For the Love of the Gram!

– How to Increase Self-Love Despite Social Media.

Fashion + Self-Love Party, Day 14.
Guest post by Savana from Official Savana Rae.

In this day and age we all know that there is a huge focus on social media growth and influencer status reach.

Instagram started off as a simple platform for posting pictures, soon enough it developed into a multi-million pound marketing driving force.

I want to focus specifically on the Instagram application but this may apply to different social platforms too, i.e : Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, etc…

Instagram has so much interesting content and impressive content creators. However, the bar is set very high on this well developed platform. When the bar is set as high as it is, growing may become an issue and not only because of this but also because of the new algorithms developed by Instagram. This new system mainly drives attention to the biggest accounts, which undermines the rest–no matter how good your content may be.

I have noticed that a lot of people have been affected by this big change and also a big loss in confidence has increased in my fellow influencers and those who follow me.

It is starting to worry me that people base their opinions of you and how likable you are on the basis of your follower count. How can you base it on this factor, rather than the core values of life? If you follow me on Instagram as OFFICIALSAVANARAE, you know I speak up on these topics on a regular basis. Self-love plays a central focus on most of my stories topics.

Already, social media, as magazines used to do at one time, has set very hard parameters to abide by to fit into society’s beauty parameters.

What happens when this certain image of perfection is portrayed?

Well, unfortunately this causes those who follow you to feel discouraged within their own life and their own skin.

I get a lot of people, especially the younger girls, telling me they wished they had my life or even looked like me. As much as I find it flattering, I finding it worrying because: are we discouraging the masses by our portrayal of perfection? Whether it’s us receiving complimentary products or in their eyes looking so beautiful, they feel they can’t compete and I DO NOT AGREE WITH THAT.

I want to give you some self-love advice that I myself follow when I feel low, because let’s face it we all have THOSE days.

This guide to increase self-love is one that I find incredibly useful, as my mom reminds most days that we all need to love ourselves first so that we can be at peace. Think about it this way, if you didn’t love yourself, how can you feel at peace?

Remember that what you see online is the final product of great lighting, editing and the gift of making something or someone appealing. So take it as a virtual life NOT actual real life, because realistically you definitely do not know the ins and out of someones life but rather they are showing you the highlights within their days.

REMEMBER the fine line between REALITY and SHOWING YOUR HIGHLIGHT REEL ONLINE.

Remember that EVERYONE and I mean everyone is BEAUTIFUL IN THEIR OWN WAY. 

Embrace your beauty regardless of gender, ethnicity or health status. So, take a long look in the mirror and see what you like about yourself. focusing on the POSITIVE and ignoring what YOU take as negative. What YOU may take as negative might be someones dream attribute.

Nowadays it’s even easier as they have changed the strict beauty parameters we had to stick to and also brands tend to source all kinds of different individuals.

Remember that we are all UNIQUE.

No two people are the same, not even identical twins. Embody your INDIVIDUALITY. One of the things I personally love is that EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT and I feel that the world is beautiful also because of this.

Sometimes we get so convinced we are worthless either because someone conditioned us to think that way or because we conditioned ourselves, to the point that we get so used to that thought pattern. The problem with this is that no matter what we can’t see our best parts.

Get into the habit of forcing yourself to believe that you are WONDERFUL not just beautiful.

FAKE THAT CONFIDENCE TILL YOU GET USED TO IT.

I am not telling you to become this obnoxious overconfident individual but rather to up your spirits, which will increase your self-love in turn.

There is a big chance you may compare yourself or your life to these other people. Well, not everything you see is real, it is just a picture or video. You don’t know the story behind it but rather what they would like you to see.

So for the LOVE THE GRAM, LOVE YOURSELF AND REMEMBER MY TIPS.

I would love to know if you have some tips for me. Feel free to comment below and let me know if you loved this post or have any extra advice.

Lots of Love,

www.officialsavanarae.com