because it sells. (The 2022 global beauty industry market size is £395.7 billion.)

What does she believe - as an employer herself - is one answer to addressing social injustice? Trade unions. Yes, a co-founder of a company suggests that to address economic inequality, employees should organise and use the power of collective bargaining. How refreshing.

I met Kat during a month-long residency in Bermuda, where young leaders from different industries built working relationships with each other and members of local communities. Since then, I have kept in touch with Kat and have been impressed by her intellect and love of culture.

Kat is someone who is a business leader, and also a deep philosophical thinker. Moved by great works of literature and contemporary theatre, her opinions and actions consider the practicalities of entrepreneurship and the ideals we all seek to achieve.

If you are curious to know the link between fashion and social justice, watch this interview. We also discuss how trends change, the pressures caused by social media, product development, fairness in capitalism, the power of entrepreneurs, and what is needed for real lasting change to happen.

My two main lessons from this conversation are that: (i) entrepreneurs have the means to make decisions that can either make society fairer or not; and, (ii) we should be wary of how the visual content we consume sculpts what we think to be beautiful, for what is deemed beautiful is deemed good, and its opposite deemed bad.

The risk of blindly accepting one universal standard of beauty is that we become ashamed of ourselves, of our face, our skin, our body, the way we look, and spend money and time and energy trying to be someone we are not, to impress strangers who do not care for who we are, strangers who are instead concerned about whether or not we comply with what adverts tell us is worthy of attention and praise.

Highlights:
- Did you know that lobsters, a modern-day expensive luxury, were once considered trash?
- Why should we worry about how beauty is portrayed?
- Billionaires like Bezos and Musk could easily help solve social injustices if they redistributed their wealth, and they would still be incredibly rich.
- Every entrepreneur knows that if you are to succeed, you must not be afraid to fail. Risk-taking is part of the business. This can be applied to life outside of startup life too. If there’s an opportunity in front of you, take it.

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Full interview available now:
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/V1mVFDtCjCU
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1qzN53ZeMdQCH9rG25AGN5

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Hope you enjoy the conversation, and learn as much as I did. And I hope that you are able to use the lessons to go on and change the world.

Alvin
Founding Director
schoolofsocialjustice.com