For the past five days, I tried to live my life like a fashion blogger. Honestly, it was kind of exhausting. Before starting this week, I had posted on Instagram for the first time in a month.
I knew when I began this experiment I would be self-conscious of posting so often on social media. Most fashion bloggers’ followings are fans or people they don’t know – and since that’s not the case for myself, I knew that’s where I would struggle the most; especially knowing all of the people in my small town would see how much I was posting and I would get branded as even more of a “city girl.” This really isn’t a bad thing but I was just worried about the small town judgment and gossip.
- Day One
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I started my school week off with a striped skirt, dark grey long sleeve and a fuzzy pink statement jacket. I am not a morning person, and with all of my classes being before 3 p.m., it was hard to create and post content before 6 p.m. My photos this day were taken by my friend at the Balzac’s on campus before we went for supper. Balzac’s has a really cute wallpapered wall that ended up matching my pastel-themed outfit pretty well. I edited the photo that night, which took me a bit of time. After fixing the shadows under my eyes from the lighting, finding a filter and changed the saturation and highlights. It probably took me about an hour to edit both of the photos I posted.
I was focused more on having a really good photo to start with rather than having a bunch of stories that day, so I decided the story I shared Sunday evening was okay for today, just to get my feet in the water a bit. This post got 178 likes and 16 comments, more comments than my usual posts. I was offered twice to collab as an ambassador from a couple of (low-key sketchy) brands I had never heard of before. I also received comments from two other random accounts, one nonprofit organization and another random local clothing brand. The clothing brand’s comment asked me to follow them and the nonprofit simply commented that the post was creative.
- Day Two
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One thing I noticed while doing my research – Instagram stalking – of fashion bloggers is that they don’t always post a photo of their actual outfit that day. Instead, they’ll take multiple photos with various angles in one day and repost a different angle of the same outfit a couple days after the first post. I decided to use a photo I had taken in the summer for my post. This post got 140 likes and three comments, a pretty big difference between this post and the last one.
Then again, I don’t usually post two photos this close together. I decided to post a classic story, the city view from my apartment complete with a Huji filter. I really wish I had the time to take a photo in my outfit that day – it was one of my favourites of the week. I had on a cheetah print skirt, a dark blue Camila Cabello Real Friends t-shirt and a light blue leather jacket. This is a combo I wouldn’t have thought to put together before but I love the fashion blogger look of a longer skirt paired with a band/graphic tee.
- Day Three
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Day three was another day I used an old photo. While I really loved my outfit that day (red plaid pants, a black crop top and a slightly large black blazer), I didn’t have time in the day to get a good photo in the look. Maybe it was just the blazer, but the outfit made me feel important for some reason.
I did add to my Instagram stories a little more that day though. The post got 157 likes and 18 comments, a lot more comments than I’m used to for a post. Three of the comments on this post were from brands asking me to DM them to set up a collab. Again, they didn’t seem very reliable. One of the brands was a repeat from my first post, another of them only had three posts on their feed, while the third hadn’t uploaded since June.
I always see fashion bloggers and influencers trying out the new face filters on Instagram so I decided to give it a try. I have to admit, it felt really weird to take the video and post it. It had me constantly thinking, “Who cares about me turning my face?” and “Why am I even posting this?” It just didn’t feel genuine. I also knew since I didn’t tell anyone why I was posting so much, I was going to be judged in some way by my peers, especially the ones from my hometown.
The second thing I posted to my story that day was a text post that read “There are three months left in the decade. In. this. Decade. Take that risk, sis.” I saw this text post earlier that day and really liked it. Usually, I wouldn’t share things like that to my story, but this week was an exception. The third story I posted that day was of my friends and I at the Ram and the Rye for open mic night.
- Day Four
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Day four was an early morning and late night for me. I had an interview at 9 a.m. that morning, so it made me get up and get ready for the day. A little later in the morning, I posted a story to my account of my outfit of the day in the elevator of my apartment building. I also posted a photo of my letter board that read “Everything happens for a reason but like what the f*ck,” and yes, completed the post with a Huji filter.
Since it was World Mental Health Day, I added a post from RU Student Life that read, “Reminder. You may mess up, but you’re not a mess up. You are not your downfalls.”
My fourth post was a throwback – thanks to Instagram – of a tattoo I got in my first year of university. Since I was flying back home this evening for the holidays, I decided to post a photo of me and one of my best friends back home since she was picking me up from the airport.
My last story of the day was a post I decided to do on a whim. My flight was delayed a couple of hours so when we finally got to board, I decided to post about my travel troubles, you know, like any normal person does.
While I was waiting for my flight, I edited my actual Instagram post for the day. It was another photo that had been taken during the summer and I hadn’t gotten to post yet. That post got a lower amount of likes – 130 and one comment. The comment was from yet another brand. After clicking on it, I realized they were one of the companies that had already posted on one of my earlier pictures, but this time they added to message their official account, which I have to say actually looks real. I was surprised to see that this new account had over 270 posts and 100, 000 followers, including eight people that I follow.
- Day Five
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By Day five, I was with my family and honestly tired of having to post when I didn’t want to. Most of my day was spent catching up with family in my small town. SInce my flight had landed so late the night before, the story I reposted of my friend picking me up (with a sign!) counted for that day.
Later in the afternoon, I posted a Huji-filtered photo of my sister’s dog sitting on my lap. I also posted an adorable video I took when I surprised my niece by picking her up from school. My Instagram post was an afterthought, and by the time I was free and found someone to take a photo of me, it was nighttime and any chance of good lighting was lost. The lighting in my photo is what made editing the photo difficult – with all of the shadows and the odd angle, I honestly couldn’t decide if I actually liked it or not, but at this point, it didn’t matter if it was my favourite photo, I didn’t have time to take another one and I wouldn’t be able to improve the lighting in my house anyway. The post garnered 152 likes and four comments.
With all of my overthinking at the start of the week also came curiosity. I wanted to know what it would take to do this while being busy with work and school. And well, it felt like a lot, but it was something I saw as a job for a week. It was something I had to do, not what I wanted to do. If it was a different week, when I wasn’t so busy and had planned to go to cool places around the city with my friends, it probably would’ve been a little more enjoyable for me.
Since I didn’t tell many people I was doing this, some of my friends didn’t know what to think. Apparently two of my best friends from home were confused as to why I was posting constantly, to the point where they thought something had happened and they were worried about me. I’m pretty sure they thought I was having some sort of mental breakdown or mid-university life crisis.
While it had its struggles, this week did give me a lot of confidence. It was fun picking out outfits like a fashion blogger. Simply walking through the streets felt like an event. People moved for me instead of me moving for them. I noticed I also held my head a little higher in the streets of Toronto this week. The experiment made me feel good. I’m not sure if it was the idea of pretending I was a person with that much confidence or if it was feeding off of the validation from strangers that had me feeling like I owned the streets. Whatever it was, it was fun to be that person for a week.