#bepowerfull

Jessica Oar is an entrepreneur whose business promotes positive body image for female athletes. Oar opened up her own business, Be Powefull, after working in the corporate world of radio for eleven years. Be Powerfull targets working women and mothers to tailor their diets and workouts to best suit their bodies. Oar is an advocate for women’s bodies and promotion of strong beautiful women. Oar stated, “I am very proud to rock big muscles that don’t fit into shirts. It’s just more about your mental power that connects with this physical power that is the most important part, instead of slimming down just to look good.” Oar believes that media has a negative impact on women’s lives by giving them an unrealistic view on what a body should look like.

Because of Oars background in Marketing and Business she understands the needs for media to sell, and sex sells. She is trying to break this model of framing female athletes by shows that it is okay to be strong, while also being feminine. The focus of this project has been the effects of media on female athletes, mainly focusing on the ways in which media frames these athletes, if at all. By discussing real life examples one can understand the different ways film, broadcast media, and social media present female athletes. This interview gives an interesting, inside point of view on how the media’s framing affects female athletes.

  Ashley Fazzino: So lets start off with how did you decide to start your own business?

Jessica Oar: I was working in corporate America for ten plus years, eleven years, and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I then had children and I had a thought one day thinking ‘what’s the point of having children, at least for me, I am not able to spend time with them’. I actually was fired from my last position in corporate America, but it was an opportune time for me to look at if I was really following my true life’s passion. I did a little bit of interception and realized that being active, going back to my athletic side, and showing others how to achieve a level of fitness could be something that I could build a business on. From there I started going on retreats, seminars, and got my certification. I am now two years into owning an online business where I help women to get fit and to learn how to eat for their bodies, yes to get physique goals that they want, but to eat the best that they can and the healthiest they can. I feel like I am making such a difference and I feel like I am making as much, if not more of a difference, than I was in corporate America.

AF: You started to touch on it, but can you explain a little bit more about your business itself. I know you said that you work with women to achieve body goals and feel good about themselves, but what is a typical day of work look like for you?

JO: Sure, so my business is called BePowerfull and it is technically an online brand. The best way to describe it is I am an online blogger and most of my business happens online. I work with women all over the country and the world. I am a hormonal fat loss coach so I help them to understand how their body responds to food so that they can get the results that they are looking for. For some of them it is performance, some is for weight loss. A typical day, I run several online groups through Facebook and social media so I hop into my social media, answer questions, pose questions to get people talking. I then write, I have to set aside some time to dig deep and write about my experience as it relates to nutrition and fitness. Going back a little bit, I start my day by coaching two thirty-minute classes, one at 6am and the other at 9:30am. I am working with women primarily, the 6am group, those are women who are working and are hitting the gym, which is my garage, before they go to work. The 9:30am group is a bunch of moms who bring their children and I have a daycare while the moms come and get their workout in.

AF: Can you describe the type of women that come into your business? I know you said a lot of moms and working women but what are they like? What are their overall motivations to come in and to work out and change their diet?

JO: Many of us have some body issues and we carry those things with us from a very early age. Most of the women that come to me are moms and they lead busy lifestyles, whether they work or not. Being a mom is a full time job as well and most of the women that come in are trying to invite fitness back into their life in a more consistent way. They are coming to me because I offer efficient solutions. My classes are a half an hour, I teach women how to work out intensely for better results so that they can ditch… most of them are coming to me after doing three hours worth of cardio a day and they haven’t been able to get the results that they want. I will have to say that most of them want to slim down and to leaner, and thinner, to shrink their bodies. Most of them are doing so after having children and their bodies have changed a bit.

AF: I just want to back track a little bit here, you were describing how you are doing a lot of online blogging and you are tracking your results as well as what you do with the women who come in, how do you differentiate yourself from all these different blogs. I know recently there has been a lot on social media and the broadcast media about all these people who started a blog to get themselves fit. How would you differentiate yourself from them?

JO: I think I would differentiate myself because I don’t think my story is unlike others, but my story is unique to me. The reason for my blog is that I want to connect with women on the level where I am being completely authentic. It is interesting because I come from a marketing background, I went to school for business and I was a marketing major. Early on I approached my online business in the sense that I need to find the niche that’s not being covered and go after that niche. But really when I dropped that mentality of business first and started to be more authentic about my weaknesses, the times where I restricted my diet just to lose weight and then went off on binges of food I restricted after. That helps women to understand that they are not alone and that their story is not something they need to hide, they don’t need to have that shame. The more authentic I am about me in particular, the more people that come to me and the more people I am able to help. That’s why I think there is this whole revolution of blogs, I am probably not going to appeal to everybody and that’s okay with me. I seriously start everyday doing a little bit of a meditation being like ‘I hope that I am able to reach people who want to hear my message in particular’. Who ever is supposed to hear my message, I want to put as much information out there as possible so that I can help them to not feel alone through their struggles.

AF: Absolutely, so what do you think the role of media is in the women’s lives who come to see you, maybe before, during, or after?

JO: I am connected to a network of…one of the reasons I love what I do is because there is a host of amazing women that are doing what I am doing, speaking their authentic stories and telling the stories that are so powerful. There is this women, Eren Brown, and she is a body love activist, a feminist. There are a lot of us speaking out about the way that media portrays women as sex symbols. Specifically you go through the grocery line and look at the cover models, these models are so far from normal life. So my clients that are walking through the door and have a normal life, children to feed, and all sorts of pressures on them, they don’t have the time or the resources to starve themselves like the women on those covers. Its an unrealistic view of how women’s bodies should actually be. Most of the women who come into my garage are moms and their bodies have shifted and changed to give life and their hips have widened and they probably will never get back to their pre baby body. They can get stronger, but our bodies shift for a specific purpose. I guess the role of media is that they give this unrealistic view for what a women’s body should look like. When women are working with me I think they realize that lift weights number one, won’t make them look bulky and number two, who cares if it does? I am very proud to rock big muscles that don’t fit into shirts and its just more about your mental power that connects with this physical power that is the most important part, instead of slimming down just to look good.

AF: That’s very interesting because part of the project that I am working on right now is looking into media and how they want to frame female athletes. I mean I consider anyone who is working out an athlete and a lot of things that you see are very negative. It’s women should be sexualized, be wearing makeup, and look perfect all the time when in reality that truthfully is not feasible. It is interesting especially when you see it first hand.

JO: Yeah I mean I just came from a photo shoot. I want my online business to look professional and I just came from a photo shoot where I did my makeup and wore jewelry, and did my hair. These are professional images but since most of my business is about my day to day life. People see that in day to day life that I have my hair up, I haven’t washed my hair for three or four days because I am busy, and I am working out in my garage getting gritty but I don’t have a problem with mixing muscles with feminism. Media wants to make it more of the ladder.

AF: Do you feel like you have to put on makeup, and jewelry while taking these photos because that is what is the norm for media now? Is that something that you felt personally want to do?

JO: It is personally what I wanted to do because I am new to my business and getting professional photos done is… I want to look my best. I love the way I look when I do myself up. It is not because I feel like I am going to get more business, it is just because I want to use the tools that I have always have and look my best to take pictures. I think what bothers me about what the media does is the only time it is acceptable for somebody to get photos done without being completely done up is when they are doing a very specific article on bare faces or like a series of famous actresses and look at how pretty they are without makeup on. I find it so much nicer to look through my social media feed and see big powerful women lifting big weights without caring about the way that they look.

AF: Absolutely, now we’ve kind of touched on social media but what is your take on media’s representation of female athletes in film. Do you feel like they are represented or not?

JO: To be honest I can’t think of a specific film to reference but I think what I think about with female athletes in the media… I follow and really appreciate Lindsey Von because I used to race in high school and college but she has received a lot of bad press mostly from female athletes that are her peers in the fact that she has put on a bikini and let media look at her body instead of her performance. I think of people like that, I think of Anna Kournikova, she makes more money from her endorsements than she actually does from her performance. That’s not a knock on her performance but it is the fact that she is a pretty woman with long blonde hair, who fits the ideal for a very attractive women. I think that’s played up, and I were her that would be frustrating to be a tennis player who trains and am focused on more for my looks. I think that is a big challenge.

AF: Absolutely, So when you think about these female athletes you think about real female athletes? Let me explain, the first film that comes to mind is Miracle where they have these male hockey players, the USA team, who are so athletic and work so hard, but you don’t necessarily see that for women. Is that something you see as well or do you feel like female athletes are represented?

JO: That is a good point, just the fact that there aren’t movies about women that have… I honestly can’t think of a movie that is about a female sports team overcoming instrumental odds. I think that what happens are commentators talk down about female athletes. The people that are covered the most prior to the last summer Olympics, I can’t think of her name but she is a pole vaulter and also a Sports Illustrated model. She was covered more than a female track star who was said to get a gold in every match that she was up against. It is less about if someone is at the peak of their performance and unfortunately about who looks good.

AF: Yeah. So I just have one more question for you. Going back a little bit, how would you compare your work with what our media culture says about female athletes?

JO: I think there’s a shift happening. I have this pack of women that I am good friends with from a fitness event. There are a lot of female focus events that are coming to light and I love that there is a lot of women in my line of work, I don’t see it as competition, I see it as we can all be the change together. I actually don’t see myself in combating media, I see myself on the forefront of this pack of women trying to bring strength, power, mental capacity, and confidence to the forefront rather than let women believe that they need to shrink or get smaller to be the ideal or seen as attractive. Two of my friends have to put together a program that’s launching in January and it is called The Bigness Project it is all about getting big and gaining muscle, to do what most women are afraid of, to build muscle. I hope to see tons and tons of people in that program because to me muscle is beautiful. I chose beautiful not sexy because I think trying to have aesthetic goals, there is not a problem with that. I also get so much clarity and mental power from my fitness that I hope I can bring more people along in this new train of thought so that young girls growing up now, I think of my niece. I want her to grow up and know that her body is capable and strong and all she needs to do is focus on how she feels when she is playing her sport, not how she looks.