Editors note
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Blinded by the Media
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Impacts of Social Media
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You are enough
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Ellie Sweet Interview
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Confidence In Colour
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More Self Love
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It’s Okay
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In my Skin
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Blur’s first body image issue was created so that we can blur the line of feeling not good enough in our skin and replace this feeling by having more self love. Confidence comes from within ourselves and is expressed in many different forms from the clothing we wear on our body to taking the time out our day to appreciate ourselves and what our body does for us. There is no surprise that social media impacts how we feel in our bodies by the way harsh content and society’s unattainable beauty standards can leave us feeling overwhelmed by the content we consume online. Reminding ourselves that we all have the power to make our mindset more positive and you do not have to love your body all the time but that’s okay, you can appreciate it’s strength for what it does for you. Blur, which is defined as when something becomes less distinct or unclear or a thing that can not be heard or seen clearly. I feel that many people online can hide and conceal their true identity
because we are afraid how others may view or perceive us and possibly of others judgement is overpowering. Women especially are directly impacted by their image due to the fake body standards that sometimes we can aspire to look like, we need to remind ourselves that this standard is not real and it is fake. In my own experiences this can cause individuals to crop themselves out of images which draws upon my own past feelings of being invisible within my body. I personally have felt that I can slip into blurring and cropping myself out of images because of the way I feel I'm supposed to look when actually I should think about myself and how I feel before I think of others. However I feel that sometimes we are told to not care about what other people think but as human beings we are always going to want other people satisfaction and praise so rather than trying not to care at all just simply try to care less and put yourself first more.
-Blur Zine-
It is no surprise that social media has vastly impacted and twisted perceptions of beauty and how and what our bodies should all look like. I would find myself sometimes wanting to crop and blur parts of my body and face out of photos just to feel like I'm fitting in with others online content. However, recognising and reinforcing the fact that I was comparing myself to something that is not real and doesn’t exist and has never existed because of layers of editing and cleaver camera angles. I felt like I was blinded by the social media content that I was consuming and it became a overpowering and negative environment, even If I’d tell myself that I was enjoying using it, its only until now I look back and realise what a self destructive environment it was. For me it was never about my weight it was about how my image portrayed though the lens and how people could or possibly judge me for what I share. To overcome this I simply deleted all of the negative content from my feed, unfollowed some influencers that were simply displaying a unattainable lifestyle, it sounds simple but once I made my online space more positive, it made the world of a difference. I feel sometimes we all forget our worth in our skin and even if that’s you now reading this you can take some time out of your day to appreciate your self more, I'm not saying every moment of every day we should love every part of ourselves because that’s not realistic but just give your body some appreciation for what it does for you. I have learnt that we as human being are never going to stop caring what other people think but just try to care less.
Negative Perception deleted.jpd
Interviewing A Self love influencer Ellie Sweet @xelliesweetx
In your opinion how would you say social media effects our perception with our own body image? “I think I depends on the person whether social media can effect our image because I mean it depends who you choose to follow, like I used to follow loads of people that were fake and only put their good sides up but now everyone I follow is either someone I know or people are good for me to see. So I guess it depends who you follow but I think if we didn’t have social media people would have a lot less body image problems.”
What do you do when you’re not feeling so confident or high esteem? “I remind myself what’s what. I remind myself what I see online is not what’s actually going on. I remind myself no one can look perfect and perfect doesn’t exist, that my body does a lot for me and I should be kind to it. Sometimes it is too much, in those cases I just try to relax and not think too much about how I look whether that’s by reading a book, having a bath or whatever else and then try to be kind to myself again the next day until it works again.”
Secondly, how did your body positive journey start and what influenced you to start posting body positive content on social media?
What Is your self care routine? “ One: tell myself three things daily I like about myself. Two: make sure my social media is a happy place to go to. Three: Look at my body often and show appreciation. Four: dance around my room to make sure my body gets the movement it needs. Five: make sure I care for my body ( eat, drink etc) That’s the best way I care for myself.”
“I put on a lot of weight through having depression and then I lost a lot of weight and I realised I was not happy with my body at any stage. Then I realised it was more than that it was my mind that needed changing so I tried to do different things to try and make that change. As well as that I saw Nelly London” who Is a body positive influencer “on Instagram and I saw she was spreading a body positive message and I wanted to do the same. I know I have helped a lot of my friends with it in the past so I felt like I could help people more people and the more people I could help the better.”
Lastly, if you could give any advice to anyone struggling with their own body confidence and acceptance what would you tell them? “Advise I would give to them is be patent and be patient and consistent because it is a journey and journeys don’t happen instantly so it will happen no matter how ling it takes and I have faith in everyone.”
@xelliesweetx
@xelliesweetx
-Blur Zine-
Feeling confident starts from within but it doesn’t hurt to add some colour
Scan for feel good music
-Blur Zine-
One last thing…. You have the power to make a big difference to how you feel about yourself.
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