Growing up, I had all sorts of hopes and dreams. We always thought Zoe was going to be a police officer, because that’s the field our parents both worked in and she took a massive interest in that. But I don’t think we really knew what I was going to do. My grades at school were fine: As, Bs and Cs – I was a middling student. (I hated maths and science and wasn’t great at them, while I got an A star in drama.) I just remember my parents wanting me to be academic and work really hard in school and get an amazing job.
I think if you’d said to my parents when I was growing up, ‘Do you want your child to go on Love Island when she’s older?’ they’d have said no – put it that way!
For a while, I really wanted to perform. Acting, singing, dancing – I just wanted to do everything! I was in a couple of West End shows when I was around 15 – small productions – as well as some more local ones. I signed up with an agency that put me forward for jobs, and my mum would take me to so many auditions as I really, really wanted to get into that world. My parents really would have done anything to help me achieve my dreams and do whatever I wanted at that time, be that going into the theatre or whatever else it was. They’d do the best they could to help me get there.
On one level, theatre suited me: I’ve always been loud and confident, so going into an audition wouldn’t scare me. It’s just the way I’m wired. Whenever I look back at my life, I never remember a stage of being even a tiny bit shy – I’ve just always been an extrovert. But I always ended up getting chorus roles and never the big parts I wanted. I think my theatre dreams died a natural death over time, and, looking back, I’m kind of glad they did. That’s a route that I could have definitely tried to go down more seriously, but it’s such a hard path; some of the friends I made in those circles are still trying to make it now, and you have to be the best of the best to do so in that industry. I knew I wasn’t there. I knew I wasn’t a good-enough singer or a good-enough dancer to make it. So, I had yet to find a path that was right for me …
In the meantime, I was getting into social media. My sister gave me her old iPod Touch when she got her first iPhone, and I downloaded the Instagram app on that. I still remember the old layout – it was just so simplified. There was no Stories feature then, and you could only upload one picture per post; you couldn’t post multiple photos for followers to swipe through.
But it’s changed a lot in the years that I’ve used it. I’ve always loved Instagram, from such a young age, and always enjoyed using the app – not just to post to but to scroll through. I didn’t really use Twitter at the time, and I never had a Facebook account at all even though all my friends were on it. For me, it was all about Instagram.
Why? It’s multiple things. For one thing, I’m quite a nosy person, so I’ve always enjoyed looking at other people’s lives! You get a bit of an insight into what people are up to. I follow accounts where people post every day, so you can really see what they are wearing, doing and saying day-to-day. Trends change so much, so it’s nice to be able to look down at your Instagram feed and see what’s happening. And, honestly, it actually can be educational as well! Sometimes I’ll find out things that are in the news via Instagram. I think it’s just a really good place to stay up to date, so you always know what’s going on.
And obviously now, with Instagram Stories, people post what they’re doing throughout the day, and it’s more unfiltered. I put a lot of things on my Stories that I wouldn’t post on my main feed, and I think that people are interested in them because they love to know the ins and outs of your life, from what coffee you’re getting at Starbucks to what foundation you’re using. People really, really like to know those things – me included! So, I love watching other people’s Stories and can find myself scrolling for hours – it’s a bit of an escape from my own life (not that I’ve really ever tried to escape my life, but it’s still fun to dip into someone else’s).
Back then, when I was starting out, I really looked up to a lot of Australian influencers, like Tammy Hembrow. I followed travel influencers, too, because I wanted to travel the world, but Emily Shak was my main inspiration – she was the girl. Every picture she posted was in a different location. She was always doing something different. I loved it all: how unique her posts were, how classy she was. She always had amazing make-up and hair, and everything about her screamed that she was the influencer.
I still think that now. She just knows what she’s doing and she’s very good at her job. She’s got this effortless quality – although now I realise all the work that goes into that. Years ago, I’d be looking at Emily, thinking, God, how is she this effortless? I didn’t realise until I was doing it myself what actually goes into getting to that stage. She was probably driving for hours to go to that location to get that cool picture, like I do!
Later, through work, we became good friends. Now it makes me laugh that I was fangirling over her – I was obsessed! But an influencer’s job is literally to influence people, so if I wasn’t feeling influenced by Emily, then she wasn’t doing our job correctly. Because she was so good at her job, I was just obsessed with everything she did. And when you’re starting out on Instagram or YouTube – or, really, in any other field that you want to get into – having people that you look up to, and want to be doing the same things as, really helps develop your love for it.
Soon I was obsessed with watching YouTube as well. On there, it was Patricia Bright who I really looked up to – and who I still admire. She’s just everything: she’s hilarious, she’s business-savvy, she’s accessible, she has cool style. She has a real loyal following of subscribers and now has a more finance-focused YouTube channel, too, where she makes videos about how she budgets and so on. She just radiates that ‘business boss bitch’ vibe, and I really wanted to be like her. Later, I got to work with her on a YouTube video we filmed together, which, like getting to know Emily, was another moment that felt like life was really coming full circle. Imagine 15-year-old me knowing Patricia had asked me to come on her channel?
In terms of Instagram, Emily Shak was the OG for me, and then YouTube, it was Patricia Bright. They were my main two girls.
Feeling inspired, I started uploading my own photos on Instagram: selfies, photos I took in the mirror of my outfits, pictures of my hair (I often put it in a fishtail braid at the time, so I’d be taking pictures of that). Showing different hairstyles was something that was easy for me to do – I didn’t need to spend money to style my hair in a nice way – and people followed me for my hair content from quite early on. I always wanted to travel the world but I didn’t quite have the money to do that yet, so my Instagram was predominantly fashion (which is funny, really, because some of my outfits were absolutely shocking back then!). But if you look at my Instagram then and look at it now, you can definitely see the consistency from the very beginning, in terms of how I use it and what I’ve been interested in. It wasn’t as if I thought, I know, I can make money from influencing. Let’s try that. It was a really organic move because it was my passion.
Soon, I was growing on it: I had around 8,000 followers by the time I was about 16. People at school would ask, ‘How on earth do you have 8,000 followers?’ And I didn’t really know – it just happened so quickly for me. Part of it was that the timing was right: I started out just before Instagram became really popular, so I’m lucky that I caught it then, when not as many people were posting the way I was posting. But most of all, I just loved using the app, and I took it seriously from the start. A lot of my friends used to ask me to give them shout-outs on my Instagram account, and I always used to say no! Even back then, I cared how I was coming across on social media, and what my Instagram looked like, and I took a lot of pride in that.
I always say, if there’s one thing I know my stuff about, it’s definitely Instagram! I know the app inside out. I know what works on there, and I know what doesn’t.
It is a bit of a mad feeling when I think today there are girls that look at me in the same way I looked at Emily, Patricia and other influencers. Say, if I go to Manchester, it blows my mind how many people will come up to me and ask for pictures – and I take it as a total compliment. It’s a surreal feeling: girls actually follow me and know who I am. I can’t believe that now I’m that girl! And I love the idea of girls being inspired by me in turn.
Zoe: ‘Throughout our childhood I remember lots of laughter, always making up silly songs and dance routines – Molly getting her first digital camera at a young age and already making silly vlogging videos with us arguing in the background.
‘I have a vivid memory of Molly returning from a day out with her best friend Molly Hughes and her showing me some pictures they took (she must’ve been about 12 years old), posing behind trees, and me thinking how pretty she looked and how photogenic she was. I think it was this moment when something clicked in her, and from then on she was always dressing to impress – which we disagreed on a lot!’
(Molly: Growing up, Zoe and I just didn’t see eye to eye over what I wore. I was going in the completely opposite direction to what she’d probably expected, as we were super different. I would wear high-heeled stiletto boots just to go into town, and she’d look me up and down, clearly thinking, What is she doing?! With Zoe being the older sister, I think she was coming from a protective point of view – she didn’t want me growing up too fast. I think it was when I moved out that she sort of realised that I wasn’t a child anymore. I could pay my rent, I could pay my own bills and she couldn’t mother me, if that makes sense. Now, we’re totally accepting of our differences.)
‘As she grew up, obviously the pictures and videos became a lot more serious. I’d always have to be taking Insta pics and I’d be absolutely mortified when people would watch us. We used to bicker a lot when it came to getting the right shot – which would sometimes take up to an hour, even with 10,000 followers – all worth it in the end! She’s always had such a good eye for finding the right location and always knew exactly what she wanted.’
Not everything was smooth sailing growing up. Back then, my biggest fear was always that my parents would get a divorce. I think that’s quite a normal thing for kids to be worried about. I believed that I’d be OK as long as my parents didn’t split up. And I was always so scared of that. But looking back, maybe the situation at home was playing a part in those fears: my mum and dad didn’t really get on and would often argue.
On a Saturday, I’d come back from orchestra practice and the first thing I’d say to Mum would be ‘Have you had an argument with Dad while I’ve been gone?’ Because if they had, it could literally last all weekend and the atmosphere would just be awful. At home, we would all just be on top of each other, feeling bad energy, bad vibes.
And it was quite a predominant theme of my childhood – my parents not getting on. I think that’s why I do and I don’t like Christmas now; for me, it brings back a lot of sad memories, as it was always a time when there would be friction. Later on, after they’d split up, I realised, Oh, this is why Christmas has always been the way it has.
When I was about 14 or 15, they sat down and told me together that they were getting a divorce. They told me that they were splitting up because they just didn’t love each other anymore and no longer wanted to be together. I felt heartbroken. I couldn’t believe that my greatest fear had come true – my parents were actually getting a divorce. But it also made me understand why things were the way they were when I was growing up: why they’d never kissed or cuddled. Looking back, I think it was always obvious that my parents weren’t really happy together.
After my parents split up, my dad moved out to a new flat, and the house in Hitchin where I’d grown up was sold. My mum bought a new-build house in Langford, a nearby village, but it was still under construction, so we actually lived in a log cabin on a campsite for about six months, waiting for it to be built. There’s still one picture on my Instagram feed where, if you look really closely, you can see the wooden slats of the log cabin!
The period after my parents split was really, really hard. Because she’d been in relationships all her adult life, my mum was playing catch-up in terms of what she’d missed out on. She’d been engaged to a guy when she was 18, and when they broke up, she met my dad straight away. So, now she was on all these dating websites, doing her thing, going out.
And in that first year after the divorce, Mum really struggled. For a very short while just after the divorce, she turned to alcohol to cope with the pain of the breakdown of their marriage, which sort of explains why I am the way I am with alcohol – I pretty much avoid it. I associate those difficult times after my parents’ divorce with alcohol being involved and my mum drinking too much – understandably, because her marriage had broken down. But I felt like I had to look after my mum for a while; it was kind of a role reversal, where she was the child.
Zoe had turned 18 by this point and had gone travelling for a year. The aftermath of the divorce wasn’t why she went, but she did get to escape the situation at home, in a way. I don’t think she realised what I was left to deal with, because she left when things were OK. But I do remember one night when it all came to a bit of a head: Zoe was away in Thailand or somewhere equally far-flung, and my mum had a guy round at our house and I felt really upset about it. I was texting my sister, saying, ‘I hate Mum, I can’t do this anymore, I’m so upset.’
What I didn’t realise was that I was sending those messages to my family group chat with my mum and my dad (my parents had stayed amicable after the split). It was really bad; I was saying some awful things. I actually didn’t care so much that my dad was going to see them, but I didn’t want to let my mum know how I felt. But afterwards, Mum came to find me and gave me a massive hug, saying, ‘I’m really sorry you feel like this.’
And, in time, things did calm down and we all got a lot more settled in our new situation. These days, my mum and I have a super close relationship and are so open with each other – almost friends, as well as mum and daughter. But I do know what that specific night taught me: always quadruple-check where you send your messages – because it will never leave me, that feeling when I knew I’d sent those messages in the family group!
• • •
Now, I think of the divorce as a terrible time where I had to grow up fast, but I don’t think I found it particularly agonising. I get a lot of questions on my Instagram these days from girls messaging me, asking, ‘How did you get through your parents’ divorce? I’m going through it now.’ My attitude was This is just something I’ve got to go through – it is what it is.
There was nothing that I could say or do to make it better, I just had to go through it. Sometimes, with tough times, you do just have to make it to the other side.
It does help to find a good friend to lean on. My best friend growing up was a girl called Molly Hughes; her mum was my mum’s best friend, and Molly’s parents went through a separation at the exact same time as mine. Molly and I were so close, practically sisters, and we really helped each other through this rough patch in both our lives. I’m so grateful I had her and I hope I was as much a support for her as she was for me. Besides that, it’s hard to give advice because everyone’s so different – and I know for some people, a divorce can just feel like the worst thing in the world.
What I will say, though, is that sometimes something as painful as a divorce can actually lead to better things. My mum, especially, has completely changed in my eyes following my parents’ split. When she was still with my dad, she very much took a backseat to him. Maybe because he was always taking charge of things, and doing things with us that she was too scared to do, she just seemed a lot more timid and meek. Nowadays, I get to see her as this strong, independent woman, and I can see that she’s actually so much more laidback and chill than I thought. When it came to my prom after-party, she agreed to have it at her house, even though it meant having all these kids over! She listens to the same music as me and Zoe and is just so fun and relaxed. I don’t know if I would’ve got to see this side of her if she and my dad had stayed together.
Another bonus is that both my parents have moved on to new relationships with partners that they’re really happy with: my dad’s now married to Carla, who he met through the police, while my mum met her partner, Jon, on a dating site, and they recently got married too, in the summer of 2021. So, it really can all work out for the best.