Social media helped me accept myself!

Let me tell you how the digital transformation that is social networks allowed me to accept my scars. Indeed, this article is less academic because it talks about my history as a 20-years-old woman who has been affected by several diseases that have left their mark on my body.

So let’s get down to business, shall we?

When I was 14 years old, I was diagnosed with a double vertebral fracture. A rare medical case for a young girl in full physical health. I had to be treated. The first step of my treatment was to stop all sports! Once my dancing shoes were stored in my closet and my golf bag in the garage, it was time for the first medical treatment: the corset. Imagine yourself with a big resin shell around your body, squeezing your chest, preventing you from breathing and giving you warmth, that’s what a corset looks like but in 3 times worse.

Moreover, living with the corset was not the most disturbing. But the look of others was, and especially the words of some, who like to call you RoboCop “just for fun”!

Then, the corset didn’t work so the solution became surgery. So that is how at the age of 14, I found myself with a 20cm scar on my back. That’s how I started to hate my body. Indeed, it wasn’t like my girlfriends’ ones, or like the ones of the girls you saw in the magazines.

However, social networks have become more and more present, Instagram accounts of “normal” girls have appeared. The natural beauty came to the forefront, and I began to regain my self-confidence. That is how I gradually dared to show a little bit of the scar that I used to find so naughty.

Self-confidence can be ruined in a minute

Then, at 17, I was diagnosed with vitiligo! The little beauty I found in my body disappeared at that very moment. Vitiligo has spread more and more. But that’s when I discovered model Winnie Harlow on Instagram. She is a beautiful woman who proudly displayed on social media her body, marked by vitiligo. I started following her and understood that you had to love your body for what it was! Thanks to this discovery, I began to follow women advocating their diversities, their differences, their scars and who simply show how much they love themselves as they are.

That’s how I learned to love my body thanks to social networks! Of course, social networks have not done everything alone. It is also by meeting people who proved to me that my differences could be the most beautiful things, making me unique. That is how my self-confidence has gradually returned. Even if today I am not 100% comfortable with my body, I have learned to love it and to no longer hide my flaws.