In a world where “beauty is everything,” sometimes social media ends up making us feel like we’re not. We see image after image of the perfect hair, bodies, and Instagramable lifestyle. These curated and edited feeds make us desire the unobtainable. It doesn’t always have to be that way though; there are people and places that show us that in our own skin, we are beautiful and powerful.
For me, one particular writer and fashion blogger, Chidera Eggerue or TheSlumFlower, inspires me to feel confident in my own skin. Chidera started the movement Saggy Boobs Matter after feeling like her breasts didn’t look like all the models and images she was seeing and comparing herself to. She wanted to show the world that you don’t have to look like those curated feeds and the models on packaging to feel like you’re beautiful and magnificent. Using social media as a platform, she began to share the hashtag #saggyboobsmatter. This immediately garnered attention, both negative and positive. Through her confidence she was able to gather an audience that felt inspired by her message that we all deserve a space in the “body positive” movement. Chidera kept the momentum from her initial hashtag going by being a powerful voice for women. Through her fashion blog and several self-help books, she could help more people feel inspired. She let her audience know that they are valuable and they deserve to find and inner peace that would allow them to follow their own happiness instead of an idea of happiness that others have created.
I know Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all take their tolls on my mentality. All the perfect snapshots in time make it seem like others are living this perfect life and I’m not. Since I’ve become self-aware of how this was making me feel, I’ve made a conscious effort to follow in the steps of the curators and carefully choose who I was following. Other social media efforts, like The Naked Diaries, help remind me that we all have flaws and we should embrace them, but not only that, to live boldly the way we are. When we use our platforms and voice to make others feel good and to show more real raw sides of ourselves, we not only become more authentic to our followers but remind them that we all deserve to have a healthy relationship with ourselves.
