‘I couldn’t recognise my own face so I banned myself from using filters,’ reveals influencer

An influencer has revealed she has ditched filters for good after struggling to recognise her own face in the mirror without them.

Sadie Bass, 27, decided to stop editing her pictures and embrace her natural side – ‘flaws’ and all – after becoming obsessed with using filters.

The London-based blogger, who shares midsize fashion, beauty and lifestyle content with her 90,000 followers (@sadiebass_), once used heavy filters and edited pictures before sharing anything on social media.

But in a YouTube video published on Shera, (@sherasocial), a digital platform dedicated to empowering women, she revealed how she finally decided to ban herself from using them – and says she’s now happier than ever with sharing her more authentic self.

Sadie told Shera: “I see my face on a phone screen more than I do in the mirror, which is actually wild to say.

“I was seeing my face on a filter more than I was ever seeing my normal face.

“Every time I’d take the filter off, I genuinely would be like ‘ew, you look horrific’.

“Then I’d look in the mirror and be like ‘I don’t look nice today’.

“So I felt very reliant on filters.

“I didn’t feel like I could ever post without them.”

Sadie started working as an influencer six years ago, and has now built her platform to a following of more than 90,000, making social media her full-time job.

But in her earlier days of influencing, there is a notable difference in her appearance – with Sadie editing her posts to look picture-perfect and blemish free at all times.

When she started sharing posts discussing body confidence and her own journey with accepting weight gain and the ‘second puberty’ she went through before lockdown, she noticed that filters were becoming prevalent online.

Rather than making simple tweaks to lighting or editing her body to look more flattering, she started to embrace the heavier filters.

As she shared more of her life on social media, sharing stories of herself chatting to the camera, she realised how reliant she was becoming on them – and noticed seeing herself filter-free was a knock to her self-esteem.

She said: “I felt like I’d started going backwards because I’d done all this work and I promote to love yourself.

“I felt like a bit of a hypocrite because I was talking about my body but I’m not showing my real face.

“I had just come off of the pill as well so I started getting really bad spots and bad skin which didn’t help.

“But body confidence isn’t just for your body.

“I saw a quote of someone saying ‘we should be the change that we want to see in the world’ and it really clicked in my head.

“We all say filters are damaging but all of us have the power to just stop using them or promote to not use them.

“I thought that could be me, and maybe that would help one person be like ‘I don’t need to use a filter’.”

Sadie said she went “cold turkey” and immediately stopped using filters and editing apps.

She said: “I just woke up one day and was like ‘I’m not doing it’.

“Within a week, it did help. I sort of got over it.

“Obviously I wear makeup and do things to change myself, but it’s that extra thing that I think was starting to warp me a lot – to the point where I genuinely didn’t like myself at all without them.

“I do feel a lot more refreshed without it.

“I don’t even think about it because I know I’m never going to use one – it’s just not an option for me.”

On being her more authentic self and embracing her body, Sadie said at first it was “the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life”.

She said: “I remember posting a YouTube video where I was talking about my body for the first time, and I was shaking.

“I was showing my body in bikinis, it was nothing dramatic, but I remember being like ‘I can’t believe I’m posting this on the internet, everyone’s going to see how I actually look’.

“I’ll be honest – I did used to edit my photos quite heavily. I think a lot of us did.

“And even if I did wear a bikini or underwear, I used to airbrush it or smooth it.

“I would change my body and obviously it’s not nice to have to admit that now, but to actually just be honest and be like ‘this is me’ – I remember shaking.

“I couldn’t look at the comments.

“I posted a photo wearing underwear and not posing, I just stood with my belly out, and people were so nice.

“I never would have expected that.”

Sadie also revealed she had previously been trolled for her body, with critics calling her “fat” and “disgusting”.

She said: “I was quite worried that that’s what everyone thought, but then when I was honest [with how I really look] I realised that actually there’s a lot of girls in my position.

“Once I did it a few times, it became very natural for me to talk about these things.

“I think it’s what actually helped me get to the point where I do feel comfortable with myself.”

For Sadie, her body confidence journey began back in lockdown.

She said: “I think I had more time to think about it all and I just got bored of hating myself.

“I get one life.

“I can [now] honestly say I go weeks and it [my body] doesn’t cross my mind.

“I go out and wear things that are tight and my belly jiggles, and I literally don’t care.

“It’s got to the point where I still get troll comments, but I find it funny because I’m in such a better place.”

For people looking to work on their own self-esteem and self-love, Sadie recommends banishing negative self-talk.

She said: “Give yourself affirmations – even if you don’t feel it, say ‘I look sexy as f**k today’.

“The thing that helped me too was to stop saying bad stuff – because if you actually counted how many bad thoughts you say to yourself per day, it’s disgusting.

“You would never say them to anyone else – that’s abuse – but we’re doing it to ourselves and it’s going into our subconscious.

“I stopped using that language.

“You’re allowed to have a bad body image day, but just pretend.

“You know when you’ve had five glasses of prosecco and you’re in the bathroom mirror and you’re like ‘wow’?

“Try and get that energy every day.”

ENDS