this talk: is about the impact of toxic masculinity on self-esteem - with David Fadd

As time has elapsed I have found out just how important good mental health is and the effects that it can have on day to day life.  Just like the beginning of most things, I personally struggled with self-esteem issues which affected my mental health and my self-perception. This was so detrimental to me because it meant that at a very young age I would seek validation and acceptance from anyone that would give me the slightest bit of attention, enforcing the idea that I had of myself at the time which was that I was less than in comparison to everyone else. As an 11-year-old boy surrounded by other 11-year-olds, it was difficult to fully identify what the cause was for how I felt or that what I felt was negative, but I remember just feeling that I was never good enough and never deserving of anything of value. 

As I began to grow (older & bigger), I turned into a moody teenager which everyone around me mistook for that fact that I was of pubescent age. I was at the age of hormonal changes, which had a part to play. However, I realised that a lot of my insecurities and self-esteem issues were rooted in my physical appearance and specifically how that was perceived by society. I’d always been amongst the top two tallest in my year group throughout my secondary school days. Growing up I was never the most athletic kid. In fact, I didn’t have any interest in playground games like football and basketball. This in turn meant that in the eyes of my peers I ‘wasn’t a man’ and ‘acted like a girl’. Back then this was devastating, these comments and remarks continued to eat away at any little confidence I’d attempt to muster up. Society and media dictates that manhood and masculinity is about sport, dominance, proof of ruggedness and ego and doesn’t leave room for the fact that there are as many forms of manhood as there are men.   

As I grew up the name calling and degrading stopped, but that was only externally. At this point I had internalised a lot of the horrific things that people said about me which affected everything about me from the way I walked to my inability to express myself as a creative and that became my new reality. 

University was where a lot of things changed for me and till this very day I’m grateful for my family and support system who made efforts to celebrate me for everything I was, and saw in me the masses of potential of what I could be. They did their part but there was a ‘light-bulb moment’ where I realised that the responsibility was on me to actively work on my mental health. Once my mind-set changed, like dominos, everything else fell into place. I began to do things towards practicing self-care and eventually restored the value in myself. Part of this was working on ‘sharpening my crafts’ which consisted of doing what I enjoy, a huge part of which is fashion and design.

Not long after, I got signed to my agency BRIDGE and that plunged me into the world of self-love and enabled me to connect with many people that make up the body positive community. Being signed for 3 years I’ve learned so much in my time so far and grown drastically as a person. I’m now a plus sized model and influencer. I do what I do for guys like me who have had such a difficult time with body image and self-love. For the little boys that are growing up feeling less than. For the men that genuinely look in the mirror and hate what they see.

My message to these guys is this: as a man, the best thing you can do is to be the man that you are, whatever form that takes, not conforming to stereotypes or societal expectations. Live as the version of manhood that you are and prove that being a man doesn’t take one form, that masculinity isn’t singular but that there are as many forms of manhood as there are men.


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this talk: is about the perception of mental health within the military - with James Elliott

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this talk: is about making the most of living with incurable cancer - with Laura Henrietta