Bella Hadid has spoken out about the pressures of Instagram and the lessons she has learnt about authenticity after struggling with her mental health, and we could not feel her more.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bella Hadid referred to taking selfies while crying as a way of expressing how she was feeling while in the throes of anxiety and depression.
“I would have really depressive episodes and my mum or my doctor would ask how I was and instead of having to respond in text, I would just send them a photo,” she said. “It was the easiest thing for me to do at the time because I was never able to explain how I was feeling.”
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On top of that, she saw taking these pictures as a way of fighting against the myths of perfection that Instagram can promote.
“[When I posted the pictures] it was to make sure that anybody that was feeling that way knew it was OK to feel that way,” she said.
“Even though on Instagram things look so beautiful, at the end of the day, we are all cut from the same cloth. I felt like it was just good for me to be able to speak my truth and at some point I wasn’t able to post nice pretty pictures anymore. I was over it.”
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Bella also described how painful she has found her struggle with her mental health. “I would just be in excruciating and debilitating mental and physical pain, and I didn’t know why,” she said.
This experience, though, has made her unapologetic about what she posts online and how she lives her life. And quite frankly, we couldn’t be any more here for it.
“I don’t know if that’s what people want on Instagram, and that’s fine,” she says of her selfies. “I don’t have to be on Instagram forever. I feel like real is the new real, and that’s what’s important to me.”
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She admits that she's feeling a lot better since her lowest days, but admits finding comfort in fans replying to her posts saying that they've felt the way she has.
“My brain fog is feeling better, I don’t feel depressed,” she said. "I don’t have as much anxiety as I usually do. But tomorrow I could wake up and [be] the complete opposite.
"That’s why I get so overwhelmed. But that post made me less lonely because I had a lot of people that have reached out saying, “I feel that way too.”
