Megan’s book shows her great talent
for breaking down and exploring
wider issues with the diet industry;
global companies profiting from an
individual’s poor self-image, cultural
conditioning, and how widespread
these problems are.
“The underlying issues I had all those
years ago, the anxiety, perfectionism,
not feeling good enough – they are
still there.
“Looking back, I’ve realised that my
eating disorder was a manifestation of
those issues. It was a way to put thoseContinues >>>However, I wonder if she feels a
pressure to be ‘Bodyposipanda’ rather
than Megan when she speaks in public?
“Not so much now, but I used to put
on the ‘Panda face’, which is what I
believed people expected me to be –
super smiley, upbeat, and positive all
the time. It was exhausting! I could
do that for a couple of hours if I was
feeling OK, but then I’d get home and
sink into nothingness, because it wasn’t
really me.
“I don’t think we realise how
valuable emotional energy is, and how
we shouldn’t expect other people’s
emotional energy all the time,” she
explains. “I love meeting people,
connecting with them, hearing that
people have read the book and its done
something for them, and I’ll always be
thankful for that.
“I think the line comes when I meet
people and they tell me about their
trauma, and it’s like they hand me their
traumatic life events as if to say: ‘Can
you hold this for me?’ Sometimes I
can’t, I don’t have the bandwidth to
hold that because I’m trying to hold
myself up.
“I do the Panda face less now. I’m
trying to let myself be me, fully human,
and be OK if that’s not as loved.
Ultimately, I know it’s more important
to have integrity in who I am, than to
be liked.”
Throughout our conversation, I notice
that Megan regularly takes a moment
to assert her gratitude for aspects of
her life and career, her supporters, and
the opportunities that have come her
way – as well as who she really is, and
her perspective on the life she is living
publicly.
It seems to me that Megan has a
lightly worn but authentic wisdom,
acquired through her life experiences,
deep research, and self-reflection. She
is also setting the personal boundaries
she needs to.
Later in our chat, Megan credits her
family for their support, noting that
she’s lucky to have them – her mumMay 2019 • happiful • 21On social media it’s so easy to reduce
people to one dimensional beings. All
you have are these squares and it’s very
simple to put people in boxes
feelings into something I felt that I
could take hold of.
“I no longer have that destructive
outlet of disordered eating, but that
doesn’t mean all the other parts have
disappeared. They are still in me and I
am still finding ways to manage them
that aren’t self-destructive.”
For the past year and a half, Megan
has been going to therapy weekly. As
well as dealing with past and ongoing
issues, she says: “There are also the very
new, sometimes overwhelming, parts
of being on the internet, which comes
with a lot of challenges for the most
anxious people.”
The aspect of being a public figure
Megan finds the most difficult is
when others try to tell her who she
is as a person – something she finds
disorientating, and harder than any
judgement on how she looks. Her
response to this is to mentally reclaim
herself – she knows who she is.
“On social media it’s so easy to reduce
people to one-dimensional beings. All
you have are these squares, and it’s very
simple to put people in boxes. Then,
when they step out of the boxes, people
get mad – ‘How dare you be a full
human?’”
Known on Instagram as
‘bodiposipanda’, her feed features
uplifting posts, joyous dancing (check
out her amazing moves to Lizzo’s
‘Juice’) and positive affirmations.“When it comes to body image,
absolutely everyone has some kind
of issue that they’re dealing with,”
she explains. “To actually zoom out
and look at all of the forces that are
teaching us to hate our bodies, and
really recognise that you’ve been
consuming messages since you were
around four years old – whether it’s
adverts, magazines, television, Barbie
dolls, whatever the beauty ideal is at
the time – that moulds how we think.
We are not insular, our beliefs are
impacted by what we are taking in
every single day.”
Megan recognises that starting to
unlearn the ideas we hold about body
image can be difficult, but suggests that
each of us need to take the beliefs we
have about bodies, beauty, and worth
and look at them under a microscope,
questioning where they came from, and
whether they are serving us.
That process, even for her, is never
ending. “I still find myself having that
same conditioned response to certain
things that I’ve had all my life, and all
I can do is take a step back and think:
‘I don’t want to believe this anymore,
I didn’t want to believe it in the first
place, and I want to let it go.’”
Megan is very open about the fact
that her professional success doesn’t
mean that the struggles, which were a
catalyst for her subsequent work, have
completely disappeared.