Sian Bitner-Kearney: Empowering Women and Girls With Rock Your Beauty

 

Sian Bitner-Kearney is her mother’s daughter. On a brilliant sunny morning during Mother’s Day weekend, the founder and Executive Director of Rock Your Beauty welcomed me into her Northern Cincinnati home with fruit, muffins, and a warm, friendly smile. We sat in her well-appointed, cozy living room to chat and learn more about the nonprofit and its mission to empower women and girls in Greater Cincinnati.

As it celebrates its first year of nonprofit status, Rock Your Beauty (RYB) remains steadfast in the mission to “...be a catalyst for change, inspiring women to embrace their unique beauty and empowering them to realize their full potential.”

Our discussion started with a look back at the origins of RYB.

Interview by Dawn Bundman. 
Photography by Stacy Wegley.

Sian, I wanted to congratulate you on the first-year anniversary of Rock Your Beauty having nonprofit status. Can you give me a recap of how you started?

It started when I was at Kroger. It was 2021, and we were coming out of COVID. I was a part of a couple of different ERGs (Employee Resource Groups), one being the Women’s ERG. They were looking for some kind of event that would get people to come out of their houses and actually be excited. So I had the idea of Rock Your Beauty for decades. 

Anytime I would talk about it, people would say, “Oh, that’s adorable, but that’s not going to happen because fashion and inclusivity, body inclusivity in particular, are not things that go together.”

I pitched it to the Women’s ERG, and they’re like, “Sounds interesting, we’re not really sure what you’re doing with this, but we have a $1,500 budget. If you can do it for that, go for it.”

So I did. The first year, we had 150 people show up. We had 23 models. We had six different women-owned businesses as vendors.

I thought, “Okay, I did it. Like cool. This is awesome. You know, check that off the bucket list.” 

Then I had leadership from Kroger come and say, “This is fantastic. You have to do it next year, too, but we’re going to give you a bigger budget and it’s got to be bigger.”

It continued to grow from there. Then in 2023, I left Kroger, and the question became, “What’s going to happen to Rock Your Beauty?” 

I talked to leadership and they were like, “We will continue to be sponsors. We will financially support you.” 

So when I left, I took it with me. And then the question was, “Well, what else could it be?” 

I would always have women come up to me after the show and they would say things like, “My daughter has had an eating disorder her whole life. She came to your show, and she finally sees herself represented on the stage. And at this event, she feels really good about herself.”

I have women who cry and say, “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve just had an awful week or an awful month. And this was the thing that I needed to get through.”

I thought to myself, “If we can do this much with a 45-minute fashion show, what else can we do?” 

But in order to do extra things, it had to become a nonprofit. So I took it all over, and it became a nonprofit in May [of 2024].

Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the things you’ve added?

Our tagline is “Empowering women through connection, education, and community.”

The Fashion Show remains our signature event, but we have added “Girls’ Night Out,” which we do monthly. Those are part education and part network.

We've had things like makeup tutorials for enhancing natural beauty; we had the SHE+ Foundation come out last month and talk about women’s sexual health. And this month we have the Happy Hormone Cottage. She’s going to talk about menopause and perimenopause. Yes, we’re all there. [laughing] 

The first 45 minutes are usually some kind of educational talk. Then afterward, you can grab a drink and some food. Let’s hang out, let’s network, let’s talk. It’s 25 people or less – very small, very intimate. So people feel comfortable in those discussions.

Then we’ve had some other events, we call them “fun” fundraising events. We had “Bellinis and Belly Dancing,” which was a fundraiser, where we had a lady come out and teach a belly dancing class.

We’ve got some workshops, too. We’ve got one coming up on August 23 with Dr. Pankhuri Aggarwal. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology at UC. She and I are partnering on what we call our official “Rock Your Beauty Workshop.” Those tickets will go live in July.    

It’s all about diving into where those negative thoughts come from. How do you process them? How do you talk to yourself differently? How do you get out of negative relationships that are continuing to feed insecurities? So that’s another piece of it, too. 

We also have two scholarships that we introduced at our Fashion Show. 

Let’s talk a little bit more about the scholarships because that’s exciting!

They’re for anyone who is pursuing a degree or a certification of any type, in either fashion or mental health. There’s no age requirement for it. It could also be a specific certification. 

During the application process, we ask all of the applicants to tell us what they’re going to do with it. How are they going to make an impact on the world? How is what they’re doing in their life aligning with what we’re doing at RYB? 

Again, there are two scholarships. They are $3,000 each. The person who receives the mental health [scholarship] has an opportunity to work with us on some workshops in 2026, and the recipient of the fashion [scholarship] has an opportunity to design some of the clothing for the Fashion Show if they wish. 

You’ve said that emotional well-being and mental health are important to RYB. Can you tell me how you came to focus on the mental health piece?

Mental health has always been a part of Rock Your Beauty because the way that fashion has historically impacted us as women has really been negative on our mental health. The origin of RYB began for me in the ‘90s. 

I wanted to be a model and an actress, and at every single agency that I went to, I heard, “You're not tall enough. You're too fat. You're not pretty enough. We don't like your hair. Your freckles are horrible. Change your nose. You need lip filler.” 

I mean, it was about a year and a half of just a total breakdown in confidence. At the same time, I had friends who weren't trying to get into the modeling business, but we would go out on a Friday night. And it was, “I hate my thighs,” you know, “These jeans don't fit me. Look at my stomach.” 

And for years, I would listen to myself and my friends go through this horrible self-talk. Then I would watch all of us, myself included, get involved in these relationships with men who sometimes treated us poorly. We allowed it because we didn't think that we were enough. 

I started to think, “What if fashion, instead of just making you feel awful about yourself, instead of making you look in the mirror and create a longer list of all the things that you need to change, what if it could celebrate you and make you feel good in your own skin?” And so that's always been a piece of it.

That's why, when we do the RYB show, there's no casting. It's, “Hey, this is what we're doing. Do you want to be a part of it?” We cap it out at how many models we can take based on who we've got volunteering on the committee, but it doesn't matter. 

You don't have to audition. You send in a picture only so that we can match you up for your profile, but we don't do any casting or anything like that. Its whole purpose is for any woman of any age or race or body type or background to be able to come in and just celebrate themselves exactly as they are. That's a big piece of it for us. 

What's your favorite part of Rock Your Beauty? 

My favorite part is probably the Fashion Show. 

The thing that I think people love about our show is that it's not this typical, very stiff, come out, hit your pose, get off the stage type of show. We factor in 10 extra songs, and we tell the models, “This is your moment. If you want to take 30 seconds and get off the stage, cool. If you want to take 10 minutes and do a full dance and take up two songs, this is your moment.”

It's really amazing to watch some of these women who I'll see when we have some connection events, or I'll see them at rehearsal and they're nervous.  

And then they get out there and the music is on, the lights are going, and the crowd is just screaming. People are up in their seats the whole time. And all of a sudden, you just see this transformation of them becoming this beautiful, confident person. 

As an example, my nephew’s fiancée decided to be in it. She's very, very shy and at rehearsal she's just standing with her shoulders in. 

She said, “I don't know what to do,” and just walked across the stage.

 And I'm like, “Andrea, honey, just do it. Be you.” 

At the Fashion Show, she came out on stage, her hair in a clip. She comes out, takes the clip out, and throws it to the side. 

Then my nephew's texting. He says, ‘What did you do to her? Because I've never seen this person before.” [laughter]  

So that's a really beautiful thing to see. And during rehearsal, which is three hours long, all the women are cheering you on the whole time. They're down there in the dressing rooms. They're helping each other out. They're telling each other they're beautiful. 

Even during the show, I’m watching the crowd's reactions. It's watching women come together, which, growing up in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, wasn't a thing. Women were the enemy. That's how I grew up. Women were your competition. They were your enemy.

I think that we're creating a community where women feel safe and supported. They want to be there for each other. It doesn't feel like a competition. It feels like you can all be in the same space and take that space up authentically.   

For challenging times when you're grinding, how do you stay inspired and creative? 

It always comes from something unexpected. So, I would say I have moments where I will sit there and I'll think, “I don't know how long I can keep this up.” 

Because I have a full-time job, which is a full, full-time job. I've got a family. At one point, I was doing about 90 hours a week between Rock Your Beauty and my job. 

I'll have these moments where I'll just think, “I don't know if I can continue to do it. I don't know how to build on this.” 

And you have all that kind of buildup that says you can't do it. And then every single time something happens: The last time it was you [Women of Cincy]. 

I was sitting there and saying to my husband, “I just don't know. I don't know if anyone cares.” I'm scrolling through my phone, and you sent the [interview query] email, and things like that continue to happen. 

What keeps me inspired and creative is every time I start to think, “OK, maybe I just can't do this anymore,” someone reaches out and says it's important. 

And then it pulls me back and says, “OK, just get it together. You're fine. Just keep moving forward.” 

I’d like to ask about an influential woman in your life. Who is it, and how has she impacted you?

It would be my mother. Aside from the fact that she makes sure that I have food for people all the time. [laughter] You know, she was a stay-at-home mom and was just incredibly strong through everything. 

Whether it was hard times or dealing with her own parents and their illnesses, she was always incredibly strong. She would never let me doubt myself. Any time that I would think, “Oh, I can't do this,” she would be right there to say, “Yes, you absolutely can do it. And actually, you're going to go and do it. You're not going to sit here. You're going to go and do it.”

I think my mom just really let me be whoever I wanted to be while constantly keeping me on this path of trying to improve myself, respect myself, and do good. That's the one thing I really can say about my mom. She has spent her whole life doing good. 

She volunteered from the time I was very small. Even though there were only four of us, she raised 11 kids in total because we had cousins and friends who would stay with us. 

She was always in the community doing things. Today, she would literally give her shirt off her back for anyone. That was a big example to me, which is where the quote of, “If it's not impactful, it's not worth doing” [came from] because when she would do stuff, that was kind of how she approached it. I have this much time in my day and I'm going to focus on things that are going to make a difference. And so I think that's how she inspired me to move forward with this. 

How can like-minded girls, women, and companies get involved?  

Women and girls can be a part of it by attending the show and coming to the events. They can be volunteers. We welcome bloggers. If you're a writer, we welcome guests to blog for us. I have a podcast that I do. We've only gotten about eight episodes out so far, but they can be a member or a guest on the podcast. 

Companies, we invite them to sponsor. We invite them to come and speak at the events, to be a part of the events, or to be a vendor. If it makes sense, and aligns with our mission and what we're trying to do for women, we can work together and find a way to collaborate.

To learn more about Rock Your Beauty, go to their website. www.rockyourbeauty.org

You can also follow them on social media:

Outreach + Advocacy, Health + Wellness, FeaturesDawn BundmanFeatures