One of my author visit talks is all about beauty standards through the ages and how social media can make us place unrealistic expectations on ourselves that can have a detrimental effect on our mental health.
Trying to be perfect is poisonous.
And yet, I love social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I belong to some great communities on those platforms and I’d really miss them in my life. It’s not the social media that’s the problem, it’s the content that’s pushed in our faces. We often can’t avoid the adverts that are sent to us, here’s one that made me spit with fury:
Because using it makes us feel bad about our real life faces?
This lovely young woman’s photograph is not real. Her skin has been smoothed and tanned, her hair colour enhanced and her teeth whitened. I am 100% sure she looked completely fine before this image of perfection was presented to the world. The effect? We feel we can’t show our real selves because we just don’t match up. How horrible. What happens when we want to go out? Are they working on a Facetune for real life? Probably. If it makes money. Because that’s what it’s all about – making money off your insecurities.
If you want to play with filters, and some of them are really fun, use ones that are obvious and give Facetune a big ole poke in the eye. And follow some people who’ll make you feel better about yourself. Here are my top five six Instagram accounts that are good for your mental health!
@CelesteBarber – this woman is hilarious – her account parodies images of models and celebrities and she makes me laugh EVERY DAY. Improve your life. Just follow.
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@lewiscapaldi– cute, funny, real, honest. I LOVE HIM. His stories are brilliant. He’s a bit sweary sometimes but, lets face it, so am I. His posts are pure joy.
@the.naked.farmer – it’s not what you expect. And it is. All of life embraced.
@alwynhamilton – author of Rebel of the Sands, absolute icon for positive body image – her stories are just fab!
@mattzhaig – well known for his books about mental health, his feed is full of positive affirmation but also the reality of coping with anxiety.
Thanks to @mattzhaig for permission to reproduce
6. I have to include Karen Ball @didyoumakethat for her fantastic series of photographs with a stranger – it’s joyous!
Add your favourite accounts in the comments and share the love – you can never have enough positive influences. And if you want to follow me, I’m @KathrynEvansInk
The last two weeks I have been all over the place celebrating book week and preparing for the launch of Beauty Sleep. I can’t get over how lucky I am that this is part of my job – thanks to all the lovely schools and book shops that have welcomed me so far. We’ve laughed and cried and I met Hercule Potatoe Two more weeks to go – in which I return to my old school for the first time in 34 years. Nervous. Moi? It’s keeping me from my beauty sleep…
Credit Karen Abrams
Credit Marie Basting
Beauty Sleep is available in all it’s shiny glory from all good book shops! Foyles Charing Cross and Forbidden Planet have signed copies!
It is January the 3rd 2019 which means I can officially say I have a book coming out THIS YEAR. It’s taken me long enough – it’s been three years since More of Me came out in the UK but I handed in my copy edits on Christmas Eve. I made some fairly major changes to the end, even though it had already gone out to some lovely people to read.
The fabulous author of The Extinction Trials, S. M .Wilson gave me my very first Beauty Sleep review:
Read a brilliant book this weekend Beauty Sleep by Kathryn Evans A fantastic story which reads like a feature length episode of Black Mirror, with just enough creep factor to keep you on the edge of your seat! Loved it!
You can read the first chapter in The Usborne YA newsletter. Complete with the stunning cover that Will Steele designed for it.
I’ll probably still want to tweak it a bit forever but…
SHOCK HORROR
I’m actually really pleased with it 🙂
Beauty Sleep…
Laura was dying. There was no cure for her illness. So her family decided to grasp a desperate last hope – Laura was frozen until she could be cured.
But what happens when you wake up one day and the world has moved on forty years? Your best friend is middle-aged, your parents presumed dead. Could you find a new place to belong? Could you build a new life – while solving the mystery of what happened to the old one?
Dark secrets lurk in the future of the girl from the past…
I’ve just been to the fabulous SCBWI annual conference and I learned a thing! Well, I learned lots of things but here’s a really fun thing you can join in with.
You will need:
A smart phone.
The HP Reveal app.
A copy of More of Me.
How to find the hidden content:
Download the app, discover and follow me: KathrynEvansAuthor
Scan the cover with the app to find the hidden content – let me know what you find!
I’m on Twitter @KathrynEvansInk Instagram, Facebook @KathrynEvansAuthor and Snapchat: KathrynEvansInk (no wonder I’m so far behind with my work…)
PS, If you can’t find a copy of More of Me, you can find some of the content by scanning the cover below…
My new book, Beauty Sleep, will be out in April 2019 and I’m beyond excited to show you the cover, designed by Usborne’s amazing Will Steele.
Will Steele’s absolutely stunning cover for Beauty Sleep.
Laura is frozen for over forty years. When she wakes up, she has new friends to make, a new language to learn, new people to trust. How do you start again in a world you barely recognise but where everybody recognises you?
There’s a really cool video but i can’t work out how to share it here – please go see it here…
Dark secrets lurk in the future of the girl from the past…
And proving that she was probably right about me, this is what I was wearing when I received the award…
Idiot Dressed As Mr Messy
Idiot Dressed as Mr Messy with the Crystal Kite Award!!!
I know, I know but it was fancy dress?! ( Gold star if you know who I was???)
Huge congratulations to the other shortlisted authors, Patrice Lawrence, Eugene Lambert, Ally Sherrick, Peter Bunzl and Sue Wallman – I read and loved all your books. If it was a Strictly vote I’d have run up quite a phone bill and possibly done myself out of a SHINY THING.
More of Me has been shortlisted for a few regional awards which is absolutely lovely. Even lovelier is that you get invited to award ceremonies that are heaps of fun. This week I was in Redbridge with Teri Terry, Anne Cassidy, Christopher Edge and Peter Bunzl.
We were spoiled rotten with an amazing lunch – I ate all the cake before it could be photographed but you know, if you will serve macaron that perfectly match my hair, I am going to eat them.
There was a quiz in which I answered all the questions about More of Me without any help from Peter Bunzl. I’m such a fibber! How do you forget things from your own book!!? Mind you, I wasn’t alone, cough, cough… Needless to say, the author table did not win the quiz.
We did all enjoy answering the very interesting, beautifully phrased questions, such as:
Do you magpie away ideas?
Yes! We all do. We pick up all the shiny ideas and squirrel them away .
As if we weren’t spoiled enough, we were given flowers and certificates.
It was huge fun and then someone gave Christopher Edge an award and it went completely to his head….
Kathryn Evans 