India Today Conclave
India Today Conclave

"My Instagram Made Me Fat"

"My hunger for likes led to pizza. And dumplings. And donuts. And then more pizza."

21 March, 2018
"My Instagram Made Me Fat"

The baby in the backseat screams in protest as I awkwardly parallel park my best friend's car on a steep San Francisco hill. It's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and I've woken up two grown adults, a hysterical two-month old, and myself on vacation, for what?

A donut. Or if I'm being honest, a picture of a donut.

This bakery ranks high on the hit list of most Instagram foodies, which is an identity I've embraced for almost as long as I've used the photo-sharing service.

Being an Instagram foodie didn't make me famous, but it did make me feel good—until it started making me fat.

Here's how it happened: For the last four years, I've done social media professionally (including, full disclosure, as the former social media editor for this very site), and I've mostly worked in fashion. Some of my friends and colleagues have massive followings—​their likes roll in at a rate that seems like hundreds per minute. And then there are the brand "influencers" that I've worked with on various projects whose followings surpass millions—​a wistful shot in a breezy slip dress can result in serious sales. The power of Instagram was obvious—and so very tantalizingly close. With the right picture, a few key regrams, and some clever captioning, wasn't I just a step away from making my monthly salary from a single Instagram? Well…no. Many have tried. Many have failed. And because it's my job to analyze this stuff, I know exactly why.

Fans love a few specific things in a fashion Instagram account, most of which have little to do with actual fashion: a barely-there physique, an It-girl haircut, a packed travel schedule, a strategically deployed cute boyfriend/pet and a closet full of recognizable staples from Chloé​, YSL, and of course, Chanel. So what's a single girl with six-month-old, long layers, a cat allergy, a limited budget, and a desk job to do?

Eat. And eat, and eat some more.

I've always loved food and food culture, but the obsession became real about two years ago, when one of my favorite food Instagram accounts started responding to my posts. That brought in a (relatively) huge rush of followers, all of whom came back photo after photo with their likes and comments (whoever says the dopamine response to a sudden bunch of likes isn't real has clearly never felt it). But as in fashion, food Instagrammers love a couple of things the most: a big plate of soup dumplings, a pile of donuts, a burger oozing cheese, and of course, pizza all day, every day. 

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The need to satisfy my following, small as it was, was all the incentive I needed to order the fries instead of the salad, the mac and cheese instead of the brussels sprouts, the Saturday-morning bagel and the late-night slice of pizza. And way before my follower count climbed to the coveted "K"; before my average likes rose above average, two numbers became massively clear: I'd gained 20 pounds, none of my clothes fit, and my overall happiness? Approaching zero.

Whenever I read a fevered piece on how social media is destroying our society, I like to send over a link to a New York Times editorial from 1877. It's called "The Telephone, Unmasked," and goes into hysterical detail about the "vast capabilities of mischief" and "imminence of danger" of the telephone, claiming that this "nefarious instrument" would be "an immediate end to all privacy." Sound familiar? A new medium may cause our interactions and issues to manifest differently, but people are always people, and they've been worrying about the same things since pretty much the beginning of civilization. So it stands to reason that Essena O'Neill wasn't really revealing anything by exposing the effort that went into every shot on her high-traffic account. That's the same perception problem discussed most famously in Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth;" a lie that's been foisted upon the modern woman for generations—you're supposed to be all things to all people, and you're supposed to make it look effortless. It's a lie that's so good, it even works in reverse—you're such a lady that doing something as unladylike as cramming burgers into your face every weekend day has no effect on you at all. You're the cool girl who doesn't gain weight, the good feminist who doesn't diet her self away

The deeper I got into Instagram's foodie culture, attending meet-ups and dinners, and even dating a few well-known faces within that world, the more I realized I missed the boat on Instagram fame, in more ways than one. I'm on the older end of the millennial generation: it's no coincidence that the biggest names in non-professional food photography are very young women and men in their 30s, who are metabolically gifted in a way that I am not. And I've chosen to give my real energy and focus to the brands I work for, rather than creating my own—where I may be invisible, but hey, I invisibly got 11,000 likes on a single photo this morning alone.

I turned 30 at the end of 2015, and realized that there's never been a better moment to embrace all the things that I am. I'm a traveler, I'm an active person, and I'm even a bit of a shopper. I gave myself and my Instagram a new theme, grouping photos by color every month to force me to get out and observe the world in a different way. I've lost 10 pounds and 30 Instagram followers in six weeks, and I couldn't be happier about it, because "foodie" isn't a label I need anymore. Hanging a dozen defining terms on yourself like Christmas tree ornaments doesn't serve you when it's time for you to change. Building an identity on social media can actually prevent you from figuring out who you are. And when you find yourself heavy with disillusionment and the cellulite of half a pizza eaten just because it was there, remember: you don't need a personal brand—you just need to make yourself happy.​

Credit: Cosmopolitan
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