interview by: Stefania Gheorghe

 

Alisa Moș is a 25-year-old young woman who I had the pleasure of interacting with for a live on Her Time's Instagram page. She is full of energy, always smiling and talking fondly about all the things she does. She is active on social media and if you ever don't see stories with her on Instagram, she is either working on something important or doing tasks for her full time job.

Who is Alisa Mos? Can you tell us a little about who you are and what you were like when you were little?

I'm Alisa Moș, I'm 25 years old, and I've had this passion for the online environment since I was little, in high school, I think since the 10th grade. I opened a blog and I was taking some cruel pictures, but even then I loved what I was doing, I was doing everything with passion, I was writing with passion. I also had a schedule, everything was so very organized, I also had some collaborations, which surprises me now that I think about it, but those were different times then. When the BAC and the first year of college appeared, I left, being all these new things, I said "let's enjoy everything that the first year of college can offer me" and I left this thing on the back burner... Until I met my friend, who doesn't necessarily share this passion of mine, with pictures and content, but he was very available to help me and from one picture to another I started posting regularly on Instagram. I gave up the blog completely, now it doesn't even exist anymore and I focused on Instagram where everything is going very, very well. Last year I opened a YouTube channel, where I try to be as active as possible. That's pretty much me.

I'm very glad that you found this motivation in the people around you, like with your boyfriend who encouraged you...

Yes, he always helped me and that meant a lot to me… and at that time when I didn't have many followers, I probably would have given up without someone to support me. I am really grateful to him.

Some time ago you spoke for the first time quite briefly, on YouTube, about the problems you had with your weight when you were younger. There are many young women who face exactly the same problems. How have all the efforts you've made to be a certain number of pounds or look a certain way affected you?

Things are starting to improve now, I don't know how the young people who are now going through this see it, but from the outside it looks like this situation is improving. I honestly don't think I cared that much, although I was quite plump at the time, I had some health problems. And I was posting... since the time when I had weight problems, I was 1.60 m tall and weighed 90 or so kilos. I was pretty plump, but I didn't necessarily care about that. I was a bit bullied at school, but who isn't?! What affected me was when I started taking pictures, and looking back, yes, I had the mind of a child, I was all flower-power, I was taking pictures of my outfits and that was my passion. Then I started getting all kinds of hate comments, very ugly, which affected me. Now, if I still get these comments, they don't have any effect on me anymore, but then, being very young, around 15-16 years old, they affected me a lot. I went on a very drastic weight loss diet, ate very little, tried not to drink a lot of water, because I felt it was making me fat. And that's what I did until I reached 45 kilograms in a year, about there. I lost a lot of weight, but not in a healthy way. This further caused me to have problems with my liver, because I was not drinking water. I kept a special diet, I took pills and that made me realize that it is not important and not worth trying to please someone, to let people and their words get to you, and this experience hardened me and since then I have everything as it is. I gain a kilo, two, this month I lose them, it's ok. But yes, I have faced this cyberbullying and it was pretty bad.

It is very sad that we realize that we did something that was not healthy for us only when it affects our health.

Yes, it's really sad. When you're in that situation, you don't see. They noticed very close friends of mine. They told me this every day and I always told them "hey..it's nothing". Then he saw my mother and from there I also went to the doctor. I had a mild treatment, I'm glad I had a kind of wake up call and I'm glad nothing more serious happened. When I was in high school, there weren't that many media. In a way it's good that teenagers can see other people with the same problems as them, they can educate themselves a little bit about it and see that they are not alone.

How did you find this confidence in yourself, to overcome this moment? Did your community have any role in this?

Honestly, I didn't use the community to get me through. During that time, I didn't even have a community and no one defended me. In my mind, when I had this problem with cyberbullying, I only saw the negative comments, there was no one to say something good, to cancel out what others were saying. Instead, I am happy that I managed to find all the resources in myself and to see that everything is more than "just looks", that confidence in yourself comes from self-pride, maybe from clothes, maybe you have achieved something that you you wanted, confidence doesn't come from how you look or how others perceive you. Confidence has to come from you. And I'm glad I learned that at a pretty young age and that's just because I got exposure on the internet and got to have that life experience. If I didn't have the blog, I probably wouldn't have managed to build this self-confidence on my own. Anyway, looks go with age, with old age. If you have something you don't like about yourself, you can work on it, you can lose weight, go to the gym, do sports. It's irrelevant to stress yourself physically, and that's not where self-confidence should come from, because... it goes away, it's fleeting.

Have you ever had a moment where you wanted to isolate yourself or give up what you were doing because you felt that exposure brought you that wave of hate?

No no no. Never. Those comments only made me doubt my physical qualities. And so. They didn't make me feel inferior for exposing myself on the internet, that's why I didn't stop. They only made me doubt the way I looked at the time. Everything was just for me on the surface, which for any teenager is an important aspect. The outside world didn't share this blog thing with me anyway, and I would delete the bad comments and see my passion.

What do you think now about the efforts that young women make, which you also made, to be thin and look like the "beautiful girls on Instagram"?

I think every generation of teenagers will go through this thing, that it's something you have to go through to grow up. As I said, during adolescence, "looks" are something very important and everyone wants to reach certain standards of beauty, some in a healthy way, others in a very unhealthy way. Unfortunately, I don't think they can be avoided. Yes, I think there are a handful of teenagers who don't care, but the majority are pretty affected by all this social media stuff. I enjoy all these "no filters" initiatives, in which people show themselves as they are, with a belly, with cellulite, with their flaws, exactly as they are. I love when I see this on Instagram and I think this kind of content needs to be promoted, more than a beautiful body which often, and I don't want to point fingers, is something unnatural. You know that saying, "you're not ugly, you're just poor". In the end we can say what we want, that you have to hit your head to learn something. And I think that's why everyone has to shake their heads with the comparison, to understand that not everything they see is real. Plus it's good to talk about it. Have someone to talk to. It's good to have a connection with someone in your family to talk about these issues. It would be very good if the parents were very open to discuss these aspects. It helped me a lot to talk to my mother and very openly, about everything. She always told me that "they, let it be that they are just stupid".

What is your view on all the love your body and body positivity movements?

I have a very good opinion. Finally we have a counterpart to all this perfection shown online. Finally, communities come from behind that catch on very well and explain that man is man and everyone has flaws. It's kind of sad that it's gotten to the point where someone has to tell you that something normal is... normal.

What would you say now, finally, to all the young women reading this article who have problems with the way they look and who let themselves be affected by other people's opinions?

To find a person they can talk to and vent to, a close person who can listen to them, not judge them and be there for them. It is very important to be able to call on someone. And try not to surround yourself with this false information and this perfection. Do you see a girl actually look perfect and it consumes you? Ok, block him. Stop letting this information get to you and try to surround yourself with things that make you feel good. Those are the first two things I wish all young women with self-image issues and issues in general would hear.