My Facebook was popular but my real life sucked
Former model, reality star speaks out against toxic culture
HENRIETTA Moore has a message for the young women of the Gold Coast — please stop idolising influencers.
The model-turned-teacher, and reality TV contestant, says social media has become an “absolute curse on the young generation and she understands the pressure young women are under to look their best.
“My Facebook account was very popular. However, my real life sucked,” she said of her younger days as a model overseas.
A TOXIC culture in which Gold Coast influencers are admired and adored for showing their “tits and arse” is encouraging young girls to place their entire worth on their looks, a model-turned-teacher has warned.
“We are now living in a society where people like Tammy Hembrow are applauded for getting their tits and arse out and young girls are looking up to them as role models,” recovered bulimic and reality TV contestant Henrietta Moore said.
“Young women are being stripped of their innocence and childhood due to wanting to grow up so fast and look like Kylie Jenner.
“I want to say to young Gold Coasters, please don’t idolise these girls, some of these influencers are the most insecure I’ve ever met.
“It’s much better to be the smart girl.”
Describing social media as an “absolute curse on the young generation”, Ms Moore said teenagers were being bombarded by images of beauty that have desensitised them to their sexual content.
“Girls in G-string bikinis at the beach, uploading it for their friends and family to see,” she said. “It’s not even their fault. Their role models are young influencers that gain a following by stripping off their clothes, applying filters to their videos and images and basically not providing anything educational.
“How girls look should be the least most interesting thing about them.
“I wish influencers would consider what their image represents to young women who are easily manipulated.”
A Bulletin investigation last September found wannabe Gold Coast beauty queens were spending about $10,000 every year to maintain their Instagram doll look – just on their face.
Throw in another $11,000 for butt lifts, up to $12,000 for breast implants and at least $3500 on liposuction.
Surgeons, medical experts and those women who have sought treatment said plastic surgery and injectables had become such a craze that “a lot of people don’t know what natural or real is anymore”.
Women said the work was making them fit better into society, particularly the social media clique where Instagram influencers attract hundreds of thousands of followers and clones who want to look just like them.
In the US, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said the number of teenagers who underwent surgery doubled in eight years. In 2008 alone, it said 219,000 cosmetic operations were performed on those aged 13 to 19.
However, psychologists say the physical transformations were having a detrimental effect emotionally for thousands of young women.
Research suggested Instagram was harmful for young people’s mental health, and viewing pictures of attractive A-listers and colleagues had a negative effect on moods and body image.
Ms Moore said that being on Farmer Wants a Wife in 2020, and having somewhat of a platform, she felt the urgency to start speaking her truth and be more mindful of her content on social media. Most importantly she wanted
We are now living in a society wherepeople like Tammy Hembrow are applauded for getting their tits and arse out and young girls are looking up to them as role models
Ex-model and reality TV contestant Henrietta Moore
to encourage all women to find their worth inside.
“Whether that’s sport, academia, jobs, creativity – anything other than looks. That’s not to say modelling is bad, it can be highly creative. However, it cannot define you.”
Ms Moore said she understood many of the issues the younger generation was going through, having battled a horrendous eating disorder for a decade that involved binge-eating, bouts of anorexia and bulimia.
Taking part in the Leukaemia Foundation’s Greatest Shave next week, she said she was doing it to raise money for the “real heroes” who fight deadly diseases and also as a symbolic gesture of her leaving behind a life that nearly destroyed her.
As a teen, the “proud state school student” was made student captain at Robina State High School and competed in chess competitions, national volleyball tournaTHE ments and state tennis events. She said she barely gave a thought to her looks. In 2006 she was offered a full academic scholarship to study journalism at Griffith University and offered a place in the honour’s college where she would become an ambassador for the university.
“The world was truly at my feet but I felt lost, confused and had no idea of what I wanted,” she said. “I gained a lot of weight, emotionally eating during my first year of university due to family and personal issues.”
A casual comment from her boyfriend’s photographer father that she could be a model “sparked” something in her and she lost 5kg in a week – 10kg in the month.
“I was petrified back then of anything with carbohydrates in it, including fruit,” she said.” A friend ... once said she didn’t take cough syrup due to its calorie density.”
She was 19 when she first made herself vomit in Germany where she was modelling. The illness would last nearly a decade.
Her bingeing, at times, would rage on for three hours and she would consume 10,000 calories only for it to be brought back up. Surrounded by a “gaggle of girls” who also starved themselves, it was a rare sight to see anyone eat.
“We were all about Diet Cokes, black coffees and occasional fruit,” she said. “I never ate unless it was a binge and I would throw it all up.
“I felt ugly and unattractive. It was this relationship where the bulimia went from being an occasional pastime to a full-blown everyday necessity. “I would wake up early ... before I saw anyone as I thought they’d think I’m ugly if I didn’t look exactly as I did in my images.
“My Facebook account was very popular. However, my real life sucked.”