Beauty
“Trolls Call Me A Pig, Tell Me To Put My Belly Away But I Won’t Stop Sharing My Rolls And Stretch Marks”
Hate comments or cruel messages don’t phase Ellie Sweet anymore.
Being a plus-size content creator has its ups and downs. The downs are what Ellie Sweet has opened up about in a new interview with Fabulous. She regularly gets vicious messages from nasty trolls about her look and 38F breasts, with most calling her a pig and others telling her to lose weight, through her page named @xeliesweetx.
On Instagram, the 24-Year-Old is known for posting self-love content that encourages people to accept their bodies, rolls, cellulite, stretch marks, and all.
“The common thing I get from trolls is people calling me fat, which doesn’t phase me, because fat is not an insult, it is just a descriptive word. People often tell me to lose weight or call me a pig. Some people will comment the pig emoji on my posts and then others will write a full paragraph about how I’m doing something so wrong.”
Though Elle receives kind comments from those inspired by her posts, most haven’t been so kind.
The Maidstone, Kent-based added: “People also say I should go to the gym and put my belly and saggy b**bs away. I had this one person send me abuse after abuse – they kept calling me a silly, fat c**t, constantly over and over and over again. There were like 20 messages saying the same thing.” But regardless, Elle insisted she will continue to share her self-love images on social media.
The influencer admitted she’s extremely confident with her body and doesn’t let the nasty messages from trolls get her down.
“I’m definitely very confident in my body now, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the way I look. I don’t focus on my weight or anything. I am very confident, most of the time, with my body, but it’s often because of the way I’ve programmed my mind to be. The way I have done that is, I have learnt that my body is the only permanent home that I will ever get.”
Elle continued: “When you live in your house, you don’t treat your living space unkindly or with disrespect and so I don’t want to do that to the one home I will always have.”
“I have programmed that in my head and most of what we hate about your bodies and the insecurities we have, we were taught from a young age, and to me, that shows you that you can unlearn these things. One person would look at me and think I’m beautiful. But both of those are irrelevant if I don’t feel positive about myself.”
“Every time I get a negative thought about my body now, and obviously I still do, I’m human, it’s easier for me to shut it out of my mind and to remind myself of all of those things, rather than dwell on it and try and change it.”
“I used to go through so many different diets and stupid things such waist trainers, to try and make my body look a certain way, but no matter what I did, it never changed because of the way I saw myself. I was always going to pick out small things about myself, but it wasn’t until I switched my mindset. Our body is the least important thing about us anyway.”
Elle added that she’s had quite a lot of trolling; people have said some really nasty things and people can be really, really abusive with how they speak.
When I first started Instagram, it was very much a shock, I didn’t expect people to be that unkind. That did knock my confidence at first, but I deal with trolling really well, I think. I am good at reminding myself of why these people say these things. People won’t say horrible things to someone if they are happy within themselves. Often, they’re not happy in themselves and they don’t like other people being happy in themselves, so they try to bring them down.”
The influencer pointed out it takes one person, to not listen to the comments, to inspire more people to do the same thing.
“I remind myself in those moments that it’s nothing to do with me and it’s how they feel and it’s their opinions. I often block people or remove them as a follower if they are being that certain way, because I don’t want them on my profile. I often laugh off hate comments, because it shows more about them than it does about me. When I’ve told my friends about the messages I’ve got, they will gasp and will be shocked at how I deal with it so well, but when you post things online and often controversial things some people don’t agree with, you are going to get that.”
The beauty went on to say that most people don’t like her Instagram content, as they aren’t ready to accept women being open with their bodies.
Elle stated: “Everything I post, I post it knowing that someone might disagree. I post mainly about self-love and there’s a lot of people that are against self-love world and think that people that promote self-love are promoting laziness, but that’s not the case. When you promote self-love, you are promoting loving your body and treating your body with kindness.”
“But people get confused and think that people aren’t caring or looking after themselves. In fact, they are looking after themselves more than they ever have.”
Aside from self-love content, the influencer also posts about self-pleasure, period positivity, and body hair. They are subject matter people aren’t ready to see or hear about.
“A lot of people think that periods should be private, but it’s a natural thing and it should be spoken about. The same with self-pleasure – when you’re in school, we hear about guys mention it, but if a girl would mention it, it would be so wrong, but it’s such an important thing and an important part of self-love. With body hair, Elle alleged people expect women to be freshly shaved, so if armpit hair or bikini hair is seen, it’s considered wrong.
No matter how sad or unhappy she’d been in herself, the influencer insisted she could never say any of the things that trolls have said to her to anybody else.
“It didn’t knock my confidence but I have got used to it and keep reminding myself that it’s nothing to do with me and I need to focus on me and not what they are telling me. Now I see a hate comment or a message and it doesn’t even phase me anymore.” For a long time, Elle struggled to feel good and felt like her size wasn’t normal because of how the media portrayed things.
The change of mindset clicked when she saw other creators with her exact body type living their life to the fullest.
She said of the struggle at the time: “You will pick up on the little things about yourself but you will notice the same on someone else and see nothing wrong with them. Since learning that perspective, that I was mainly being harsh on myself, from that I realized how much I was helped by other people and therefore I wanted to make other people feel more comfortable in their body, no matter what size or shape it is.”
Of the lovely messages she gets, Elle said every single one means everything and is 100% the whole reason why she will continue with her self-love posts.
“When you see someone else being confident and feeling comfortable in themselves, it’s contagious. People often tell me that I’ve helped them with thing such as being able to look in the mirror or wearing a bikini for the first time. Honestly, those messages mean everything to me. I screenshot so many of those and keep them in an album on my phone, so if I ever feel like I’m losing motivation, I read them and am then reminded of why I do this.”
Elle feels very grateful for the following she has created and delighted to have people messaging her asking for advice.
