There’s no smoke screen with us. What you see is what you get. One day that might be full on glamour, make-up, nice clothes, excellent shoes, on this day there will definitely be a few photos taken for Instagram, after all we want to sell shoes, and we all know that if something looks good it sells. But the thing with us is, the next day or the day after that there will definitely be the opposite, swimmers´ hair (and usually goggle marks too) accompanied by a bad tracksuit and old trainers, and on that day we’ll take photos too and post them to @palmairagirls and we’ll piss ourselves laughing over it.
I’ve got a good reason for wanting to be true to myself. I know what is important in my life and what I want to teach my kids.
I need them to be able to just be themselves and to appreciate themselves, value their lives and above all their health.
I’ve not always found it easy to just be myself, age has helped me, I remember being so self conscious when I was younger, worrying about what I looked like and what other people thought of me. For a while, in my early twenties I was quite unwell, I had Graves’ disease which led to thyroid disease. I’d been a high achiever all through school and into university and then in my final year I just didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t concentrate, I lost weight, I was starving all the time. I totally messed up the end of my final degree year, after two years of first class marks. At the time, I didn’t realise the stress that my illness had on the people around me, my boyfriend and my family. I think now as a mum, the terrible dread of one of your kids being ill, how my mum and dad must have felt.
As I´ve got older I have realised the value of my own health, I know not to take it for granted and I make sure that I look after myself, my endocrinologist passed on wise words to me, almost a mantra that I hold onto and have indoctrinated into my day to day: Eat well, be active, rest lots. Three simple things that can be so easy to neglect.
I’ve found that one of the beautiful things about ageing is feeling more self assured, confident in my opinions, my choices, how I look, appreciating, above everything, my health.
I know that you cannot go back and tell your younger self some of the lessons that you learn in life but I can tell my children. I want them to realise that the spotlight isn’t glaring on them and that so many of their peers will have the same feelings of insecurity and self consciousness, that they can let their hair down, say what they want, dress how they want, be themselves completely.
From the start of our social media journey we knew we wanted to just be ourselves, to show a rounded perspective, a true image. This means we don’t use any photoshop gimmicks or airbrushing ever. We might sometimes put colour enhancing filters across photos, to bring our shoes to life… but ironing out wrinkles? Never.
As mothers of daughters we feel more strongly than ever that our girls need to see a true and ‘real’ representation of women. We want them to grow up feeling proud of the faces and bodies they were born with, to care for themselves and to love themselves.
Tracey x
https://palmairasandals.com/pages/about-us
