Name: Megan Jayne Crabbe
Age: 26
Location: Essex, UK
Occupation: Author, influencer and advocate for body positivity and mental health awareness
A few years ago, we profiled Megan Jayne Crabbe, aka bodyposipanda, and gave her serious kudos for all of her body positive social media love. Today, we asked Megan to be our first ever repeat Cool Girl in honor of National Self-Confidence Day on March 26th.
In the time following our initial interview, Megan Jayne Crabbe has become a blogger at The Unedit, been featured in Cosmopolitan magazine, and has written a book, Body Positive Power. Still, with a larger platform and the label of being an Instagram influencer, she remains the same down-to-earth, accessible, utterly lovable human being.
“I'm still living a bit of a double life between being an influencer and also remaining a caregiver for my older sister Gemma. I'm definitely still just as much of a dog lady and I'm still dancing around in my underwear on the internet!” she says.
The immediacy and transparency of living life online hasn’t always been easy, however.
“A lot of my personal growth over the last couple of years has come from adjusting to the highs and lows of existing on the internet,” Megan admits. “I've always said that as someone who struggles with anxiety and self-doubt in the ways I do, I'm not really made for this world. A lot of putting yourself out there online is dealing with hundreds of people every day telling you who they think you are - good or bad - and it's super hard not to lose your own sense of who you are in that. I'm definitely better at keeping hold of that now and trusting that I know who I am better than strangers on social media do, but it's been a real journey!”
Over the course of nine months, Megan wrestled with aforementioned anxiety, and many pots of coffee, in order to create Body Positive Power, her new book that is largely an inspirational autobiography.
“I was just trying to pass along the things I'd learned in my own body acceptance, with a bit of sass and a lot of straight talk about diet culture. I'm so thankful people have connected with it the way they have and used it to start reclaiming their body and a life that isn't filled with hunger and self-hatred,” she says.
The healing power of the writing process, as well as the perks of her personality being at the forefront of the mainstream body positivity movement, has led to a lot of transformation.
“I'm never done learning. There are always ways to be a better advocate, make my message more pure, and hold myself accountable for that. But there also has to be a lot of room for self-forgiveness when you don't get it right, which is often,” she says.
When it comes to navigating the often cruel ocean of social media, Megan has a bevy of sage, hard-learned advice.
“I think it's on each of us to treat the people on our timelines as full human beings. So much of what makes social media toxic is that it enables us to put people into one-dimensional boxes of who we want them to be. In reality, we're all more than our social media, we have more going in our lives, we make mistakes, we screw up, we learn. We have to allow the people we follow to be human. And when it comes to the straight up trolls who just want to spread hate - block on sight, they're not worthy of your time or energy,” Megan says.
“Also, the same as always, what you see everyday has a huge effect on how you see yourself. We should all be regularly curating our social media feeds to be full of inspiration rather than negative comparison. We should be conscious of what we're reading and what we're watching, we deserve to feel represented in the media we consume and we don't need anything in our lives convincing us that our bodies are wrong. Follow a diverse range of humans online, watch shows with casts of strong characters whose differences are celebrated, throw out the photoshopped magazine covers. Curate what you consume as much as you can so that the messaging you're getting is that you're good enough as you are,” she adds.
As for the average young woman, Megan empowers everyone to ditch the self-hate.
“We are all affected by diet culture, fatphobia and beauty ideals in some way, and we deserve to have our feelings recognized and understood. Find the people who will fight back with you, whether they're in real life, online, on podcasts or even in books! You really aren't alone in this.”
And what advice does the passionate and compassionate new author have to pass along to each of us in honor of National Self-Confidence Day?
“When I was learning about why we hate our bodies and where that comes from, I realized that it is so much bigger than you or me. Our cultural body dissatisfaction is something that we've been taught since we were children, by thousands of messages we take in every day about beauty, weight and worth.
We didn't ask to live in a world that values how we look over who we are. And it's not our fault that we feel the way we do. Once you really believe that you can let go of the blame you're holding against your body and get angry at the real culprit: diet culture! Unrealistic beauty standards! Patriarchy! I think self confidence ultimately is about refusing to see yourself as anything less than what you're worth, which is the absolute world.”
For her constant body positivity, and being a light for everyone who is yearning to grow in self-love and acceptance, we think Megan Jayne Crabbe is a very Cool Girl! Check out Body Positive Power and Megan’s advice column, as well as her Instagram and website.
