#fitspiration

"Hey tribe. Today I skipped the gym, because I just needed to practise some self-love at home. This is a hard thing to do for most of us. We feel like we need to force ourselves to the gym in order to feel good about ourselves. But listen to me - you can skip the gym whenever you want. Your worth doesn't depend on how many squats or how many calories you 'saved' that day. You are so much more and don't ever doubt it, gurl <3 Love from the couch potato x" She copy pasted the text under the picture of her wooly socks on her duvet.

1.5 year ago she had started a fitness instagram and a year later she had been featured on a famous fitness guru's instagram and her numbers of followers had exploded. Suddenly there were 17 times the amount of creeps asking her sleezy questions but what shocked her more was the 100 times amount of girls asking her questions about working out and self worth. It had shocked her to have multiple young female strangers writing to her every day that because they hated their bodies they felt they weren't worthy of dating, having fun, hell, even living was mentioned. She had gone through so many phases herself and if she hadn't had an observant family she'd probably become anorexic or bulimic when she was a teenager. She used to stand in front of the mirror every night and tell herself how disgusting she looked, blaming herself for eating "too much" that day. She had been horrible to herself and to her body which after all, had carried her through her entire life. It had grown and stretched, dealt with hormones, hiked mountains, swum in streams, it had been broken in a few places and healed and always done its best to keep her alive. And what had she done in return? Starved it and hated it. The hate of her body hadn't come from within. She remembered a time as a child where body image didn't matter. Of course some of the kids couldn't run as fast as others and some weren't picked first for different sports but then they were good at other stuff. She remembered the first comments just before she became a teenager. Her uncle had drunk-whispered to her mum at a family gathering and asked if "Mia wasn't getting a bit chubby for her age." The magazines she subscribed to every month were all focused on looks. On makeup, on diets, dresses and how to attract the perfect boyfriend. The magazines never showed much diversity and therefore she tried to fit into a box she would never be able to fit into. The instagram had started as a personal project and she never expected to have that many people would be looking to her for whatever reasons they had. Her family and friends followed her as well and she felt awkward sharing that side of herself with them and was, she hoped lovingly, mocked for having it too. It was a strange balance to keep, posting pictures of herself before, during or after workouts in tight gym clothes, knowing her old neighbor and her grandmother's instagram feeds would show those pictures too. She knew some people would see her as a sex symbol and see it as a cry for attention, but from the messages and comments she received she also knew her pictures and words hit where she wanted them to. So many women were following her journey and were inspired or comforted by what she wrote every day. Many wrote almost as if they knew her. The messages were often vulnerable and full of insecurity on full display and she was proud that she had created an online safe space for women who felt the same as her. She tried to answer as many of the most insecure messages she received as she could, but it was hard to keep up. The pressure had become too much lately and she'd taken a break.

The break was supposed to last a month but one day Mia received a message. First of all it lit up as purple whereas all the other messages had lit up yellow as usual. She disregarded it and thought that it might just be a weird update. She wanted to keep her 'no social media' promise to herself and left the message unread. She turned off her notifications but every night the purple message would light up on her phone. One night after a beer or two she got too curious. She unlocked her phone with her thumb and pressed on the blinking notification. The message was from a user named her own name; MiaDarbyson. She figured it must be a super fan who had figured out her real name and was being a bit stalkerish. "Hi former me." the message began. Somebody was definitely being a weirdo, Mia thought. "We're not supposed to take contact with our former selves, but I needed to cause I know what happens if I don't. I was always supposed to break the rules, I guess. I mean, we were." Mia squuezed her eyes while reading the message, thinking that this person really must be crazy. "Hold on, I remember that you, or we are thinking that this message is crazy. So press this button." At the end of the message there was a round purple button. Mia pressed it and jumped back as her phone flew into the middle of the room and a hologram started playing from it. "Calm down. It's me. Or us, or you. In the future." the hologram said. Mia blinked and removed her hand from over her beating heart and slowly approached the hologram. "Holy shit." she uttered as she slowly walked around it. She stopped at the face and studied it. It was her. It was really herself. But with shorter, darker hair. Her eyes were more grey and she had more wrinkles around her eyes. "Yeah, holy shit." the hologram grinned. Mia jumped back again. "Okay, I'm gonna get straight to it, cause holograms like this aren't cheap." her future self said. "You're on the right track, gurl. Keep doing what you're doing. You're gonna touch and change so many lives. Nobody was gonna tell you this except if I came back like this and I know it's been a lot of pressure for you lately. But it will turn into something so much more manageable, but also so much more magnificent, you can't believe it. Or maybe you can, cause you've already thought of it, you just think you're not able to make it happen. But you can. Just keep going, former-me. You're doing the right thing." The hologram disappeared and her phone went black. Mia walked backwards until she felt her chair against her legs and she sat down, staring at the wall in disbelief. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

The sunlight was hitting Mia straight in the face and she woke with an annoyed groan and rolled over to the other side. Her eyes sprang open. She remembered the dream. The hologram. The motivational speech from her future self. And she knew what she had to do. She got up and went over to her desk, sat down and grabbed pen and paper and wrote with capital letters at the top of the paper: FEMALE ACADEMY.