In appearances-obsessed Los Angeles, young women gathered at Fred Segal boutiques in both Santa Monica and West Hollywood to celebrate inner beauty, self-confidence, and a healthy body image.
The zerominusplus boutique in Fred Segal Santa Monica hosted what felt like a family barbecue as fans mingled with Katherine Schwarzenegger and her family and friends, who had shown up to support the new author and her book Rock What You've Got: Secrets to Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who's Been There and Back. Schwarzenegger, a communications major at USC, grew up in Los Angeles. She says that it was living in the city of angels that inspired her to write this book for tween and teen girls:
People are much more body-image conscious of themselves and they dress up more, and you see the pressures that the media puts on young girls much more up-front here than you do see in other places. You see the way girls struggle here to fit in, and to be a different person, and fit in with the norm of what society considers 'beauty.'
Maria Shriver admitted that she never thought her daughter would be publishing a book while she was still in college. "I'm so proud of her, proud that she had this idea, proud that she wanted to reach out to young women, and saw an opening and went after it. So I think it's great. I hope it will help so many young girls."
Rock What You've Got & Live Like A Hot Chick
At a Fred Segal across town in West Hollywood, authors Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent were celebrating the recent release of their third book together, Live Like A Hot Chick.
Live Like A Hot Chick follows the pair's first two books, How to Eat Like a Hot Chick and How to Love Like a Hot Chick. While the title may be misleading, Jodi Lipper emphasizes that the term "hot chick" means "being confident, empowered, and knowing what you want and not being afraid to go after it. For us, it's really not about looking a certain way or adhering to the beauty standards that we see in the magazines. It's inner confidence and that inner beauty that makes you a hot chick."
As with Katherine, living in Los Angeles also deeply influenced the pair's decision to write a book for young women. Jodi explains,
the first book, How To Eat Like A Hot Chick, is all based on experiences that Cerina and I both went through being young women in LA, trying to work our way up career ladders, and feeling insecure and unsure of themselves--just like all women do. Living in LA really accentuates that. There's so much focus on the physical, being perfect, and looking a certain way that if you don't look that way, it's very easy to become insecure. So Cerina and I, when we met, actually helped each other through that, and helped each other realize that we were wasting time feeling bad about ourselves and our bodies and the way we looked. That actually sparked the idea for the first book... we redefined the term 'hot chick' for ourselves and wanted to share that attitude with women everywhere.
Although the book is written for an older audience (in addition to sections on workplace pitfalls, there's also advice like trying a brazilian bikini wax to get yourself out of a rut), it shares the same root message as Rock What You've Got: be yourself, love your body, stay healthy, treasure your inner beauty, and relax.