Is Social Media Ruining Your Confidence? | A Tall Girl’s Take on Social Media

Good morning everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who's tuning in today's doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say, make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast, on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, so that you can stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my every day life. Also, feel free to leave me your review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Oh my gosh, I literally can't believe that November is here, and as Mariah Carey would say, it's time. It's the way I couldn't even finish that. I really thought to myself that I would just spare you guys and not even try to hit the high note. I would probably just try to go for a lower note. And I think that I probably embarrass myself even more than just simply trying for that higher note. Do you feel the secondhand embarrassment too? Okay, I'm sorry, I genuinely apologize for that, but it is time. It's holiday. Holiday season is literally right around the corner, like Thanksgiving is coming up. Next thing you know, you have all of the holidays coming up in December. The weather is getting cold. Next thing you know, it's gonna start snowing, like well, at least in New York City. I don't know where the rest of you guys or all of you guys are located, but at least in New York City is going to just it's gonna feel very, very jolly, and I'm just excited for that. I think one of the biggest things that I'm very excited about are the holiday parties. Okay, food first and foremost food, family and friends, and the outfits. I hope y'all know it's really it's really going to be a fashion show out here, oh dear. And then I have to figure out what I'm going to wear. That's so much work. I can barely figure out what I want to wear on a daily basis to school, and now I have to figure out what I'm wearing too these fashion show caliday parties. Oh but we're going to show up and show out, and that's a fact. I can already feel the stress coming down and speaking of what to wear, before I get into this episode, I would like to thank GOA Shoes for partnering with me on this episode because if you're anything like me, you understand the struggle of having extra long limbs and extra large body parts and the struggle of finding clothing and shoes that's it. But GOA Shoes is here to help end that struggle. GOA Shoes is a platform to shop different brands that provide high quality, fashionable shoes for women with larger feet, from heels to flats to boots. GOA provides inclusive sizing ranging from US ten to US fourteen and EU forty two to EU forty six, And when I was scrolling through their website, I just love how stylish their options were because as a tall woman, I'm sure we all understand the struggle of finding clothing that fits our dimensions but is also super cute and on trend. And GOA alone with their partner brands, do both of those things perfectly. With the capital P and with the holiday season and holiday parties coming up, you definitely need to check them out, So head on over to goashoes dot com to shop their footwear and check out their Instagram at go Isshoes. Hey, y'all know the drill. Y'all know the drill. I got a discount code for you guys. Make sure you use code tall Girl pot to get fifteen percent off your purchase with go Isshues. And thank you again go is Shoes for partner with me on this video. I definitely need to see you guys showing up and showing out at these holiday parties. I'm actually expecting it. It's a requirement, So just do yourself a favor and head on over there. All of their information is going to be linked in my description. So today, as you can probably sell by the title, we are going to be talking about social media, arguably one of the most toxic places on this planet. Okay, probably not just this planet, in the galaxy, like the entire galaxy. Okay, that's kind of weird because social media isn't even an actual place. It's just an app or several apps, or maybe even a website. But it's online. It's virtual. There's it's not tangible. There's no land, there's no infrastructure, there's no buildings, nothing. It's literally a virtual space. Yet we take it so seriously, all right, I should probably explain the context of this a little bit. So I was catching up on a bunch of work and a bunch of school work because as you probably know, my midterm season just ended and I fell very much behind in a lot of things and I just really need to use this next week or two to catch up. So that's what I've been doing. I've been trying to catch up. And I like a little bit of background noise, not too much, nothing too crazy like music, because I will actually get distracted by that. Let me know, like hit me up on my social Autoto Gross podcast if you also get very distracted if you listen to music while doing work. But anyways, I don't like to listen to music. I like to put something on the but I like people talking, maybe looking at them doing things kind of to remind me from time to time that I'm a human being and I'm just not a robot doing work twenty four seven, three, sixty five and sometimes sixty six. So a little bit of a distraction to like pull me back to reality. So that's essentially what I was doing. I was basically just watching videos on YouTube and I just let them run, because you know, when a video is done it just like auto plays like another suggestive video, So I just let it run, do AutoPlay whatever, because it's not like I'm paying full on attention to these things. And eventually it just got to the videos with a bunch of fall holes full twenty twenty three clothing holes and recreating Pincher's outfits and Yanna, I'm like, okay, yeah, cool. I like seeing people like try on stuff and even though I can't really take it literally because most of these people aren't around my high end. See that's the thing. That's the thing. It eventually got to the part where they would talk about their sizing. Usually that happens as like a reference, like yeah, like i'm five two, as a reference, I'm a size small in this I'm a size extra large and that or I got this size, I got that size, YadA YadA yah, just so that people who are watching and probably fit around their dimensions would know how it would fit them, or even if they're different sizes from them. They would do that as a way just for other people to use that as a reference, so they would know they're the same size as them, or around the same height or have the same body proportions. As them, and they would know how the clothes would fit them, or even if they're around the similar body dimensions, but maybe if they're a size up or two sizes or three sizes up, then they would also know how the clothes would look on them. That's essentially what they would do. However, when all of these YouTubers, influencers, creators, whatever, got to their height, it was like five to one, five, three, five four. It just seems like the people in a lot of these videos that I was watching were not over five six, And I was like, oh goodness, is everybody is everybody the shore Like? It just had me thinking because there was just a lot of heights that were quite a few inches below my height. And this can definitely be the case for not just YouTube, but a lot of the other social media platforms where a lot of our feed is filled with women, especially if they're in the clothing space filled with women who are on the shorter side. Now I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. I think that there should definitely be repers in for everything, for all heights, for all bodies, for all racists, and so on. But I just find it weird that me being a tole person, Like why is my feed crated to just like showing short people short women? And that's definitely something that I struggled with when I was younger, when I just started out on social media. Fun fact, I don't even think I got onto social media till I was like in eighth grade. It was like seventh It was like seventh or eighth grade when I started getting on to social media, and that was a time where I already felt pretty bad about my height because you know, I was going to school a lot of my peers were shorter than me and making fun of me. Those were those that was the start of, like not the startup, but that was like the middle of some of the worst years in terms of me being bullied because of my height. But then when I joined social media, and not only am I seeing my shorter friends on there, then I'm just seeing other people on there that are short as well, And then that would lead to a lot of self comparison, like, oh my gosh, everybody seems to be short. I'm just this tall freak. I stick out from the crowd. I stick out like a sword thumb. And even when my friends would post pictures. Even when my friends would post pictures of me or of us as a group, and I was there, I was always I was never in the middle. I was always at one person at the end. And the best way I could describe it is, it just looks like a straight line, like let's just we're just like talking about the tops with heads right now. It was like a straight line because everybody was fairly around the same height, and then you have that one sharp line going up to reach the top of my head, like everybody was fairly around the same level. And then I was just ooh. I was like I was up there. I was up there compared to everyon else, and it just looked so wrong. It didn't look very picturesque, it didn't look very aesthetic, and I just oh. Sometimes I would tell them to take those photos down, because number one, you'd even get my approval of it, but number two, I just looked so I looked so out of place, and I felt really really bad because of that. But even with those pictures that were posted, and then just seeing on my feet all of these short girls who had boyfriends and all of these short girls who looked great in these clothes and knowing full well I didn't know that. I didn't know that, but now I know full well at this present moment that the clothe that they wear was not going to work for me. Obviously we have very different bodies. But because they were able to wear that shirt or that's good or that dress that I wanted to wear but I couldn't because I was very tall I am very tall, I just felt really bad, like wow, like she looks so good in that. How come she gets to look so good in that? But I can't? And that really played a big part in my self esteem issues and for me when I was playing around with social media, I really grew to hate it. I hated social media with a burning passion because I used to compare myself all the time to people other women. I should say I used to compare myself to other women all the time on there, and most of my feed was just filled with shorter women that were wearing the things that I wanted to wear but I couldn't wear because it just wouldn't fit my long dimensions, or them having their significant others and I'm like wow, like I can't get one because I'm taller than all the other boys. In my lass or in my grade, or seeing pictures of me with my other friends, and I'm like, wow, I look like I if you didn't see my face, I could very well look like I'm a full grown adult compared to these people. And it really got to the point it got so bad, to the point where I used to say to myself, Wow, short girls are prettier. Like I actually started thinking to myself, short girls are prettier, All short girls are pretty. Short girls are the prettiest. Why are short girls so pretty? Why are short girls prettier? And I really used to think I'm ugly simply because I'm tall. Social media and all of these things that were on my feed way back when before I actually was able to have some type of control over what I could see on social media, because I didn't know how to do that at the time, I used to think that simply because I'm tall, I'm ugly because everybody else, everybody else, even though its people that were on my feed, everybody else, because social media has pushed it on the algorithms and stuff like that. On my algorithms, everybody else is prettier because they're shorter. And I felt really, really bad at that time, it was it was just very It wasn't a good moment. I did not have a good relationship with social media. And then it actually wasn't until I started this podcast that I changed my views on social media because I was posting stuff about being tall and tall women confidence and tall girl this and tall girl that. And then I actually started actively finding the tall community on the platforms so that I can attract the right audience for this podcast, and you know, I started to see it as a good thing until until a lot of interesting things happened. I basically found the tall people, and I found the people that really really liked tall people, like in a very creepy way, Like, yes, there were mean comments. I want to say hate comments, but mean comments, and people would just say all these horrible things about not not necessarily horrible things about tall people, but they would just be like, yeah, like you klutz and doof and y'all look out of place, blah blah blah. I was like, I've been here this for years. It's whatever. The DMS is, Where the DMS is, where it started. Don't even get me started on the creepy DMS of people asking me for fee picks asking me for leg picks or asking if they can climb this tree girl, no further comment. Once I started actually liking being tall because I was finding these people of this tall community, I started falling back into the whole of disliking my height because I'm gonna just say it straight up, no filter. There are people out there that sexualized tall women. There are people out there that's sexualize tall women, and they can be extremely aggressive about it, where they start asking you these extremely personal, extremely creepy questions. They start pushing their fantasies onto you. They start asking you to play out their fantasies, and it's like, I don't even know you. I could very well be an axe murderer on the other side of the planet, and you're asking me to play out your fantasies for you. Are you okay? I'm just saying that social media can be a good place where you can get like a bunch of support and it can feel like a safe space to share your thoughts and you can find your people. But then there's also that other side where it's not just like the comments and the self comparison, but it's also the creepy people that hit you up on there and just make you feel gross inside, because I definitely was feeling gross inside at some point, and at one point I really started to feel ashamed because I just got of the mindset that, oh, like, tall girls are ugly and shore girls are prettier, and this and that and the other. I just got out of that mindset now to thinking that people only see my height as something that they are into for their own pleasure. That it just it wasn't a good feeling. So if you're a tall girl who's also struggling with this, my number one tip for navigating social media as a tall woman is to find that community. Follow other people who look like you, follow other tall women, connect with other tall women online. Finding your community can make a huge difference. Let me tell you, I love opening my social media apps and just scrolling through my feed and seeing other confident tall women on my feed sharing tips, hacks, stories and whatnot. It really does make me appreciate my height. And I am just so so grateful for that. And I am so so so grateful for y'all, because isn't that the point of social media, or at least one of the points of social media to embrace your uniqueness, to appreciate your uniqueness, because we can't necessarily find everything in common with the people around us. So social media can be a great way to connect with others who understand those unique things about you. Just like with being tall, finding another tall women online, they understand the struggles, They understand the confidence issues, they understand the self esteem issues. They just they understand and a lot of us do have similar stories. And I think that social media can be a great way to find your people and to connect with these people that you have never met in real life. And let me tell you, after two and a half years of being on social media and doing this podcast and stuff, social media has definitely changed my perspective on my heighth end. Has helped me love and appreciate it more so. If we're struggling with confidence and self esteem because of social media, you are not in the right place because the algorithm is not necessarily going to feed you what you need to see. You have to go out and actively look for it. You have to actively search for it. You're going to have to actively seek it. And you know, if you've found a Tall Girls podcast, this is a great starting point. You are in the right place. So yeah, social media can definitely. It has its moments, it has its bad moments, but with the right people in the right community, it can definitely change a lot for you. And that's my two cents on social media, because you know, I feel like a lot of people think that social media is very bad, but it's not necessarily the case. It can be great and you can use it for good, especially finding confidence as a tall one. So yeah, with that sins, we're talking about social media. Hit me up on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast on Instagram, TikTok and pinches. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Let me know your thoughts on social media and how it impacts your confidence and your self esteem. I would love to talk about that with you. And also don't forget to leave me your review. Let me know how tell you are. I really want to find my height twin. Everything is going to be linked in the description, and thank you again to go Issues for partnering with me on this episode. Make sure you check them out. Their information is also going to be in the description and I will catch you in the next one. Good night and goodbye.