#bodypositivity
Marin McCue | @dopeame
1,784 Posts
2,147 followers
1,368 following
Marin McCue is a body-positive yoga instructor from Calgary, Alta. You can find McCue at Yoga Nova in Marda Loop, YYC Cycle, Liv Yoga and Wellness and Bold Athlete. McCue also wrote a book titled, Be The Change. You can visit her website at www.dopeame.com
How scrolling through Instagram impacts our self-esteem
By Sarah Kirk
Instagram is a social media platform that gives people the tools to communicate the events in their lives through pictures and video, however not everyone is inclined to talk about their bad days and instead use the platform to create an ideal image of their life.
When you’re in control of which photos you post or withhold, it becomes easy to convince everyone that you’re living the good life, even if that’s the only side of the story you’re telling.
Marin McCue, a Calgary yoga instructor and body-positivity motivational speaker, spends a lot of time on Instagram. She has over 2,000 followers. But the social media app comes with a downside. A certain sensation overcomes her when scrolling through her Instagram feed.
“I think it's an aspect of the surface level connection on social media, it's so easy to look at people's images and just assume all their life is perfect."
McCue realizes that despite how real people are behind almost every Instagram account, not everyone shows an accurate depiction of how their life is like.
“We're just looking at people as the shell, and to me that I know from my experience with mental health, that amplifies my issues. I don't want to be seen as my body and the more I get to know the deeper levels and layers of who I am, the more I want that to show,” says McCue, who spent many years battling with her mental health.
“I don't want to be judged by my body, and I do not feel good when I look at somebody else and I judge them by their body, whether it's a good or a bad body — if you could even say that.”
McCue prefers to spend her time on social media looking at Instagram pages that better reflect how vulnerable a person can be, people who can still make mistakes like anyone else.
“It was [a woman on Instagram] doing these crazy lunge, split-lunge jumps up stadium stairs and then she fell, lost her balance and fell, and so she posted that and said ‘You know the videos that people post are polished and have taken a lot of time to look as perfect as they are, but this is what it looks like behind the scenes.’”
McCue always prefers to have a more human connection to her audience on Instagram, so that her followers don’t have a polished and perfect version of herself.
“I also love being able to share the deep heartfelt things about what I'm going through and to lead by example for other people to show that you know, it's OK to be messy and it's OK to not feel OK,” says McCue. She believes that running an Instagram account has to do with leading by example, and that it’s important to be a role-model for others.
“And [sharing] more of who I am and what I'm learning and to share where I've messed up and what I learned from that.”
"It's so easy to look
at people's images
and just assume all
their life is perfect."
-Marin McCue
McCue regularly posts on her Instagram account, @dopeame, in hopes of inspiring her followers to pursue self-growth and treat themselves better.
Even though McCue has many follows on Instagram, the social media app can still create feeling of inadequacy at times, “[If] I see I lost 10 followers, the gut reaction is, ‘Not good enough,’ or I did something to offend and I've really developed the ability to call bullshit on my first reaction though the first reaction is generally the ego and I'm really trying to train myself to retrain my relationship with my ego and create a healthier relationship.”
There is also a pressure behind having an audience and McCue reminds herself that despite the importance of posting everyday on social media for her professional account, it sometimes can’t happen and that’s OK.
“I think with anything, if I stop and I think about it and I have reflect on what I really want to do, the pressure dissolves and I am back in to doing it for the sake of myself and for what I want to be doing.”
Scrolling through social media can be a very addictive habit for many people and toxic to those who follow social media accounts that give misdirected information about an Instagrammer’s quality of life.
“I think all of us need to start to really pay attention to how how you're feeling. How does it feel when you pick up your phone a hundred times in the day? How does it feel to look at all these images of people living their lives and then you know, do you walk away from that feeling empowered? Or do you walk away feeling like, ‘My life is boring,” and you know, ‘[Should I] be further along?”
McCue hopes to leave Calgarians with some food for thought about the content they consume, “The more you compare yourself to other people the stronger that muscle gets so be mindful of what muscles you're flexing in your brain.”