The New Girl | Sidemen

Birthday Pictures | Chapter 48

It's currently the day before my birthday. I'm not too happy about it at all since it meant I was spending my birthday in quarantine. I mean I guess it was okay, I've had every other birthday to celebrate. It's just one year that I won't be able to, but it still sucks a lot. I told all of my friends to not even bother buying me presents because I didn't want them to have to come and drop them off or to get them sent to Jj and Simon's flat. The only people that are going to be getting me gifts are Jj and Simon. Apparently they had both had their gifts for about a month now because they wanted to be prepared.

     "Simon! Come help us!" Jj yelled as me and him worked on setting up a little area with balloons and some streamers.
   "Yea! Come on Minter!" I yelled at Simon as he walked out of his room.
   "What's going on?" He asked as he pointed to the corner of the room that we were decorating.
   "Well... we're decorating the corner of the room for some insta pictures to take tonight" I told him as I grabbed some shiny confetti from a bag and spread some on the floor.
   "She wants some insta pictures to post tomorrow" Jj added onto my comment.

"You girls and your instagram pictures. Shaking my head" Simon said out loud, although without even shaking his head which was stupid.
"Okay Minter. Just help us please. Can you set up the colored lights and make sure they're all working fine?" I asked him as I pointed over to the other side of the room where they were sitting in the box.
"Oh wow you're going all out" Jj said as he didn't even know about the lights yet.
"Well I want it to be really pretty. I only get one Instagram birthday post a year you know" I joked with him as I punched the side of his arm.

"Okay I think that's good Simon, thanks. Now you two come here!" I said as I motioned for them to come into the shot with me.
"Who's going to take the photos then?" Jj asked confused.
"We'll just do a self timer and if they turn out bad I have a clicker I can use to take it" I told Jj as they both walked into the frame of the photo.

"Well for the first one we probably need the clicker, because I have an idea" I told both of the boys, their faces turned to worry.
"What kind of idea?" Simon asked me.
"Nothing weird you lot. Simon just hop on Jide's back" I told him, and then waited for him to do so. After he jumped onto Jj's back I got up on the edge of the sofa and got onto Simon's back.

"This is so stupid Aria!" Jj said as he tried walking back towards the picture set. After he had got there we all started laughing since he had almost tripped. Thinking it would be a cute photo, I clicked the button on my tiny remote as we were all still laughing. We took a few more photos all together, and then some with just Simon and I, then Jide and I.

The pictures with Jide turned out wonderful. Simon had helped take them which was super nice of him to actually care to take my pictures for me. I considered it as a birthday gift already but he insisted he would still give me gifts tomorrow. My favorite photo of me a Jide was one where he had his hands on my waist as we kissed, and I had my hands on each side of his face. I wasn't going to post that on my account, I was just going to keep it for myself. Although Jide had told me that I should post it on my private finsta so that we could finally let all of our friends know that we were sort of a thing. Although he still hadn't made it official yet.

After looking through all of the pictures and choosing about eight which were my favorites. I put them onto my laptop and started to edit some of the coloring and contrast and such. I never touched my body or face with editing, well at least anymore. When I first started getting popular, the higher my follower count was, the worse my insecurities were. I would edit my waist to be slimmer and my bum to look bigger. I desperately wanted to look like all those Instagram girls and just influencers in general. Although for some reason I just couldn't look like that, and I accepted it. Most of them had photoshopped anyways, and I realized being my natural self was more important to me than looking perfect.

Jide was also the one who helped me with my body image a lot. He had realized that I didn't eat much, and that I always talked about wanting to be thin like certain girls and would always show him pictures of what I wanted to look like. One day he sat me down for a talk, and it had changed my whole perception of myself completely.

~
"Aria. Can I talk to you?" Jide asked as he poked his head out of his bedroom.
"Yea sure. What about" I said as I started to walk over.
"Have you eaten today?" He asked me quietly as I got close to the door.
"No. Why?" I asked him, confused, as I walked into the room and he closed the door behind me.
"It's the evening already and you haven't eaten anything? That's unhealthy Aria" He told me as he motioned me to sit down.
"I know Jide. But it's not that big of a deal. I'm just trying to lose weight" I told him, trying to defend my bad habits at the time.

"You need to eat. I get that you might want to lose weight but you should do it my working out and eating enough. I don't want to see anything bad happen to you and if you keep doing this something bad will" He told me as he held my hand and stared into my eyes.
I started to tear up as he talked. "I know it's not healthy Jj. I just don't feel pretty. I want to be skinny and I want to look as pretty as all those girls online. God even a girl like Talia or Freya" I said, wiping a tear from my face with the hand he wasn't holding.
"Aria... you're beautiful. Before you started all of this everyone still thought you were so gorgeous, we don't think of you any differently now. But how you were before was so much healthier. Those girls you see online aren't being truthful Aria. They edit their photos just like you've been" He told me sincerely as he wiped away another one of my tears.
"I know I know. It still just gets to my head. I just want to look like that still. I want all my followers to be able to look up to me and thing I'm pretty" I told him as I looked down, ashamed of my reasons for what I've been doing.

"Aria look.. this picture is before you edited it, and this is after you did it. You look so gorgeous before, I don't get why you would change it at all. Please promise me you won't do this anymore and you'll start eating normally again... Promise me?" Jide asked seriously. This had probably been one of the only serious conversations I have had with him.
"Okay... I promise you Jide. Thank you" I said as I gave him a kiss on the cheek.
~

After a few weeks where I had been eating more I felt so much more energized and it was amazing. The photos on my Instagram had also been doing better than ever with the amount of likes and supportive comments. I realized that I didn't need to look a certain way for people to like me. I just needed to be myself.

I don't know where I would be right now if I never had that talk with Jide. Probably still hating the way I looked... He had truly helped me a lot.