We at Annmarie Skin Care are mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, just like you. Beyond empowering people to choose natural products that support your health and the health of your family, we want to promote a better world. That means taking care of the planet and all people, regardless of where they come from or how they identify.
Sometimes, it even means stepping aside as a company to hear from individuals on the causes that move them. A few members of our team and one of our gorgeous models, DeeAnn, have been proudly celebrating Pride this year and we wanted to amplify their voices and share their thoughts on what this global event (and ongoing effort) means to their sense of self and the world.
What Pride Means from our Team
KATIE
To me pride means really truly loving yourself and dismissing all of the hate that is often pointed at LGBQT people. Pride month is a time to come together as a nation and celebrate people for the love that they have and give to the world, while also celebrating the excitement of being true to yourself! I also really like this Obama quote for this year's pride month. 🙂 “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”
– Barack Obama
RACHEL D
I strongly believe that love is beautiful in all forms. Pride month is a time to come together and celebrate in unison. Celebrating living our lives with authencity and integrity, love and passion, being true to one's self. My favorite quote: “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.”–Harvey Fierstein
ANDREA
Pride means to me, is to continue to support any person to live free and as open as they would like without fear of judgment. I share Pride by empowering those who cannot live free, with love, compassion, and not allowing for silence when things need to be shared. My goal is to help people feel safe and supported, both personally and professionally.
KARL
As a queer person I have a bit of trouble talking about Pride right now and what it means to me in the wake of recent events and a huge surge of support and energy being directed towards the BLM movement and subsequent protests in our country. I want to make sure that this is not something that is pushed to the side or overshadowed. The queer community has always struggled with intersectionality especially in regards to non-gender binary folk and POC. We have lived under administrations that threaten the rights of trans folk (among others) on a ongoing basis and where police are killing POC without penalty. While these are in no way new issues, I feel now more than ever that we are in a war for equality and human rights on so many fronts and have reached a breaking point. For many, Pride has historically been a moment of respite from the day to day struggle of having to carve out a place for ourselves in the world, from having to find community and family to replace our own, from having our accomplishments be erased from history, from being defined by stereotypes, from having our art stolen and appropriated, from being threatened and feeling unsafe to be who we are, and from having to fight daily for equality. So this Pride, my focus is on reminding myself that the idea of singular or incremental progress is a political tool used to repress actual change. If you don’t support all oppressed people, you are not an ally to any.
SARAH
Pride to me means, inclusivity. Its also about being yourself, unapologetically, and not being judged for it. When we celebrate Pride we are celebrating and commemorating every other LGBTQA+ person who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this cause. We are celebrating the fact that we can now live as who we were truly meant to be in a society where we so desperately want to be accepted. Pride IS love and acceptance.
DEEANN
When I finally came out, it was such a relief! To finally be honest about who I was, to be authentic in a way that I never had been before. It has been 30 years Since I stood in my identity as a lesbian. The changes that I have seen in my lifetime are profound. I was a child when the Stonewall Uprising was happening, and within my lifetime I have seen visibility and our legal rights grow so that I now have the legal right to marry, and trans rights – thank you US Supreme Court – are finally being included in a powerful way.
It is amazing to me what has been accomplished through activism, through honesty, through profound courage and through a deep deep commitment to a higher understanding of love and compassion – of inclusivity. I am proud to be out. I am proud to be married to a beautiful amazing woman who is my wife. I am proud of the hard fought rights that LGBTQI have won through our willingness to stand up and be heard.
LEAH
Thinking back to the origins of Pride (with the Stonewall Uprising), at the core it was a group of people who stood up for what they believed in. Their actions have had an impact for generations to come. To me, Pride means not staying silent in the face of adversity, and believing everyone should receive equal rights. It is times like these that make me think of a quote by Desmond Tutu “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
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