Whatever the platform I’m using, I’m very choosy about what I post and don’t post. I know that everything I do is a representation of the brands I work with and, just as importantly, myself – as someone with a public profile and a platform, people respond to me as a brand too, funny as that might sound. I’ve had to find a balance of living life, but also making sure that everything I do represents me in a way that I want to be seen.
Because that’s just so important to me, that everything about me – from what I post, down to the way I come across in meetings – comes across in the right way. I think that in every aspect of life, you have to be the best version of yourself to help you achieve your goals.
Everything you say and do represents who you are as a person. And that applies to whatever stage you’re at.
It’s been like that for me from almost the very start: I’m so cautious about everything I post. Of course, when I look back to when I was a kid, I was less conscious of what people were thinking – but I have to care more now because everything I do is scrutinised. And I think there is also just a natural change that comes with getting older: you start to care more about what people think and how people perceive you – and not acting like an idiot in front of certain people!
That doesn’t mean I always present the glossiest version of my life. I try to keep it real. I appreciate my life is not your typical 23-year-old’s life. But this is the life I’m living. All I’ve ever aimed for in my life is to do things to the highest level I can achieve – and I think girls have been inspired to believe they can do the same. Which means a lot to me, I love that.
However, I do make an effort in terms of the energy I project, in keeping it positive. That doesn’t mean I shy away from the negative – as I’ve said, I don’t try to hide the bad days or arguments with my boyfriend. But, for example, recently I filmed a vlog introduction and I opened by saying, ‘Oh, I’ve had a really rubbish few weeks – I’ve been really down. I’ve been having anxiety. I’m stressed out.’ And then I sat on that for an hour and thought, Nah, I can’t start a vlog like that. I didn’t want people to feel, God, she’s draining the life out of me!
So I filmed it again, saying, ‘Hey, guys, I’ve already started this vlog once, but I just want to be a bit more upbeat and later I can talk about what’s been going on.’ I was still transparent, but I opened it more positively because I think people aren’t coming to my channel for the opposite! If you’re having a bad week, then yes, you may want to see that I too am having a bad week, and that you’re not alone, but you don’t want me to drag you down and make you feel worse. It’s about being open and honest, but also being that place for people to escape to if they want, so they can come and watch a snippet of your life without it draining them.
I’m all about keeping it real, but also understanding that my job is what I post. I like to keep myself – my brand – consistent and post a similar kind of content, so people know what to expect from me and know that, if they like it, they can come back for more.
If I didn’t share the lows or when things went wrong, it might be intimidating and not ring true, because no one has a perfect life – and I certainly don’t. As an influencer, I think it’s important to share those moments when things don’t go your way. I think that’s why I have a loyal fan base: because my followers have seen the ups and downs of my journey. As you know, when I’ve had filler done and it’s gone terribly wrong, I’ve not shied away from explaining that. I’m very transparent when it comes to mistakes I’ve made or things that maybe I wouldn’t do again, because it’s a journey and one I want to share.
So, I try to be relatable and say what I want to say. But, over time, I’ve also learned more about having that control of what I’m putting out there and being careful. Your twenties can be hard years, as you’re making so many mistakes. That’s so normal because it’s an age when you’re learning so much. But I’m doing that with millions of people watching me!
When I’m posting out on my platforms I always stop twice and think about what I put out there. If ever I need a second opinion, I will always check with either Fran, my sister or someone else to see what they make of it. I ask them, ‘How would you feel watching this Story?’ or ‘How would you feel reading that caption?’ just to check that different people wouldn’t find it offensive.
I will check at least a few times with different people before I post something: ‘If you didn’t know me and saw this on my Instagram, how would it make you feel?’
I always want to know other people’s opinions, because I’ve made mistakes before where in my mind something seemed completely acceptable to post, but other people took it a different way, because of course everyone thinks differently. So, it’s just about checking things over: everything I post is a representation of me, and it needs to represent me well.
Still, if you think about having millions of people watching, it’s impossible to make sure you’re catering for every single person and keeping every single person happy. Everyone has different opinions, and you can’t really cater to each person’s needs. From having this public platform, I know that whatever I say and whatever I do, there will always be somebody who hates it – that’s just the way it is.
I’ve definitely learned about controversy the hard way: by making mistakes – for instance, when the way that I worded something online or said something publicly totally didn’t register in my mind the same way that my audience took it. That’s happened to me so many times! It has definitely been a learning curve in the last few years. I just don’t naturally hold back in what I say, and sometimes I can say too much, or just the wrong thing. I always say I have at least one scandal every few months, when I’ll be trending on Twitter. I do my best to avoid it, as the backlash over the next few days is horrible – a terrible, terrible time – depending on what I’ve done.
At times, I have felt horribly guilty that I’ve upset people. When I look back, I think, I shouldn’t have said that. It has really underlined for me that I’ve just got to triple-check – either in my own mind or with someone around me – how something comes across before I post it or say it. I don’t always get it right.
That’s why I don’t always weigh in when bad things happen in the world. I do try, and I think spreading awareness of certain issues is really important. But it’s hard because you’re always going to upset someone whatever you say, and sometimes, I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on a really serious topic. I wouldn’t want to share an opinion unless I knew 100 per cent of what I was saying was factual, and educated, because I have a responsibility to my followers.
Even when I talked on YouTube about my endometriosis diagnosis, and some people were really happy that I was talking about something that affected them, there was some backlash that I wasn’t speaking about it in enough detail. But I wasn’t a doctor or any other type of medical expert – I had just been diagnosed and I was still learning about the condition myself.
Sometimes, when you have a platform, it can feel as if you’re expected to always know everything about everything. But I’m just a 23-year-old girl who got plummeted into this new world – it doesn’t make me smarter! It doesn’t make me more educated on topics. I’m still the exact same as everybody else at this age. I think there’s a lot of pressure to always be spreading the right information and be 100 per cent accurate on everything you’re saying, which is just impossible for anyone to do if they’re busy commenting on everything that happens. It’s just not feasible.
But just because I don’t comment on something, doesn’t mean I’m not interested, or that I don’t care – it can be the total opposite.
As you’ll have gathered, I’m not always the best at dealing with backlash. For a while, I think I focused on the 5 per cent of negativity I would face, more than the positivity. And I don’t think I’ve changed totally in that I do still read what people are saying online – Tommy can’t understand why. But because I care so much about my audience and how people are relating to me, I always want to know what people are thinking and how they’re responding to me.
But I would say that – as cliché as it sounds – everyone’s going to have an opinion, whether you like it or not, and you can’t stop people from voicing theirs, no matter how hard you try. For me, understanding and accepting that has meant learning to listen more to the positive comments – because there’s more positivity than there is negativity, and I think it’s important to focus on and enjoy that. The negative ones, of course, I take on board if someone’s pointing out to me in a constructive way that I’ve got something wrong. I am the first person to say I don’t always get it right! But anything else, it just blurs into noise and goes in the category of ‘ignore that and move on’. The minute the negativity starts to get to you, that’s when you’ll crumble.
I have to accept that with every single thing that I post, there will be people that love it and people that hate it – it’s literally impossible to cater every post to an audience of 6 million people.
There wasn’t a specific moment for me where I realised, This is where I’ll decide to stop caring if people say negative things that aren’t fair. It’s been a very gradual process and I’m still not fully there yet: I do still overthink everything I say, everything I post, and I try to keep everybody happy, even though I know it’s not possible. But over time, I’ve definitely got better in terms of starting to be a bit easier on myself and worrying less about what people say.
And maybe I’ve got a bit more prepared to set the record straight. Fran and I decided a long time ago not to really do many interviews; we’ve never given many exclusive stories, and we don’t work with a lot of press outlets, because we knew there would come a time when I would want to tell my story in my own way and do it in the right way for me, in terms of how people would read about my life and hear what I have to say. When the press writes a story, it’s from the journalist’s point of view – don’t get me wrong, if I gave an interview it could turn out really lovely, but ultimately, the outlet can present it in the way they want to. So, publishing my own book at this stage just fitted in perfectly, because I feel like I’ve done enough now in my life to really get into what’s happened in the last few years and share my journey, and where I’m at now.
I’ve learned a lot from Tommy too, in terms of how to deal with living a life that people have opinions about. Honestly, nothing fazes Tommy – nothing gets under his skin. It’s taken me a while to get to a similar point because when everyone’s got their opinion about what you’re doing, it’s hard not to think, Oh God is what they say true?
But I do take inspiration from him when it comes to that side of things because he’s really good at handling that – he’s got an incredible attitude. He’ll say to me, ‘Why do you care what they say? You’re happy, I’m happy, our families are happy. It just doesn’t matter.’ He’s right. And that genuinely applies to everyone, whether you’re trending on Twitter or getting talked about in your hometown. If you and the people you love are happy, don’t worry about the haters.