Sophie: How did your body image issues begin?
Food has always been a problem for me, as far as I can remember. I just never wanted to eat a lot... I do recall the first time I thought about the way I looked though. It was in the changing rooms during PE at school and all the girls were being loud and shouting at it each other, you know how it used to be. I was in my cubicle and the popular girls started going "who's the skinniest in the class!?" Then a girl, who was anorexic at the time, shouted out "Saoirse Fallon is definitely the skinniest". She said it in such a weird way, and she was also super popular, but I remember smiling to myself, and at home we had a big mirror wall, and I remember trying on jeans thinking "wow I'm skinny as fuck!" I was happy about it. Until people started calling me anorexic, so that was short lived. (laughs)
Did going from being in school to being home-schooled influence your body image?
Yes. We went from being in school, where we weren’t able to go on our phones to then being on the Internet all day and all night, with no supervision. During that time, I saw some horrific stuff online, as did most people our age. So yeah, dropping out of school did have a big effect. Also, I was already sexually active when I dropped out, so there was a pre-existing insecurity there that got worse from being surrounded by social media and unrealistic body standards. It was a mess.
You were always on Tumblr, so can you tell me what your experience was like, because it is known for being full of ED content.
On Tumblr, I didn’t seek out Thinspo (hesitates) ... okay, I didn’t always seek it out. It would just come up for me because I interacted with it and sometimes, I did like it, so it was coming up on my feed. I liked it because it was the only place I was seeing my body at the time being represented and being idolized. There were a lot of ED accounts on Tumblr, but they’d normally be called ANA instead, like #ANA.
Was there a moment when you realized the standard switched from being skinny to being slim-thick?
Yes. We went from being in school, where we weren’t able to go on our phones to then being on the Internet all day and all night, with no supervision. During that time, I saw some horrific stuff online, as did most people our age. So yeah, dropping out of school did have a big effect. Also, I was already sexually active when I dropped out, so there was a pre-existing insecurity there that got worse from being surrounded by social media and unrealistic body standards. It was a mess. We were recently looking at a photo from twenty-fourteen (see below), and you acknowledged how unhealthily skinny you looked. Was there a point when you decided you wanted to change, and gain weight?
We were recently looking at a photo from twenty-fourteen (see below), and you acknowledged how unhealthily skinny you looked. Was there a point when you decided you wanted to change, and gain weight?
Yes, for sure. I started drinking those crazy shakes that were five hundred calories, but they weren’t making me gain any weight, like, it wasn't doing anything, so I gave up. Then I started smoking cannabis to help with my anxiety, and it made me hungry, so I started eating and now I'm a healthy weight! (Laughs) It took me eight or ten years to get to fifty kilos. I wasn’t just cannabis. I grew up and my body changed, I turned into a woman, and it was weird for me. Seeing my body with some weight on it.