(soft music)
- A lot of times on social media
it might look like people have the perfect lives
or like nothing has ever gone wrong,
but realistically we know that's not true.
So I'm tracking down some of my friends
that you probably already follow
to have them tell you something
about themselves that you probably don't know.
Because by telling these stories
that we don't normally share on a public platform,
we can find out who's behind the handle
and all grow together.
So first up, here's my friend Jazzmyne.
(light music)
- My name is Jazzmyne and I am a video producer at Buzzfeed.
I feel like people see me online as many different things.
People consider me to be very confident.
I'm going to be walking in a runway show
as a plus-sized woman for the first time.
Very I hope to be empowering to people
and I hope to push people out of their comfort zones
and help them feel good about that.
Some people might think of me as a bitch though too.
So, (laughs) that's fine.
I would describe my social media
to be kind of like me which changes day by day.
I post often,
because I really like my outfits a lot.
(laughs) I also do it for visibility purposes.
I just want at least once a day
someone to see a story or a picture
of something of mine and to feel seen.
But there's something you might not know about me.
A lot of my close friends know about me,
a lot of my family know this about me,
I think the only times I've talked about this publicly
is when I'm feeling super vulnerable.
I'm also like nervous. (chuckles)
It's a lot to talk about, like we all have history.
Knowing this backstory will either make people
be like oh, that makes sense or oh,
that's doesn't make sense,
why does she look like this?
There's just so much room for judgment.
(sighs)
- Now we can just kind of like go back to the beginning
and just talk about what we've been
kind of beating around the bush about.
- Oh, okay.
So, setting up the full picture here.
I'm from a very small town with a lot of cornfields
and a lot of people who didn't look like me.
Everybody in my town was very small,
everyone was very blonde or had very long hair.
I was the only person of color for a long time
and that got to me.
I was like 10 looking like I was 15,
already went through all these changes
that my friends didn't understand.
And my dad's black, my mom's white,
I had like curly hair, I was darker than all my friends
who wanted to be as black as me or as tan as me.
It was a hard time.
So by the time I go to high school,
it was rough just trying to be myself.
And the one place that I was allowed
to be myself was in volleyball.
I played volleyball all my life and I loved it.
But it got to this point where
I was around 16 years old
and everything was just coming at me so fast.
I was the captain of the team,
I was the first team all-conference,
getting good grades, I was also working,
I was doing travel volleyball.
I always had so much pressure
and I always put myself to that pressure,
even if people weren't telling me about it,
I was putting it on myself regardless.
So a lot just got to me and then it came to a point
where I heard there was another girl
in my class who was like people knew
that she had an eating disorder or a problem with eating.
And for some reason that like sparked an interest in me.
There was so much just going around
and running crazy that the one thing
that I could focus on was the food
and how I eat it and if I don't eat it.
So when I was 15 normally what I would do
is I would not eat for a very long amount of time.
If I did eat like an actual meal,
the first thing I would do is make myself sick afterwards.
I obviously was not okay to think that
an eating disorder sounded like
that's the only way I could get control into my life.
It would go periods of like eating
maybe a meal per two days
or I would get sick after every time I ate.
It would get almost immediate to the effect
where I almost felt sick after I ate,
because I knew I was gonna make myself sick.
Tons of people would compliment
oh, you're looking so good,
oh, have you lost weight?
And I'm like oh, I'm starving myself for two days.
Thanks.
Of course people don't know this
and of course people are being nice,
but I dunno, people only know what they see I guess.
- [Female] Did anyone around you know
that this was going on?
- Nobody around me knew that this was going on,
nobody at all.
I told my best friend at the time
and she was the person that actually
drove me to telling my family.
She was just so worried about me
and was like your family needs to know this,
if you don't tell them, I'm going to tell them.
And you know when your friends pull that card,
like what are you supposed to do?
I think she maybe allowed me sit on it
for like two weeks and then I told my family.
It was about a year between me starting
my eating disorder and me telling my family.
When I told my family this I remember
we were sitting at our kitchen table
and I was like hysterically crying.
I told them all together, my mom, my dad, and my brother,
that I had been starving myself
and I've been getting sick every time after I ate.
And oh, they just broke down.
Yeah, it sucked to let people down that care about you.
- [Female] Yeah.
- My family, first of all they were distraught
that I would do something like that.
I also was like a very good child.
I remember my mom immediately the next day
printed out all these things you can do
if your child has an eating disorder
and got me a book.
And she really, really tried hard.
But eventually I found a therapist and went to therapy.
I was going through my mom's emails
and I found an email between her
and my aunt talking about it
and it like tore me apart of how sad she was for me.
So that sucked.
And then were was one time in therapy
where I was talking to her in this room
and I passed out because I hadn't eaten anything
and then I woke back up and everyone
was like freaking out around me telling me what happened.
And I was like okay, this is where I need
to reevaluate my life.
I'm really hurting the people around me,
I'm putting myself in danger.
That was kind of my breaking point
of like I need to stop doing this.
I went to my therapy appointment early
and my therapist was in the office
and the door was cracked
and she was talking to her boss.
He was like okay, if she's getting this bad
then we need to submit her to go to rehab.
And I heard him say those words and she agreed.
And I was like oh, I can't, I can't do that.
Like where in my life timeline
that I have mapped out for me for the next few years,
where is rehab going to fit?
I started freaking out and I went to that
one therapy appointment, we talked about stuff,
and then I like immediately stopped after that.
- [Female] Because then going to rehab
would have made you be out of control.
- Yes, yes, exactly.
Going to rehab would've meant that my control
would be in somebody else's hands.
I couldn't do that.
So I was like you know what,
I don't need to be doing this anymore.
- [Female] So then you just stopped kinda cold turkey.
- Yeah, I completely stopped, didn't look back. (chuckles)
(soft music)
Having an eating disorder is still
a really big part of my life.
I don't think about directly starving myself
or making myself sick,
but there are things that definitely trigger me
that I'm a lot more sensitive to.
I forgot to eat all day
or oh, I just lost track of time.
And I'm like, I never lose track of time, it's breakfast.
(laughs)
I feel like my body now,
it's so weird because a lot of people
think it's up for discussion and it's not.
I currently love what I look like and I have for awhile.
Like I think that I have a problem to be honest.
I could put on 20 pounds and I will walk around
like I just dropped 50.
I always look at myself and I'm like damn,
like someone's gonna want this.
And it's me. (laughs)
So that's all that matters, you know?
I get so many comments on YouTube
to the point where like I'm numb.
My favorite comment that I ever see over and over again
is I don't know why, but I hate Jazzmyne.
I know you hate me because you're not familiar
with a bigger woman with no hair wearing lipstick,
wearing whatever the hell she wants
and being confident at the same time.
You're not familiar with that
and that's how I know I'm doing my job correctly.
For me personally, it is always going to be a time
and a point in my life and to watch that growth is amazing.
And so I don't necessarily think
that's it's something you have to be
ashamed of or embarrassed of.
We're all people and we're all going through things
and all's we wanna do is just feel good and be loved.
And to be loved by ourselves.
At the end of the day,
I'm living with me 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I mean you gotta be happy with that.
So now you know this about me
and hopefully this helped you
and can help you empower yourself and everybody around you.
- [Female] It's perfect, cool.
Let's cut.
(bright music)