When Susie Todd quit her fulltime job as a teacherโs aide to pursue a career on YouTube, she had no idea she would gain a combined 847,000 followers in just a couple of years.
Susieโs channel (susiejtodd) posts fashion, beauty and fitness content, but it was her videos surrounding body positivity and midsize representation that made waves on the platform.
In August 2019, the Chloe Ting fitness challenge was well on its way to amassing over 387 million views. Response videos popped up all over YouTube, as women swarmed to โproveโ the challengeโs purported benefits of giving anybody visible abs in two weeks.
Susie, who had been posting on YouTube as a hobby after studying film at CIT, watched the array of Chloe Ting response videos in utter disbelief, as each of the women appeared to be doing the strenuous workouts with ease, grace and a fully done face.
โPerfect hair in sleek ponytails, they were never even breaking a sweat,โ she said.
โI thought, โThis isnโt realistic for someone whoโs still trying to get fit. I need to show people that it is hard to do these challenges, so they donโt feel bad when they try it themselves.
โBack then I didnโt work out at all … I figured I would put something out there where I was trying and failing and keeping on going, regardless of not being in shape, and maybe people would relate, and realise that if I could do it, they could too.
โWhen people saw me struggling, it made them feel better,โ she smiled. โI put a lot of effort into filming, and it just makes me smile when I look back. That was the start of my fitness journey. Through YouTube, I fell in love with it.โ
Susie now inspires thousands to follow along on their own fitness journeys, working out with her every day and still trying viral fitness challenges for fun. Her warm commentary with a touch of self-deprecating humour, all while never taking claims of fitness trends too seriously, has steadily attracted an international following.
Despite living in Canberra all her life, the mass of Susieโs fame exists on other shores. โThe largest portion of my fanbase is in the US, about 27%, then the UK is my second biggest, Indiaโs my third, and right here in Australia is my fourth.โ
โItโs just crazy. I get messages saying, โlove from India,โ โlove from South Africa,โ โlove from the USA.โ Here in Canberra though, my life is hardly different since before I started YouTube. I still have all the same friends from school, I still live at home with my mum. Thereโs no online persona. Just me, in my room, filming my life.โ
Susie said the YouTube algorithm sends her to far more American screens, where her largely body positivity-centred content is more in demand.
โOne of the reasons I started focusing on midsize representation was because I wasnโt seeing any here.โ
The midsize movement, referring to representation in the media of women sized 12-16, has only recently become mainstream. Susie, a midsize beauty symbol, is one of the first to gain a sizable following in Australia, despite the national average womenโs dress size being size 14.
โI donโt understand why it took so long for media to promote the average woman. Clothing brands are completely within their power to show that you can wear these clothes and look good in a midsize body, or any body.
โWouldnโt it be great if the body positivity movement, wasnโt a movement, and just the norm?,โ she said.
โLike most girls, I struggled with hating my body in the past. Now I just want to help girls feel beautiful in their own skin, stretch marks, cellulite, and rolls included, because I never had that growing up.โ
Susie, who ends every video welcoming new viewers into a โfamily of all shapes and sizes,โ said if thereโs one message sheโd like to give to young girls growing up surrounded by the beauty standards of Instagram, itโs to not spend hours comparing themselves to the โperfectโ bodies online, and instead follow girls who look like them.
โWhy not go and follow people who are showing their real bodies, without the edit? You can feel good about yourself and admire others online.โ
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