I’m sure we’ve all read Sarah Ashcroft’s article with Cosmopolitan over the past few days and if I’m completely honest, the backlash has both surprised and disappointed me!

If you have yet to read the article, Sarah talks candidly about her humble beginnings into the blogging world; having her Mum or boyfriend take her pictures in her drive, to where she is currently – hundreds of thousands of followers and campaign deals most bloggers would kill for.

I had already read a little bit about Sarah’s background and she completely inspired me to get back into the blogging world and take it seriously. I constantly look forward to seeing her content – one of the few bloggers (or social influencers) that I can say this about. She and Rebecca Spencer (her photographer) are a power duo, together and in their own right – the images are always aesthetically pleasing and effortless.

“The amount of Instagram pages that I come across that I’m like, ‘Is this my Instagram page?”

Should Sarah have mentioned in a round-about way that most Instagram accounts look like hers – probably not, but is she really wrong? I come across so many accounts that look amazing and I enjoy looking through, but is there anything that’s really new that I’ve never seen before? Most of the time not. Sarah’s statement has annoyed quite a few people, which I do understand, but nowhere in her sentence did she say that her Instagram theme or content was original and that most accounts have tried to imitate, surely that’s just reference to how many social media accounts look similar?

Image of Sarah’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahhashcroft/?hl=en

Many of the critical comments about the article call Sarah out for being “narcissistic”, “arrogant” and one even stating that she needs to “crawl back into her cave”. These comments are excessive (in my opinion). I honestly thought we, as forward-thinking women, were getting over trying to tear each other down?! Sarah’s extremely successful and she’s spoken about it and the industry she works in – so what? Don’t get me wrong, the people who disagree with the article have just as much of a right to voice their opinion as Sarah did by saying the blogging industry is “saturated”. It just doesn’t sit right with me that people seem so quick to tear apart and take every word in that article as a negative.

Have an opinion but you don’t need to voice such negativity on such a public space, prove her wrong (if you feel you have to) and do it with a smile on your face. I found the article to actually be a good motivator. This isn’t a “celebrity” who’s found Instagram fame through reality TV, as mentioned in the article she couldn’t even afford to keep the clothes in the beginning of her blogging career – a position I’m sure many of us are currently in. Fair play, Sarah Ashcroft, as far as I’m concerned!