Is Online Shopping Affecting Our Mental Health?

I said it out loud recently to a room full of women and I paused. I watched their faces.

And every single head started nodding.

'Online shopping is bad for our mental health'

Not all shopping. Not buying a birthday present or replacing a broken kettle. I’m talking about the endless scroll. The 2am basket. The influencer in the reel who looks vaguely like you — similar age, similar colouring, similar body shape — holding up something that looks incredible on her. And you think, yes. That’s it. That’s the one.

It arrives. It’s nothing like you imagined. It goes back, or to Vinted, or to the back of the wardrobe where it will quietly make its way to a charity shop or landfill. And you feel,somehow, worse than before you bought it.

Sound familiar?

Are  influencer's the problem

Here’s the thing about influencers. They are not you. They never were. And the algorithm knows exactly which ones to show you — just similar enough to feel relatable,

just aspirational enough to keep you scrolling.

We have outsourced our style decisions to strangers. We used to go shopping with a girlfriend, try things on, hold pieces against us in daylight, laugh at the disasters and celebrate the finds. We had a relationship with our clothes and with ourselves in them.

Now we have a 12-inch screen and someone with 1.2 million  followers showing us something in 30 seconds. No relationship. No context. No real idea of who we actually are.

The midlife blindspot

And here’s where it gets honest.

As midlife women, we are in a strange place. Many of us are post-children, post certain careers, post the bodies and the hair and the skin we had in our thirties. We look in themirror and we are not sure who is looking back.

We have a choice in that moment. We can lose ourselves in regret — grieving the waist,the glow, the version of ourselves we remember — and try to hide. Pull on something safe. Something that doesn’t draw attention. Something that disappears us.

There is almost an anorexia of midlife — not about food, but about how we see ourselves. The same distortion. The same inability to see what is actually there. I call it SELF ERASURE . We look in the mirror and we don’t see what’s there. We see what we’ve lost. The woman who walks into a room and lights it up cannot see herself the way everyone else can. She has decided, quietly, over years, that she is past it. Too big, too skinny, too shapeless, too unsexy,  too grey, too invisible. (the list really is endless of the self depreciting 'too's' ) And so - slowly but surely she dresses accordingly.

That is not the truth. It is just a story she has been telling herself for long enough that it feels like the truth and one that she feels she has to carry through this thing called mid life until she reaches old age! 

Or we can choose a renaissance.

Not going back. Going forward. Into who we are now, with everything we’ve learned, everything we’ve lived, everything we’ve become.

That woman deserves clothes that are intentional and chosen by her,  Not for an influencer. Not for who she was. For exactly who she is right now.

Why it matters

Most women I meet know their height, their rough dress size and not much else about their style. They don’t know their foundation. They don’t know what makes them feel magnetic rather than just dressed. They are making thousands of small purchasing decisions with almost no framework to guide them.

The result?

Wardrobes full of things that don’t work. Money spent on returns. A creeping sense that fashion is not for them anymore.

It is absolutely for them. They just need a different starting point.

What SNOB is doing about it

This is why I created SNOB Outfit School.

Not another event with fizz and a goody bag — though there is fizz and there are goody bags. A proper methodology. A framework for helping women understand their personalstyle, clearly and practically, so they can shop with confidence and dress in a way that feels unmistakably them.

We have just run our first evening here in Tiverton. The feedback told me everything I needed to know. These women did not just have a nice time. They had lightbulb moments. They left differently.

More dates coming soon. If you want to be the first to know, get yourself on the list - message us on hello@ilovesnob.co.uk and add SNOB OUTFIT SCHOOL  in the subjct line 

Because your renaissance is waiting

Emma Ranson Bellamy is the founder of SNOB, an independent fashion boutique  in Tiverton, Devon. SNOB Outfit School is her methodology for helping women rediscover their personal style — and themselves.

www.ilovesnob.co.uk | @ilovesnob