Our mission: when tricky taboos meet girl power!

Go Against The Flow started as a pelvic health awareness initiative, and has become a girl power movement, aimed at celebrating difference and tackling taboos.

More than 1 in 10 young women experiences bladder leakage (incontinence). It’s that heart-sinking feeling you get when you laugh, sneeze, cough, or you’re waiting in line for the loo… and your bladder decides it hates you, your pelvic floor throws in the towel and your legs just can’t twist up tight enough. It’s the moment you pee a little (or a lot), even though you’re making every effort possible to hold it in.

Incontinence is something we talk about a lot in Australia — if we’re new mums or senior citizens. It’s not something we talk about much if we’re young women, because no one really tells us it’s even a thing until we’re older maybe!? And because no one tells us it’s a thing, the more than 1 in 10 of us who have to deal with it every day, deals with it in silence, feeling embarrassed, stressed and like we’re complete weirdos!

What do incontinence and girl power have to do with ‘Go Against The Flow’?

For so long now, young women all over the world have had these things we have to deal with silently, that just make us feel totally alone and like we are broken or different. Well, no more!

Go Against the Flow is about education, awareness, support, sisterhood — it’s about empowering us to build a community where we can talk about the ‘below the belt’ issues we experience, starting with incontinence.

Like many women’s issues, there is something that can be done to treat incontinence and pelvic health issues. There is a way you can watch Rebel Wilson or Adam Levine movies with the comfort of knowing your seat will be dry when the credits start rolling. That no matter how many tears stream down your face, none will stream down your leg. There’s also a way to prevent incontinence so you never even have to worry about it in the first place!!

GATF was started with one main goal – to let young women know about incontinence; that it does happen, but it doesn’t have to.

From that one idea, we realised incontinence isn’t the only girl issue we don’t talk about. Whether it’s weird period stuff, smells or even shape, through to obscure careers or certain relationship issues, as young women, we tend to talk to our friends about a lot of things, then bottle up other stuff that is SO important!

Knowing this about ourselves helped us grow Go Against The Flow from a simple idea into so much more. It helped us really focus on what young women can do when we support each other and work together – girl power!

The girl empowerment movement

In exploring why we don’t talk about incontinence and other girls’ issues, we acknowledged in part, it’s because as young women, we sometimes aren’t all that supportive of each other. We judge, we eye-roll, we ignore, and we help to create some of the taboo around really important areas we should be discussing.

And we realised, if we support each other more; if we build each other up, listen to each other, share and celebrate difference, we can become something truly powerful.

The Go Against The Flow movement is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a movement designed to change our direction, how we view things, to encourage us to fight against the norms that have held us down, and to build each other up, so we all feel more positive and better about ourselves.

GATF is centred on incontinence, but some of its other important aims include:

• Encouraging young women to talk about taboo issues, especially health issues
• Motivating young women to support each other
• Creating a positive world for young women to be the best they can be
• Helping girls realise we truly are all different and that’s more than ok, it’s great!
• Building opportunities for young women to share and express themselves
• Promoting new and ‘out of the box’ thinking – no more of this ‘I can’t’ and all of this ‘I can’!

How can you Go Against the Flow?

Being part of this girl power movement is as simple as:

• Trying to be more positive about yourself and other young women
• Pulling back on the self judgement and judgement of others
• Encouraging friends to talk about health and other taboo issues
• Trying new things you may have thought you couldn’t do, or ‘aren’t for girls’
• Kicking off a regular pelvic floor muscle exercise routine – lift, squeeze and relax!

You can also help the Go Against the Flow movement by getting involved in our social media pages and forums, sharing your own stories and experiences, and offering your advice when our other community members are looking for input.