Why Shopping Small Is a Radical Act of Self-Care (and Reclamation)

In a world of two-day shipping and billion-dollar beauty conglomerates, choosing to shop small might seem like a nostalgic or idealistic gesture. But let’s be clear: it’s not just charming. It’s revolutionary.

At Getaway Culture Company, we believe every dollar you spend is an act of alignment—a choice that shapes the kind of world you want to live in. When you shop small, especially from LGBTQ+ and Disabled-owned brands, you're not just buying a product. You're investing in a new way forward.

You're funding liberation.

🛍️ What Happens When Big Beauty Gets Bigger

Major retailers like Ulta and Sephora have made strides in highlighting diverse founders and launching DEI initiatives—and that visibility matters. But behind the scenes, these efforts often still feed a larger economic engine where the bulk of profits ultimately benefit large investors and corporate boards. The structure itself often limits how much truly returns to the communities represented on the shelves.

That doesn’t make those platforms bad—it just makes them part of a system where wealth continues to be centralized at the top.

When you support a small brand directly, especially one founded by someone from a historically marginalized background, you create a direct economic ripple that’s deeply personal and powerfully communal. You’re not just buying “clean beauty.” You’re funding someone’s therapy, someone’s rent, someone’s community mutual aid contribution.

You’re putting money into a system that’s actually designed for care—not just consumption.

🌈 LGBTQ+ and Disabled Entrepreneurs Are Designing a Better Way

When Queer and Disabled folks build beauty and wellness brands, they often do it from lived experience—reimagining what accessibility, pleasure, and inclusion can look like.

They build:

• Products that celebrate real bodies and all forms of gender expression

• Sensory-friendly, ritual-driven experiences that reduce overstimulation

• Offerings rooted in empathy, healing, and interdependence—not shame or urgency

Supporting these businesses goes far beyond aesthetics. It’s a way to help redistribute resources in a way that’s intentional, embodied, and equity-driven.

🧘‍♀️ How This Reflects the Beach Life State of Mind™

The Beach Life State of Mind™ is more than a mood—it’s a movement.

It invites you to:

• Slow down and choose meaningful alignment over impulse buys

• Tune into intuition over trends

• Value ritual and rest over hustle and hustle and hustle

• Say yes to beauty with consciousness, not convenience

When you support small, inclusive brands, you embody this spirit. You get to know exactly who is benefiting from your purchase—and how they’ll turn that support into community reinvestment, safety, and systemic change.

That’s not just self-care. That’s legacy-building.

💖 Getaway Culture: Built to Break the Mold

At Getaway Culture Company, we’re proudly Queer-founded and Neurodivergent-led. Our entire brand was born from the question:

“What would it look like to build a future where self-care is truly liberating—for everyone?”

Every product we create—from the Jetsetter Kit to our Beach Babe merch—is infused with that mission. We don’t just want to sell beauty products. We want to help you escape the burnout, the hustle, and the shame—and come home to yourself.

And we’re not alone. A growing constellation of small businesses is doing the same.

🌅 What You Can Do (That Feels Like Magic)

Here are a few simple, joyful ways to make your purchases more powerful:

• 🌴 Shop small and indie businesses year-round—not just during Pride or Disability Awareness Month

• 🐚 Seek out LGBTQ+ and Disabled-owned brands and learn their stories

• 💌 Subscribe to their emails, leave kind reviews, and share them in your group chats

• 🏖️ Use your social influence to uplift those creating real change

• ✨ Treat your dollars like energy—and cast them toward a more beautiful, inclusive future

  
  

🌊 In the End…

You don’t need a corporation to define what beauty is. You already know.

It’s in the waves. In your breath. In your body and your morning ritual. In the softness of knowing your purchase nourished someone who will turn that energy into more care, more freedom, and more possibility.

This is the Beach Babe era. We’re soft, smart, and sovereign.And we’re not waiting for permission to build something better.

So go ahead: romanticize your ritual. Make your purchase political.And let your self-care ripple outward like waves on the shore.

Truly own your beauty routine,

Hannah Stringfellow

Founder, Owner, & CEO of Getaway Culture Company