Last October, I went to a Birthday Party and ran into people I hadn’t seen since I graduated from University. It is always a bitter-sweet feeling. You small talk, get updated about where everybody now stands in life and try to explain all you have been through since you parted ways. Usually it is nothing deep or meaninful, just chuckles in between beers and a desperate try to act like time never stopped. One thing changed this time around though, I got a few ” Hey there Influencer”. Some of them were curious while others were teasing, because really wtf is this whole influencer thing to begin with? Part of me always smiles proudly while another always get a pinch of sadness. Mainly because while I always tried to avoid tags, my life is now so alienated from everybody else’s that I have become ” Neguine the Influencer”. Like I went through some kind of magic spell and became someone else overnight. And I did, but it didn’t happen overnight and not in the way you imagine it did.
Behind the Gram':
10 things
you need
to know
I.
I am extremely self-conscious when it comes to my work. My parents always expected me to be the best in whatever endevours I undertook and after years failing at it, I have finally learned to embrace the pressure of perfectionism. I think it only happens when you truly discover what you are meant to do, what finally makes you the best you. For now, that thing is blogging for me. I will re-shoot a picture a thousand times, re-write a post a million times, change my layout once to twice a year, switch up my editing every season. Blogging is a funny thing really, it looks so easy yet hides a million things you need to master in order to keep this whole thing going. You would expect that with the time it becomes easier, but the fear never goes away. I will never feel fully satisfied, I will never be over change, I will never be done. And that is scary but perhaps the most exciting thing about my life because as scary as fear is, it generally means you are doing things right.
II.
Yet I don’t want blogging to be everything in my life. And it isn’t, thank god. I almost feel offended when people ask me “so you are 100% a blogger now?”. It sometimes comes with a condescending tone and a deep lack of understanding. Like you are not good enough to make it in traditionally successful careers and ended up posting pictures on a website. I started blogging because something big was missing, settling for normal made me feel invisible for a long time, I always felt like I was underperforming, that I was worse than everybody else. In a way, it became my superpower. Something that I could do and nobody else around me was daring to do. Suddenly, I felt worthy. And now that I do, I want to use that worthiness into so much more than fashion pictures. In a way, I realized that this world is pretty much as imperfect as the real world. If not so much more. It made me be in love with the art because it pushed me to be who I am today but also hate it half of the time. As game-changing as it is for millennials to choose a different career avenue, it is not all I want to be.
III.
So I hate to break it to you, but I spend 90% of my time without make-up and I love it. As glamorous as we all look in our #goals OOTD and brunch pictures, our lives are not how we portray them to be all of the time. For the most part, we plan everything. That cute in-impromptu pic is everything but impromptu. We work hard to find the best locations, spend the entire lunch snapping shots that we pray are going to turn out good and only get to drink our coffee when it is half cold. My real life is quiet. There are a lot of moments in which I am on my own, and while over 500 people appear to love more the moments I spend tons of efforts making as effortless as possible, the make-up free quiet moments are the ones I love the most.
IV.
My love for writing didn’t start with Fashion Blogging. Writing has always been the love of my life. Only a very few people are aware that I used to write a lot of anonymous fanfiction throughout my teenage years. It helped me escape a period of my life that I hated, to deal with anger and feel less lonely. Similarly to blogging nowadays, I belonged somewhere. It taught me to use writing as a way to heal and grow. Fashion Blogging did help me to make that part of my life public, to feel less ashamed of it, to have the courage to say ” hey there, so this is who I am, this is who I have always been.” Sarcastically, I am a very private person: I don’t live for the drama or the gossip and I certainly don’t find pleasure in exposing that my heart has been broken or that I have been fired. I still can’t understand the contrast between oversharing my life virtually and undersharing it in real life. But the more time passes, the less I care. And when you stop caring, what used to be hard suddenly becomes a whole lot easier.
V.
Up until a year ago, I have dealt with years of self-hatred, depression and guilt. This is something I hate to talk about because unfortunately, depression is not taken as seriously as it should. The reaction I usually get when I reveal this is “omg, I would have never said that about you! You always look so happy in your pictures”. So I’m going to say it once, the pictures you see on social media don’t represent how someone feels or what she/he is going through in real life. Creating pretty content doesn’t make us any less flawed than anybody else. I never thought I was smart enough, funny enough, talented enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, cultured enough, cool enough, nothing enough. I didn’t even try because I assumed I would always be at loss. I have spent a long time thinking that hating myself was normal. Accepting the wrong kind of relationships, chasing the wrong kind of love, assuming no one would ever stay. Writing about self-improvement, and sometimes the lack of it, really pushed me to kick myself out of all the shit above. When I read these words I instantly chuckle: HA. what a cute success story, “how blogging saved me”. But it is true. It really taught me to take care of myself and learn that self-love is not about being enough under someone else’s standards, but about definining your own. I won’t lie and say it happened overnight, blogging was a hard thing to do at first because I was suddenly competing professionally with all these amazing women. Perfect hair, perfect bodies, fuck do they have their shit together. But after a while I realized: nobody is perfect. Half of the stuff you see online is heavily edited: legs are shrunk, double chins magically disappear, pimples and skin imperfections are smoothed out, that tomato lunch stain is nowhere to be seen. Knowing that was a game changer for me because I stopped aspiring to stuff I knew wasn’t real. Instead I started aspiring to strong minds because I learnt that the only way to beat self-hatred was to tear down all the barriers my own mind had created. Everything else fades, trends are born and die as fast as you say hello and goodbye but strong minds are the only ones to age well with the time.
VI.
The aftermath is: I have the most self-depreciating personality. In a healthy way. If you hang out with me, you will hear me say that I am an idiot at least a thousand times and run away from compliments with a dumb joke. I don’t do it to fish compliments, I do it because laughing at my own self is my comfort zone, the way I have to get out of my head and stop taking things too seriously. Contrarily to popular opinion, bloggers aren’t self-obsessed. We don’t think we are gorgeous, or better than anyone else. At least, I don’t. I enjoy to write and I enjoy fashion. Yes, that means I need to publish pictures of my outfits, no that doesn’t mean I am a brainless narcissist. Just setting the record straight.
VII.
I am a geek for a lot of contradictory things: My Spotify playlists are some of my most precious possessions, I am a Potterhead, a Star Wars fan (and Reylo shipper), a James Bond girl at heart, a Taylor Swift addict, a former Tokio Hotel hardcore fan, anything disney or disneyland makes me insanely happy and the list goes on and on. I spend more money on books than on clothes. To me, there is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING sexier than a curious mind. I love to ask why and to be asked why. To wander around bookstores for hours and discover something new. I am not nearly as cultured as I want to be, but I am making sure to push myself to get there.
VIII.
I feel too much. Hence why this post was meant to be quirky and ended up being yet another life talk.
IX.
I often feel like my personality clashes too much with the average flashion influencer personality. In other word, while I am supposed to act pretty while looking pretty, I’m still waiting for my “how to act like a lady” package. I am loud as fuck, I am allergic to small talk, I curse, sometimes I start dancing in the street out of the blue, I say stuff like “you need to get laid” and I am so blunt I sure have offended more than one innocent soul. Most of all, I am very selective about my friend circle. I am not the girl who has a blogging squad in every city of the world. I am not the girl who gets along with everybody. Either we click, either we don’t. And even if we do, I have a hard time trusting you. I was once in between, a people pleaser, a squad gal and that made me feel like the loneliest person alive. I learnt the hard way you can’t give your everything to everyone. But most of all, while my pictures might show you the one day of the week I happen to apply some red lipstick and dress blogger appropriate, my words will always show you where Neguine is at. For that reason I often wonder, how the hell I am still doing this if I am unable to act/look like everybody else but then I remember that life isn’t about fitting in, but about creating your own fit (hehehehehe cheesy Neg is out).
X.
Newsflash: I am a dork. A perfectionist. A Writer. A pessimist that hides a big heart. I suck at singing but I still yell “cuz baby now we got bad blood” when no one is watching. AKA a freaking normal person. I want happiness in both conventional and unconventional ways. To be ordinary and extraordinary. I want to be both Neguine and PersianBrunette. To Work in a Fortune 500 company and still have the voice to say “lots of love always” every week. I went through shit like everybody else, but I settled for way less than what I deserved. I found myself doing something I would never think I would do, but found strength to love myself like I never did before. A strength that no one could have ever given me, the kind of strength that you need to find on your own. I may now fit in in the small and obnoxious world of influencers, but I realized in doing so that at the end of the day I am really not much more different than you are. I want it all. And so much more.
ZARA blazer, ZARA pants, ZARA boots, H&M turtleneck, CHANEL bag
Babe I am so glad you are sharing this! The world of Instagram has become only a pretty version of what life is all about! Sometimes I wonder who’s fault it is that we only post most most amazing moments of our lives! Whenever I share a real life moment, my audience loves it, so why don’t I do it more? Maybe it is a protection mechanism?!
This post was just as amazing as I thought it would be! Your writing is an inspiration, cheesy as that sounds. TBH I kind of don’t trust those super perfect girly bloggers, they seem like aliens sometimes. And I feel you on not fitting in. I have no idea how to contour, my hair is always frizzy and crazy, I like watching nerdy cartoons and fantasies, and I’d rather have breakfast in bed than a fancy brunch. But you’re so right, it’s better to just be your true self and fuck bring a people pleaser.