I talk a lot about fashion and travel here on the blog, but I don’t often delve into lifestyle/personal things too often. Today, I wanted to take a break from my usual content to address something that’s been on my mind for the past few weeks.
I know that many of you are unaware of this so I’m going to very briefly address what has prompted this post. I got cyberbullied, quite badly actually by a number of women influencers about 3 weeks ago. They weren’t happy with the results of a service and instead of recognizing that Instagram is a fickle platform, they decided to call me a scam, threatened to report me to Facebook and Paypal and bullied me. Now, I’m a strong person, there isn’t a lot in this world that shakes me right down to the core, there isn’t a lot that makes me so scared to continue doing something that I love. This did. These women attacked me over every single platform they could. Public platforms, private platforms, everything.
Here’s what bothers me about this and what I want to address today…
The first thing that bothers me that I’ve already discussed is the fact that they were mad at me over results that I couldn’t control. I can’t control these results because I don’t control the Instagram Algorithm and I don’t control other peoples followers… I don’t even control my own followers because followers (for the most part) are people with free will and free thought. So them getting mad at me about this and bullying me into doing what they wanted was horribly entitled, showed their privilege (ya I said it) and completely unfounded.
The second thing that has bothered me is that a number of these women are mothers and self-proclaimed God-fearing Christians (again ya I said it). So here’s my issue. If you are a mom, you would NEVER want your child spoken to in a hurtful manner or bullied. So the fact that they could speak to me in that way shows their true colours as people. In addition to them being mothers and the whole “they wouldn’t want their child spoken to that way” a number of them have scripture in their bios and have variations on “God|Family|Fashion” in their bios. I’m like 100% sure that there is nowhere in the bible that says “It’s 100% ok for you to bully this 23-year-old who is trying to help you do something that you didn’t want to organize yourself”… I AM JUST SAYING. Seriously though, there is the golden rule aka do unto others as you would them do unto you. It’s about treating people the way you want to be treated. It’s a basic tenant of Christianity and most other religions… it’s also a basic tenant of being a good person. I don’t believe these women would want to be treated the way they treated me and thus I’m perplexed.
Now their behaviour aside here is the bones of what has been bugging me. We as influencers/content creators are told to EXPECT to get hate, to get a thicker skin AGAINST hate, not let it get to us etc. Why? Why should we expect to get hated on, bullied, cursed at, told how we are ugly, fat, stupid, intolerable etc because of our chosen profession. If we were to translate this logic into another situation ie. Sexual Abuse. The MAJORITY of you WOULD NOT VICTIM SHAME. Yes, by saying “suck it up you knew you would get hated on” you are victim shaming. Don’t get mad at me, face the reality of the situation. In middle school, if a child got bullied you would NEVER say to them “you brought it on yourself”. So why is hate or cyberbullying any different? Why are we allowing people to be hateful, negative and downright awful because they are protected by the anonymity of a computer screen?
The other thing that has bugged me to no end is that women treat each other like CRAP. We treat each other way worse than men. There is so much intolerance for anything other than being “perfect”, there is unfounded cattiness, bitchiness, cliquey-ness, meanness etc. In a world where we already deal with unfair treatment because of gender parity gaps why the actual F do we as a gender tear each other down. This makes no sense to me. Why when in theory there is potentially 50% of the world’s population that will discriminate against us because we are a different gender than they are, do we INSIST on also self-destructing?
So here are my solutions:
Those who spread hate and negativity, bully, cyberbully, commit abuses, etc. SHOULD BECOME AFRAID because we as a society need to start shaming/blaming/bringing to justice these people.
- I’m going to start: To the women who bullied me. I’ve talked about you on IG, YouTube and now my blog because I want to use what you’ve done to me to help others become less afraid to stand up to people like you. Yes, I think you are horrible people or people who were having bad days and took it out on me, and yes what you did was wrong. I think that how you treat someone on the internet is who you really are deep down. I wish I could call you out my name and handle but I won’t because I respect your privacy. I hope you never treat people this way again, but if you do, I hope that person is strong enough to stand up to you.
Women need to stop tearing each other down.
- My friend Zoe (The Canadian Creative) is doing collab month featuring women creators, we as women need to provide opportunities for other women to better themselves and it is imperative that we build each other up.
- Every single woman should actively stand up against this behaviour there is no exception, no excuse, no reason why you can’t. You wouldn’t want someone to tear down you, your mother, your sister, your aunt, your cousin, your daughter, your granddaughter so at least fight for them.
Regularly scheduled fashion content will be back next week
xoxo Steph
