I’m not sure that this is going to be your average #BodyConfidence post, but I feel this topic needs to be talked about nonetheless. When I sat down to write this post, I knew I wanted to talk about body confidence in relation to the photos you will see accompanying my words, but I wasn’t sure quite how to approach it. I’ve decided to talk about a few observations I’ve made during my many years of blogging, specifically concerning the relationship between sharing aspects of my life online and how I feel about my apperance.
The photos in this post were taken during our trip to the gorgeous Cala Mesquida in Majorca a couple of weeks ago. I’m going to be brutally honest, as I believe it’s the only way – heading down to the beach and taking these photos was bloody scary. Firstly, because I could feel countless pairs of eyes watching what Tiz and I were doing (if I didn’t really get the blogging/Instagram world, I might have raised an eyebrow too) and secondly, because it has literally been years since I walked around a beach in swimwear.
Here comes another dose of honesty…contrary to what these photos might suggest, I’m not feeling spectacularly awesome about my body right now. I’m also not feeling spectacularly badly about it either. I sometimes feel that in the blogging world, you’re pushed to fit into one box or another – flying the flag for body confidence or documenting your transformation journey. I have done both of these things over the years, but right now I feel like a bit of an inbetweener. Don’t we all at times?
I think I perhaps have a slightly different view of the blogging and body confidence subject – I spend a lot of time with fellow influencers, and have seen and heard a lot over the years. It’s so easy to present this incredibly sassy front online, but everyone has hang-ups about their appearance from time to time. I hate drama and definitely don’t want to go into any specific examples (even without naming names) but believe me when I say that not every Instagram photo you see is all it seems. With all the apps on the market these days, it takes mere seconds to pinch in your waist, plump up your lips, airbrush that spot or slim down your thighs. I’d never judge anyone for doing any of these things, but it’s therefore important to remember to take what you see on social media with a pinch of salt.
During my many years of blogging and vlogging, I’ve discussed my weight loss journey and love for health and fitness at length. You may have noticed that I haven’t been talking about those things lately, and to be perfectly blunt it’s because I haven’t been thinking about them all that much. My workout schedule has been on pause and I haven’t been putting a huge amount of thought into my diet, besides trying to eat plenty of fruit and veg. For my own happiness I do want to get back on track with exercise as it makes me feel great, but I don’t want it to take over my life. I have often had this all or nothing approach and I don’t want it to be like that anymore.
And that sort of brings me to my main point. In the blogging world it sometimes feels like we have to go borderline OTT on everything to stand out amongst the crowd – we have to be the most confidence, have the best fitness routine, visit the most glamorous places, take the best selfies with the most famous fellow influencers, go along to the most exclusive events…I could go on forever. It’s exhausting. Obviously, I would love everyone to feel incredible about themselves at all times and have awesome body confidence but sometimes it just doesn’t work out like that. And it’s not because you’ve gone completely the other way and now hate how you look, it’s just that your attention might be on other things. And that’s OK, too!
So you’re probably wondering why the heck I’m posting these photos if not to present a certain confident image of myself, right? Well, there are a few reasons. One of those reasons is because this Certified Mermaid Swimsuit from Boohoo is ridiculously cute and I wanted to show it to you. Another reason is because in that moment, on that day at the beach, I decided I’d had enough of over-analysing what I look like. This is how I look right now, so that’s what you’re getting from these photos. Sure, I posed in particular ways and chose these specific photos to share with you out of a pretty large batch, but that’s blogging right? And I do like these pictures! I think I look fine and I couldn’t resist taking advantage of the gorgeous location we found ourselves in – we didn’t even know the beach was this amazing when we booked our holiday, so we hit the jackpot really.
Here is my take-away message from this post. Not everything is black and white, and not everyone has it all figured out. We’re all under enough pressure as it is without feeling we have to be 100% body confident 100% of the time if we’re just feeling kind of…alright. Don’t forget that everyone is different, and that each post you read like this is just based on one person’s experience. I do wonder whether we all might feel a bit happier about ourselves if we just kind of got on with it, but perhaps that’s too simplistic a view to take. I’d love to know what you guys think!
Stay Creative,
Chyaz xox