Despite the rise in the popularity of ‘tweakments’ like Botox and fillers, 43-year old writer and former fashion model Ruth Crilly says she won’t be going down the injectable route any time soon.
As a successful beauty blogger and content creator with a huge audience, Crilly explains her rationale: “I’m very conscious that I have a huge responsibility to women, to not make them feel sh*t about themselves, and to not make them yearn for things that possibly they can’t afford”.
Speaking to The Irish Times Women’s Podcast, the mother of two says her decision is also based on her worries about the impact the beauty industry is having on young children, specifically young girls. As a mother of a nine-year-old daughter, she tries to keep the beauty side of her work “under wraps” and to “not really mention much about appearance at home”.
“I don’t want her ever thinking about skincare or her face or what needs changing,” she says. “The skincare for kids thing is insanity in my opinion. I mean, why?”
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Reflecting on the skincare content that young children often come across on their social feeds and the rise in numbers of children asking their parents to buy them complicated skincare routines, Crilly maintains “it’s a really grim direction for things to be going in”.
“They shouldn’t be accessing this content… it’s not inappropriate, but it’s meant for a different set of eyes. So although it’s not X-rated content, it’s definitely not kid-friendly content. And yeah, I do feel worried about that”.
In this episode, we also hear about Crilly’s new memoir, How Not To Be a Supermodel, which lifts the lid on her days spent working as a model in one of the biggest talent agencies in the world. Told with Crilly’s undeniable wit, it’s a humorous and touching reflection on the highs and lows of the early noughties fashion scene.
In this wide-ranging conversation with podcast presenter Róisín Ingle, Crilly talks about her Irish roots, the influence of her safety-conscious father and what prompted her to enter her name into a national model search while studying law at Birmingham University.
She also reflects on her days as a fledgling model, selling car insurance on the weekends to keep herself afloat and all the hilarious situations she found herself in along the way.
With her life-long love of writing, Crilly explains how a move into blogging and content creation came as a natural progression, after 12 years mastering how not to be a supermodel.
You can listen back to this episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
