Redefining Beauty and Self Worth with Bridgett Burrick Brown

In this empowering interview, we sit down with Bridgett Burrick Brown, the fearless founder of the Beyond Beauty Project. As a former model and advocate, Bridgett is on a mission to revolutionize the way we perceive beauty, body image, and mental health. Join us as she shares her two-decade journey in the modeling industry, highlighting the need for self-acceptance and confidence from the inside out. Bridgett's wisdom and experience shed light on breaking free from societal standards and embracing our unique beauty.

Amy Cohen Epstein: Today, I am really excited to interview Bridget Burrick Brown, who is the founder of The Beyond Beauty Project.

I'm really excited. Everything you do is very near and dear to my heart. And your life story is so interesting, and clearly you've seen the depths of darkness and become such an incredibly positive person and spokeswoman. You're from outside of Detroit. You're from Michigan. You were discovered as a model... So just sort of start from the beginning.

Bridget Burrick Brown: Well, thank you for having me first of all. I'm very excited to chat with you today. So I actually didn't get discovered. My mom was really sick growing up, so my dad was the primary income for our household. I have four other siblings and he was working like 70 hours a week. So when I went to college, I was helping pay for my college. I somehow got a job as a secretary at Big Boy headquarters to the Vice President of Purchasing. Didn't know how to type, but got that job. So I was working full-time. It was the first time I was really making money and growing up people would say like, you should model, you should model. And I had no interest in it.

It was the first time that I really got the feeling of what it felt like to make money. And I had remembered, oh, you know, my dance teacher and people would tell me like, you should model the thought made me super uncomfortable. I never wanted to do it, but I was like, well, maybe I could just make like an extra a hundred dollars a month modeling. You know, why not try? So I found the best photographer in town. I met him, we took photos, and he was like, you could do this. You could travel. We should send your pictures out. So I'm working at Big Boy headquarters as a secretary. We send out all these packages, like handwritten letters with pictures like all over the world. And I remember I came back in on a Monday and my boss just handed me a stack of faxes. And he was like, so I guess you're not going to be working here much longer. I had faxes from Australia, Paris, New York, everywhere. And the next thing I knew I was on a plane and my life changed.

Amy Cohen Epstein: And why were you hesitant to go down that road? Like what made you at, how old were you at this point?

I was 19 when I started, but I think the hesitation came from my personality. I can be very outgoing, but I'm actually an introvert. And I don't know, I think there was this subconscious part of me that didn't like the judgment about the way I looked.

Yeah, definitely. So then you were a professional model traveling the world and booking print, runway, everything...

Bridget Burrick Brown: I was never as thin as I needed to be for runway. But I, I had a very good career in print. So when I was younger I was doing Australian Vogue and Korean Vogue. And then as I got a little bit more mature, I was doing a lot of Land's End and more lifestyle kind of catalogs. So, yeah, I mean, I had a great career. I'm super grateful for my modeling career. I have wonderful friends and it gave me this life I would've never had otherwise. And also it did lead me to where I am now fighting harmful beauty ideals.

I definitely learned beauty is more than skin deep. I think that was a common theme throughout my career. I would sort of go in and out of really enjoying it because, you know, as soon as you're told, "Oh, you need to lose weight" or "You need to cut your hair, something's not perfect about you." It's like, I always had this feeling of like, "No." I was always a bit of a rebel about it. It always irritated me maybe more than some of the other girls.

Amy Cohen Epstein: I feel like it's so much more intense now, not just for women who are modeling, but just in general... In this day and age, with every single thing our kids, young people, and grownups do, is so focused on putting this perfect image out into the world. [For example] airbrushing your own photos. I grew up when Polaroids were a really big deal... Then you got all your pictures and you realize half of them were terrible — like basically of someone's foot — and you were upset because you spend 15 bucks on the film and getting it developed. But there was no absolutely no like, "oh, I'm going to fix it." <laugh> You know, "I'm going to fix..."

Bridget Burrick Brown: My face.

Amy Cohen Epstein: And now it's, it's so prevalent. And that coupled with the amount of makeup that young women and men wear actually is unbelievable. I was talking about this with a friend of mine whose daughter is 17... I mean, she's a stunning young teenage girl with perfect skin, and the idea that she's putting all this on her face is just bananas to me and her own mom, but it's what they do. And so I feel like what you're talking about is so relevant and so important... Now, I feel like it's just, you know, a volcano of, of disconnect between outer and inner beauty. I mean, how do you talk about it and how do you talk about it to young women and get that message across?

Bridget Burrick Brown: Yeah. When I started modeling, it was interesting because we had the Polaroids and we had the film and you had to make the picture perfect in the Polaroid before you started using film because you couldn't retouch. And then I remember when retouching came in, they would swap our legs. It was wild!

I get asked a lot. "Do you think, you know, the body diversity movement or the body positivity movements are helping?" And I think that they are in the way that young girls are seeing themselves in advertising more. So if there's a black girl or a girl in a bigger body, she's able to see herself represented in media, which is great.

“Kids, even parents, and moms are retouching their photos and they're advertising themselves around to their networks. So every time you get an image you're thinking, wow, you know, my friend's skin is perfect. Oh wow, she looks so thin. My skin's not perfect. I'm not that thin.”

The problem is, I almost think we're going in this other direction and it's getting really bad because not only are advertisers retouching [but] kids are retouching their own images [also]. Kids, even parents, and moms are retouching their photos and they're advertising themselves around to their networks. So every time you get an image you're thinking, wow, you know, my friend's skin is perfect. Oh wow, she looks so thin. My skin's not perfect. I'm not that thin. So I think one of the things we can start doing is we all have to collectively think of the messaging we're putting out there. I think there's a huge responsibility on people that have power or are in a position of influence, like beauty brands, fashion brands, influencers, celebrities, et cetera. But I also think that we have a lot of influence over the people in our lives.

...So that's where I think the issue is now. We have all these tools to either retouch the images or actually retouch our face and actually change it.... So I do a lot of workshops with teens and preteens and I'll put up an image that's not retouched and then a retouched image.

You know, the messaging that goes out to these girls all the time is, you can be better, you can be more perfect, you can be better. You should have flawless skin, you should have no cellulite.

We can continue to do little things at home to [combat] those messages, but then also [need to] ask the beauty brands like, please, please start showing reality because it's really harming our youth. It's harming all of us... The eating disorder rates are going up. Mental health is going in the tank.

That's one of the reasons why I walked away from the modeling industry when I did, because I had gone through this really kind of rock bottom in my life. I had lost my mom, my dad, my brother, a best friend, all within two years. It was just, and it was all really horrific deaths, really.

I was six months pregnant with my daughter at my dad's funeral. He was the final one to pass. And then I had a series of miscarriages. And before I had my daughter, I was at the height of my commercial modeling career and my final miscarriage was twins at five and a half months. And I was broken. I mean, I was suicidal. I was not okay on any level. I lost everything.

You know, I felt like I lost my mental health, my family, my body. I was like, if I can just get my career back, I'll just get my career back and then I'm going to be okay. You know?

I say this story a lot and I feel bad 'cause I know people in the industry are just like sort of doing their job and they're really like in it, they're in it, you know?

“I influence my daughter. I influence my nieces that see me in advertisements. I'm not going to shrink myself.”

But I went to my agency, which was Ford Models at the time. I'm 41, 42. And they, the first thing they said was like, "you have to lose weight." And I wasn't big. And I just thought, "no." I am a person of influence. I influence my daughter. I influence my nieces that see me in advertisements. I'm not going to shrink myself. I'm not going to say when I'm smaller than I'm worthy. And I'm like, I know that I'm not somebody big. I'm not a supermodel. I'm not somebody that everybody knows, but I can be one person out of many that starts to say no.

I'm allowed to age. I'm allowed to be exactly who I am in this body right now, and I'm beautiful just the way I am. I think it starts with the messaging at home. It starts with educating our children about the media. It's those influencers that have the guts to say, this is what I actually look like. This is what I look like without all the makeup, the retouching, the filtering, and I'm great. I'm good just the way I am....

Amy Cohen Epstein: Yeah. I mean, I think it starts at home. …It's important for us to be body positive and to recognize that everyone comes in different shapes, colors, and sizes, but also recognize what it means to be healthy. That’s a tricky thing to define. And our society's doing a poor job of it right now. So, do you address that with young people that you talk to? What does being healthy mean?

Bridget Burrick Brown: I think that that's maybe relative... I think being healthy is feeling good. So how do I feel the best? I feel the best when I'm not too restrictive. I feel the best when I give myself a lot of vegetables and water and hydration. I need a lot of sleep. I need a sweaty workout. I need some easier workouts. So I think it's very personal to each person. And I think that we live in a society that has taught us to look at ourselves either through the mirror— weight on a scale, or our image on a phone. We need to get back inside and really get in tune with, how am I feeling.

What does my body need? Do I need to just walk outside and walk barefoot in the grass for a second to calm my nervous system? We're so far away from that. We're sort of like, fake being healthy. Like, ‘Let me go do a SoulCycle and then let me get my green juice.’ Are you healthy? I don't know. You can look at someone and think, ‘Oh, they're so thin.’ That’s what society tells me is healthy. But are they? What's their mental health like? I think it's looking at your mind, body, and spirit. Together. How is everything feeling? That would be my definition of healthy….

Amy Cohen Epstein: I have one last question to ask you. You touched on it a little bit and if you don't want to go into it in a lot of depth. How did you deal with and then get through that intense trauma that you experienced in your life when you had so much horrible loss during that span of, I guess one to two years, you said?

Bridget Burrick Brown: I think that I got through it because I had my daughter. I had to get up and I had to be okay for somebody. And I have a wonderful husband. I call both of them my angels a lot.… I went to a psychiatrist. I saw my therapist regularly. I went to a naturopath. I did all the things that I am lucky I have the resources to do. And I think that there was a moment — I'm not sure what triggered it —where I was like, okay, I'm going to live. But if I'm going to live, how am I going to live?

Like, how do you want to live Bridget? Like what do you want to do? What do you want to feel like? What do you want to do with the rest of your life?

…I think I just slowly, slowly got help. I went into a sort of trauma menopause, like early menopause just from like the trauma that happened from losing the twins so late. So I had a lot to sort out. Like when I finally got my results back from my naturopath, she was like, ‘Woah, how are you even surviving?’ I'm like, ‘Well, I barely am but <laugh>, I'm here.’

So, I think I was always sort of resourceful. I tried to be resourceful. Like I maybe didn't want to do the thing, but I knew I needed to call the psychiatrist or I knew I needed to go to the doctor. So I just would take one step in front of the other and keep going. I think what I learned from all of it is I think that we're so lucky to have our bodies.

… I think our bodies are, as Dr. Katie and Lexi Kite say, they're our instruments, right? And it's like we have these bodies to, you know, spend time with our family members. So I think it's taught me to also slow down a little bit. And believe me, it's a constant battle to slow down and really appreciate my health and take care of it.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length