Hi, I’m Olivia, and I’m a size 4, comfortably a size 6. Growing up I was always this super skinny, lanky kid. When I was in fourth grade we were having what, I guess what you could call an “in school physical” a doctor came in and took our weight, height, blood pressure, and all that jazz. I was waiting in line with my friend, Caroline, she too was somewhat of a stick bug. She went before me and was marked down as weighing 47 pounds. To my knowledge, the last time I checked, which wasn’t often, I was around 45 pounds. The woman told me I was 4’11 and 50 pounds. She announced it loud enough for the entire line to hear. I was 50 pounds. This was the first time in my entire life I was horrified about the reality of my weight. I broke 50 pounds! That’s almost 60 which is basically 70 which means I was just shy of 100 pounds! Now of course, as I’m recalling this memory, 50 pounds is literally NOTHING but just go with it, this is fourth grade me talking… I was absolutely mortified.
I’ve grown up with an incredibly stunning sister and a mother who used to be a model, her sister was a model as well, and so was my dad’s sister, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that there is definitely a standard of beauty in my family that came with a pressure to uphold it. When I learned that day that I was 50 pounds I felt like I let everyone down. I was no longer this little fairy; I was 50 pounds. Time went by where I accepted that my sister was the beautiful, intelligent one and that my brother, was the talented, not only athlete but also artist and genius, and I was just Olivia. I didn’t really have a lot to offer.
But then freshman year rolled around and I with my friend Ally, while she showed me all these incredible blogs she followed. I was so completely fixed on how cool the idea of sharing your life and passions through the platform of media was. So I created my own blog. I wasn’t really sure what I would blog about at first, so I used our family trip to San Francisco as a launching point, thinking I’d be a travel blogger, when really I don’t get out much at all. I thought about being an advice blog, giving people the Do’s and Don’ts of life, high school, love and what not, but I was 14, had yet to really experience high school, love was a great big question mark, and to me, living life on the edge was sitting in my bed in the dark eating lucky charms while my mom thought I was asleep, so giving genuine advice was off the table. The one thing I did somewhat have an eye for was fashion. I loved being in front of the camera and yapping on and on and on about clothes, so this was the PERFECT outlet for me to express myself.
Fashion blogging turned to be a beautiful toxic thing. Of course I followed other fashion blogs, there were so many better bloggers out there. Girls who were skinnier, prettier, richer, more eloquent, had better photographers, made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. I tried to tell myself the numbers didn’t matter, but the bloggers I followed would get hundreds of comments, their posts would rack up thousands of likes, the dresses they wore were only sold in zeros and twos, they got money for every post, and a lot of it. I got zero comments, only a few likes, only followers who were my friends and family, shopped at Forever 21 and thrift stores wearing sizes people are for some reason embarrassed to share, and never got any money. Once again, I was on the 50-pound end of the stick. Feeling like I had disappointed people. I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging for a while and just got trapped in an even darker hole; I no longer had an outlet where I could express myself and my interests. And then it hit me. I don’t blog to show off expensive clothes, or nonexistent modeling skills, I blog because I love myself.
The most important thing that you can do, especially in the age of media, is to try to do whatever makes you happy and confident and feel like your purest self. Don’t ever let someone with more followers, money, or whatever, get you down. Because everyone is incredibly beautiful no matter if you’re 50 pounds or just shy of 300, learn to love yourself because that is the most important knowledge you will ever gain.