Before I go into my answer, I want to give you a little history. I started out as a style blogger in 2013 with the hopes that people would read my other works. I’ve always been a writer, but no one paid any attention to ‘Leah the Writer’. In order to bring people in, I started adding visuals to the blog posts. At that moment, I became a plus-size, Muslim model. I fell into it, but it was never my intent. I just wanted people to read my shit. I started getting attention for my photos and not really my writing. Which frustrated me, but it worked out in the end because now people actually read and appreciate my stuff.
Over the years, my followers tripled, and now I have—on Instagram alone—over 14k followers.
Now, there are bloggers with waaaaaaay more followers than me. I’m middle-grade compared to them. Which is fine, but when I meet people in real-life and they stumble upon my account, it’s the first thing that latch onto. The numbers.
“Errrrmagawd,” one guy said scanning my feed. “You’re like insta-famous.”
“How’d you get so many followers?” A girl asked. “I can’t even break a thousand.”
And, I always get someone who asks, “Did you like buy your followers?”
I neeeeever tell people or flaunt the fact that I have a fan base or a semi-medium following. Because you can see the difference in how they look at me. It’s more like I’m a reality star to them and not a human being. I’ve become some sort of object, a trophy to flaunt about. Oh yeah, I know her. Smh.
