Girls Know Best‪!‬ Chantel Chen and Janessa Seto

As two teenage girls who have experienced their shares of self-doubt towards their body image; we can understand how challenging it can be for a young girl to face the facade celebrities put on social media of their bodies, the toxic environment of girls who constantly obsess over their appearances, all whilst attempting to keep up with other expectations that society holds against us. It can honestly be exhausting and can truly impact our mental health negatively. Only in the last year or so did public figures begin to speak up about their body image issues, and revealing how deceptive photos on social media can be in order for an individual to feel “beautiful.” Our road to self-confidence is forever fluctuating, there are some days where we feel the most beautiful, and other days where we don’t; however, it’s the acceptance of our body that allows us to be content in our daily lives. We hope that at the end of the episode, you can learn to love your body just the way it is and to avoid comparing yourself to other people.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Ever since we could remember, we’ve always wondered about how our life would unravel in the future. As university applications come around the corner, we wanted to discuss our thoughts on post-secondary life. At a young age, the idea of post-secondary was always perpetuated by our friends and family; usually guiding us towards the “right” path that would either make lots of money or have respectable titles and careers. However, the high expectations of our families sometimes brought excessive pressure or anxiety upon us. This week, we brought on our very good friend, Sydney Hughes, to share her thoughts on this topic as well. We believe that bringing on another perspective can hopefully allow our listeners to gain some more insight in our discussions!

We bet everyone has subconsciously felt the need to fit in within a group of people, whether that be among your classmates, teammates, or simply your friends. At times, you might feel the compulsion to wear whatever your friends are wearing, to speak the way they’re speaking, and to sometimes act the way they act. And that’s okay. It’s all a part of growing up - we all go through this confusing phase in our teenage years. However, there can be a negative effect that subconsciously arises with the desperation of popularity, that may persistently affect and possibly change many aspects in your life; may it be your personality, your mindset or even something as simple as your wardrobe. We believe the most important takeaway is to find your way back to your values and passions in order to stay true to yourself.

Continuing off our discussion about the struggles with fitting in and popularity, in this second part, we share the thoughts and personal experiences from our followers on Instagram (@_girlsknowbest_). Each week, we ask our followers for their perspectives or personal experiences surrounding a topic of discussion within each episode. Due to the happily overwhelming amount of responses we received this week, we decided to break this episode into two parts; this allowed us to engage with our followers’ responses more thoroughly, hopefully allowing our listeners to understand various points of views from others. By sharing our followers’ inputs, we hope to further demonstrate that everyone goes through similar struggles, however, just in different ways.

In this episode, we share our personal experiences and felt emotions when we first realized the importance of our mental health. Although we’re still young, we want to express the importance of not devaluing mental health issues; despite the age of an individual. We also address our current triggers that may negatively impact our mental health, and include the inputs of our Instagram followers on their opinions on the topic of mental health!

Before diving into some deep and personal conversations, we would like our listeners to get to know us! In this episode, we introduce ourselves, answer some icebreaker questions, and discuss our goals with this podcast.