Interview with Tara Stewart - Are we entering the new age of Instagram influencers?
By Neasa Gorrell
Forget unrealistic beauty standards and say no to fast fashion – the picture-perfect influencer is becoming outdated, and here is why. A new wave of influencers is gaining traction by moving towards sustainable living and body diversity, such as Tara Stewart – an icon for pre-loved fashion and body positivity.
In 2020, around the world, our lives moved almost entirely online, as we lived through lockdown situations. With this, the world rallied together through social media, as a global community. From the comfort of our homes, and with the aid of our smartphones, we supported many major current issues. Yet, we also realised that in recent years the world of social media has become so saturated with the same streams of content and influencers whom not all, but the vast majority, seem to promote similar things – fast-fashion, unrealistic lifestyles, and one singular image of beauty.
It can be challenging to find someone online that can offer something different – a new perspective, new outlooks on life, or an inclusive platform that aligns with your ideals. The world we live in today offers a vastly different reality online and on the ground, and there are millions of people with different identities and areas of interest. Yet, on social media platforms like Instagram, we still have to trawl through many of these similar accounts of influencers who have sold their audience to major corporate industries. As young women, it is often the brands like Boohoo, or other unethical and unsustainable companies, who we see advertised by the influencers we follow in the form of targeted advertising.
In fact, Boohoo Group PLC own several online ultra-fast-fashion retailers, including PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, and MissPap, to name a few. Earlier this year, a Sunday Times Investigation found this company has been underpaying employees, offering as little as £3.50 an hour. Yet, they have made colossal promotion deals with reality and social media personalities, including a number of Love Island stars, which saw their sales soar.
Keeping in mind that every action almost always has a reaction, in response to this style of influencing, Instagram too is seeing the rise of a new age of Influencer. It seems we are witnessing a surge in those who stay true to their ethics and beliefs, those who remind us that social media is not reality, and those who promote inclusivity of the many identities of people all around the world. On the Irish social media scene, people like 2FM DJ and podcast host Tara Stewart, have turned their social media platforms into something with a message. Slowly, but surely, Tara’s Instagram platform has become a hub for those with interests in second-hand shopping, sustainable fashion and living, and a place supporting body diversity, promoting many ideas of beauty of the modern woman. A new age Instagram platform. For Tara, it was her moral beliefs on environmentalism and sustainability that pushed her to stop promoting fast-fashion.
“I know a lot of us have pushed past this moral dilemma over the years because we know the world we live in isn’t perfect, which is true, but at the same time, the fact that I was encouraging people to buy [fast-fashion] is where my issue was,” Tara says.
Instead, Tara now promotes sustainable products and companies, as well as Irish industries, and encourages people to shop local. She is often second-hand shopping from vintage stores or charity shops, thrift shopping for quirky homeware pieces (like a banana phone) and even up-styling clothing she already owns. Not only this, but Tara also has a podcast called Dirty Laundry, where she talks to other people in the sustainability industry, as well as those advocating for body positivity and diversity. She does this to give them a platform and share this platform with her audience. Because of this, Tara has created an online community of positivity, advocating for the normalisation of all body types.
Tara shared her beliefs on body image issues that Instagram as a platform creates, disseminates and perpetuates to all users of the application. As it is an image-based server, every day, it is the most popular influencers that get the brand endorsement offers and push forward the same idealised and secular images of beauty. “There’s a reason why they get celebrities for endorsements, and it is because they influence so many people,” Tara says. Tara also shared her beliefs on influencers editing their body image so entirely that it doesn’t look like reality.
“It kind of feels like an endless circle, especially when the people don’t disclose the bodywork they have had done. When it comes to FaceTune and altering your body or face, and I don’t mean adding a filter, or colouring, or whitening your teeth, but if you’re altering your complete body to an extent that you don’t actually look like that in real life, I feel like it should be disclosed. When it says on Instagram at the top of an image that ‘This image is a Paid Partnership’, I feel it should also say ‘This photo was edited’,” Tara says.
In my own experience as a young person in modern Irish society, I definitely would say that our views of beauty and our bodies have been damaged to a certain degree. For young women, I can say we feel there are such high standards placed on us in having to conform to this particular image of beauty. It is often shared on Instagram as; the tall, skinny, effeminate woman with long flowing hair, flawless skin, perfect smile, luscious lips, thin waist but big hips, strong facial bone structure, cute nose, small hands, thigh gap… The list could go on, but I would prefer to stop it here, as to not feed into it any more than it deserves.
In conversing with Tara, she too acknowledged the pressure Instagram placed on young men and women to look a certain way. Like many others today, she believes the platform could be more transparent about the editing of images and more accepting of normal body shapes. “When posting an image of cellulite, maybe we shouldn’t point it out in saying ‘Oh everybody has cellulite’ because, yeah they do, but maybe we shouldn’t point it out because that would make it seem like a flaw, we should just make it normal, ” Tara says. On struggling to love your body image, Tara gave me this quick and quirky tip, which she too learned from a follower, showing that her platform is a welcoming, learning environment.
“This may sound basic, but get in front of the mirror naked, or your favourite bikini or whatever, have a glass of wine or juice, put some music on, look at yourself and dance. You can look at your whole body, and appreciate what it does for you every single day. I know it sounds cliché, but when you realise how important your body is on the inside as well as outside, you’ll love it so much more,” says Tara. So are we seeing, through people like Tara Stewart, the Instagram Influencer evolve into something connected closer to reality? Are we really on the dawn of the new, popular influencer – the new age of Instagram Influencer? For society’s sake, I would like to think we are. On a final note, Tara has offered one last word of advice, against the Instagram beauty standards, which I think we should all listen to.
“If there are people you compare yourself to or people on Instagram that you wish you looked like – just unfollow them.” It really is as simple as that. Like the old saying goes – out of sight, out of mind, and hopefully, for the influencers and ultra-fast-fashion companies who profit off their following – they, too, are out of pocket.
