I Acted Like Chrissy Teigen On Instagram And It Proved Women Are Treated Differently Once They Become Moms

I lost 14 followers after I posted the swimsuit pics. For context, I don't have a lot of followers. I am basically invisible on Instagram!!! Anyway, I went from 1,374 to 1,360 followers. So the swimsuit pic only lost me about 1% of my total following. However, if Chrissy lost 1% of her following, she would lose roughly 284,000 followers (she currently has over 28 million followers).

After it happened, I tried not to let it get to me. I mean, really, why did I care that people were UNFOLLOWING me for one photo? It was silly that I was letting people I didn't even know affect my thoughts. But, I couldn't help it. I just wanted to know why those 14 people unfollowed me. Did they think I was too into myself or did they think I wasn't a good mom for posing that way on the internet? It made me feel — for lack of a better word — shitty.

I also started to wonder if I would have lost followers if I wasn't a mom. Do people think it is more acceptable for women to post photos of their bodies if they don't have children? Or, maybe I was overthinking the whole thing and people simply unfollowed because they didn't want to see me in a swimsuit, which is OK! Either way, I tried to forget about it and move on.

I did this experiment throughout the course of a month and I don't think I've ever had this much anxiety surrounding social media. It made me realize how toxic my brain can be when it comes to the opinions of others — sometimes even complete strangers. I know my worth is not based on likes, comments, or followers, but I have to consciously remind myself of that.

It also confirmed my belief that some people hold women to different standards after they become moms. (This was already pretty obvious to me after writing articles like this and this and this and this and this and this.) But, some of my female coworkers – who aren't mothers — have also re-created celebrity Instagrams, receiving pretty positive feedback overall. The feedback from my photos felt less supportive and more negative and — even though I gained some followers — I still lost 32 followers overall. You can read Farrah's experience re-creating Gigi Hadid, Nina's experience re-creating Selena Gomez, and Lara's experience re-creating Kylie Jenner for reference.

So my experience wasn't super fun, but I am super glad I did it (and that it's over, lol) because I learned a lot about myself. The purpose of this wasn't to get more followers, it was to truly understand just how much power the social media has over me. And, unfortunately, it's a lot. But, I am going to work on changing that! I am going to be kinder to myself...AND STOP ALLOWING STRANGERS TO HAVE POWER OVER MY SELF-WORTH!

from BuzzFeed - As/Is https://ift.tt/2TU8U44