Steph also opened up about her struggles with her body image and how she has battled an eating disorder for the last few years.
“I was very unwell with an eating disorder for a while and I was hiding it for a long time,” she said. “I was getting so many compliments, everyone was just so lovely to me about it [saying things like] ‘You’re looking so great!’ but I was so dead inside.”
Despite the tough subject matter, the beauty guru decided that she was ready to tell her followers and Steph has since made small changes to her beauty content because of it.
“I felt like I was lying to my audience,” Steph said. “I just needed to take a break from the beauty side and step back while I was trying to look after myself and that’s why I’ve been concentrating on content that is more helping myself kind grow and get over it but create content while I’m doing it. It’s kind of taking a step away from the appearance-based things at the moment so I can concentrate on getting better and it’s been really helpful in that sense because it can be quite difficult to be an influencer when you have body image issues already.”
To listen to the full chat with Steph, click the play button below:
Steph revealed that she is still working on her health right now but she is doing really well and this whole process has taught her to be kinder to herself.
“My whole life I’ve been very critical,” she said. “I think the biggest thing I’ve learnt is that it’s OK to be kind to yourself, it’s OK to not see something as a failure, you’re allowed to have bumps along the way and it’s just turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts, thinking ‘What have I done today?’ instead of ‘What I haven’t done today’. I’m just regurgitating what my psychologist tells me! It’s just been learning to be nicer to myself and everything has sort of fallen into place after that. These are things that take a long time but I’m definitely making a lot of headway.”
Because of her own struggles, Steph is super passionate about breaking down the “perfect” persona that is personified by a lot of influencers on social media.
“I wanted to show that someone that you might look up to online and think has a perfect life, doesn’t necessarily have a perfect life and I thought it was important to show that because I never ever wanted people to look at me and have that cause them to feel the way that I felt because I wasn’t feeling good myself,” she said.