Sharon is a seasoned international campaigner in the realms of body autonomy and women’s rights.
Most notably, in 2011, she founded an Argentine-based NGO (AnyBody Argentina) focused on advocacy aimed at eliminating sizeism in a fashion industry that prefers to stock smaller sizes.
AnyBody Argentina was the first to collect data on the consumer experience, and it continues to be the primary source of annual national data in government and media reports. Its results, coupled with years of lobbying, proved instrumental in the passing of national anti-discrimination legislation in 2019 committed to standardizing Argentine sizes, an important first step to ensuring a wide range of sizes is available to all members of the public.
Sharon’s career began in social work in her native Canada, gaining extensive experience working for Canadian non-profits in various capacities. Following her move to Argentina, she channeled her drive to address injustice by publishing articles and essays in both English and Spanish on the topics of bodies, violence against women, and feminism.
Since relocating to Bristol, UK in 2019, Sharon continues to work at the international level in her role as a researcher at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) at the Centre for Appearance Research. As a Research Associate, she forms part of a team dedicated to the development and quantitative evaluation of tools intended to improve body image in young people, primarily in Indonesia and the United States.
Most recently, Sharon has secured funding for a mixed-method study she is leading in collaboration with researchers from the University of Buenos Aires investigating the relationship between clothing size availability and body image among Argentine adolescents.