As humans, we absorb ideas and values based on what we see around us. Everyone and everything can be both a source of social influence, as well as subject to influence. It can be extremely harmful to open up your phone and continuously see people and things on your feed that make you feel bad about yourself and your life.
We live in a world where following people who make you hate yourself is the status quo. Self-hatred and low self-esteem have become normalised, but loving yourself, your body, and looking after your mind, should be the norm.
Following an influencer who preaches fitness and healthy eating, who also happens to naturally be four sizes smaller than you, and is presenting their very happy, unrealistic life is almost definitely not good for self-esteem. Society, and the institutions that are said to be necessary to uphold it, don’t want you to stop in your tracks and realise that your body is just right as it is. It is a protest to love yourself in today’s world.
But for this to be possible, it's important to follow people you relate to, and those that make you feel good about life and yourself; not people you aspire to look like. In time, you’ll start to lose the desire to change yourself to fit society’s beauty standards, or your own subconscious ones, and begin to love who you are.
Some recommended accounts to follow: @jess_megan_, @meg.boggs, @alopeachia, @chelsiehill, @stephanieyeoah, @thenutritiontea, @aaron___philip, @mattjosephdiaz, @bodypositivityformen, @bopo.boy
Written by Kate Hopwood
Artwork by Zara Masood
