What is beauty?
On International Women’s Day, March 8, this was the main topic of conversation between female residents at Murrayville’s Sunridge Gardens seniors complex and group of 16 girls from Langley Fundamental Secondary School.
Sunridge Gardens hosted the event to encourage dialogue between residents and high school students about their perception of beauty in their generation.
Started in the 1900s by the Suffragettes, International Women’s Day was first celebrated in 1911, and is now a global movement of advocacy, activism and support.
The Sunridge event was meant to create an opportunity for women from different generations to learn from each other’s experiences, challenge stereotypes, and grow together in self-confidence.
Business owner and cancer survivor Gina Best shared her philosophy on what makes women beautiful, while creating a starting point for small group conversations between seniors and students.
Best told all those attending that “this is your life and your story.”
“On International Women’s Day, we need to change the story,” she said. “We celebrate all shapes, sizes, ages, and colours.”
Grade 12 student Jaida Bardeck visited with resident Kathleen Watson during the event. Bardeck shared with Watson that she learned that beauty doesn’t lie in materialistic things.
“Who you are inside is who you truly are,” Bardeck said.
Watson told Bardeck said when she was a teenager, young people simply didn’t have the money to “keep up with the Joneses.”
troy.landreville@blackpress.ca
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