Profile: Where users can view their account information, and receive the workshop’s notifications.
Articles: Where users can find reliable information and advice about new mothers life and health.
Community: Where users can communicate with each other by posting stories, questions, and polls.
Counseling center: Where users can communicate with counselors regarding their physical, mental, or social
concerns as new mothers.
-
The project display at College of Design
-
Rewaa's Design Statement.
Body shaming is a social problem that means criticising people for what they look like. Most people, especially women deal with it at least sometime during their lives. In Saudi Arabia, many women suffer from body shaming at their mid-life years, they go through body changes due to pregnancy, ageing and other health issues that leave visible impacts on their outer shape. Many women get body shamed because of those changes, and many women judge themselves and suffer from low self-esteem and other psychological problems because of that.
Pregnancy and it’s effects on body shape play a large role in body shaming of women in Saudi Arabia, and it can leave women with many problems such as low self-esteem, social anxiety, and postpartum depression. Focusing on raising body positivity and self-esteem among new mothers can help lower the affects of body shaming women after giving birth. It is hard to stop people from criticizing women and negatively commenting on them, but it it helpful to create a system that would help women raise their self-esteem to make them stop judging themselves, and minimize the effects of other people’s judgments.
This proposal is to brand a socially responsible center called “Rewaa”, the center provides a system that aims to raise body positivity and raise self-esteem by creating a positive women community for new mothers to engage in and get professional advices and counseling that they need regarding their physical and mental health postpartum. The center is to be located in a private hospital in Dammam, and the services are free. The system is made of 3 steps: first, a free gift that is given to mothers the day after delivery while their stay at the hospital, it contains products that insure women’s mental and physical comfort such as a neck pillow, relaxing bath salt, a water bottle, and a mirror with positive notes on it. The second step is an App that provides: A social board for women to share their positive motherhood stories, articles with information about women’s bodies postpartum and how to care for them, and a counseling section where users can send have live chats anonymously with a counselor. Finally, Workshops that are held at the center’s location for women to attend once a month (6 months postpartum to 12 months postpartum). They contain activities to help woman embrace themselves, share their thoughts and stories, and build a positive mindset, as well as having counselors present to help women that need special counseling.
In the end, it is impossible to control how the society acts towards people. Body shaming will most probably always be a present social problem, however, the hardest judgments are the one’s that come from beloved people, and most intensely, the judgments that come from the women toward herself. Rewaa Center is a practical help provider for women to raise their self-esteem, but the change has to come from within.
Thank you.
