Just a short blog post for you today as I’m feeling a little peeved with the health and fitness blogger/influencer industry. The reason I started Imperfect Matter was at first to motivate myself to get my butt in gear with my wellbeing. It then evolved into what it is today, hopefully helping to motivate and inspire others make small changes in their lives to feel a little better, along with chatting about all the things I love from food to fashion and my own personal journey in health, fitness and yoga.
I feel sad today as have recently seen some images from fitness Instagrammers who are incredibly beautiful in the flesh, but sadly feel the need to photoshop photos of themselves. These are girls with a big enough following to have other women looking up to them and being inspired by them, so what kind of message are they spreading? I totally get using a filter or an app to brighten an image, but using photoshop to slim limbs and alter the lighting effect on muscles just makes me question what we’re doing on Instagram.
People would be kidding themselves if they didn’t admit that part of the joy of having a growing Instagram following is a lovely ego boost and that a part of them posts photos to see all of the ‘likes’ coming through – I can say this because I can admit that I’m one of those people. I love finding success in a new yoga pose and sharing a photo of it, as I feel like every like is a little round of applause. You could argue that that’s egotistical of me, but like I said, there’s a little part of that in all of us.
In the grand scheme of social media numbers my Instagram isn’t huge, but I’m so grateful to everyone who follows me and continues to support the things I do. In return I can promise you that apart from adding numerous pair of legs to headstand photos, I will NEVER photoshop my face or body. Naturally I share the photos where I like how I look, but again, that’s just human.
This blog post isn’t targeted at any one person, I just wanted to remind everyone to be happy in their own skin – the REAL skin. I get it, I know that life isn’t always that easy – “just be happy”. But to the girls who are out there inspiring, motivating and wanting their followers to look to them for advice, PLEASE be honest and careful about the message you’re sending with the photos you post. You’re all beautiful anyway and don’t even need to make these silly alterations to your photos.
Love, Cat x