Gigi Robinson Talks Mental Health, Body Image, and Sobriety

Gigi Robinson is active. The 24-year-aged influencer, photographer, podcast host, and entrepreneur not too long ago additional “swimsuit design” to her stacked record of credentials when she became the first Sports Illustrated product to overtly discuss about her serious sickness.

Robinson passionately utilizes her system for advocacy — and long-term health issues is far from the only crucial issue she broaches. She just lately introduced her podcast, “Everything You Require Is Within,” to discuss about system graphic, mental overall health, and articles generation with specialists like Diversability founder Tiffany Yu, Sofi the Oddity, and Playboy social media editor Helen Sibilia. And if that was not plenty of, she’s also working on an exciting new task that “focuses specifically on self-advocacy for pupils, clients, and anyone who struggles with their body impression,” she states.

Robinson, who was diagnosed with connective-tissue problem Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) at age 11, has a lot more than 130,000 followers on TikTok by itself. She sums up her mental wellbeing technique with a single phrase: “I are living by the indicating ‘what somebody else thinks of you is, frankly, none of your business.'” But Robinson has a large amount more to say about standing up for herself, acquiring a assist system, and coming into her role as an educator — and what it took for Robinson to turn into outspoken in her advocacy.

POPSUGAR: You happen to be an advocate for mental well being recognition. What tends to make you so passionate about both of those that and physique graphic?

Gigi Robinson: Residing with EDS has challenged me in a ton of methods, simply because I sense like my human body has betrayed me and it would make almost everything complicated, especially when I have flare-up days. The good news is, I dwell in New York Metropolis, and during higher education, I lived in Los Angeles with obtain to skilled specialists for persistent soreness and EDS. I definitely desired a aid process. For me, that grew to become my clinical care crew as I struggled with my psychological and mental wellbeing. I was concurrently taking medication and developing a ton of insecurity with my physique. This triggered me to have difficulties with binge having and ultimately led me to speak about it with my doctors and therapists. I do not know how I bought to a level the place I wanted assist, but I know doing work with a medical treatment group that recognized my needs and focused on my specific issue genuinely assisted push me to established a lot more healthcare boundaries. If it served me, an individual with about a ten years of health care worries, I could only hope that it would support other individuals as perfectly. That’s why I advocate for it.

In a publish-COVID planet, in which it really is clear that lodging this kind of as distant studying, hybrid class, and extended deadlines exist and incredibly considerably assisted the general academic experience for chronically sick and disabled pupils, the worst part is that as we appear out of the pandemic, we are resorting again to prepandemic routines and methodologies for learning, which disregard learners with these lodging. And despite the fact that there are places of work of accessibility and incapacity products and services at universities, it’s very clear we need to give learners the electrical power to advocate for them selves, to be capable to check with academics for what they want to do their position as a university student best.

And component of sharing my story is so that other individuals really don’t make extra errors, and they can discover from the hardships that I’ve professional with my continual health challenges.

PS: You have spoken publicly about your individual decision to not drink alcohol. What guided that final decision?

GR: I essentially never had a difficulty with liquor, but I experience like when individuals say that they are sober or don’t drink, anyone assumes they experienced a challenge. For me, it can be all about my overall health. There is certainly no other way close to it: I’m virtually allergic to alcohol. It would cause terrible reactions with my mast cell activation syndrome [which causes repeated episodes of severe allergy symptoms] exactly where my facial area would puff up and my eyes have been virtually absolutely swollen shut. I also would get horrible joint agony whenever that I drank. So I stopped. Coincidentally, a couple months later, I began on a new ache medication that is served me enormously and transformed my everyday living this sort of medicine is deemed a managed compound, and you’re not authorized to consume alcoholic beverages on it, so it just appeared to get the job done out in my favor anyway. I truly like not ingesting simply because it just will help me dwell a much better life with less persistent discomfort.

Quite often, I hold a club soda with lime, which appears to be like like a tequila soda, or a ginger ale in a whiskey glass with an ice dice that mimics a whiskey, or I purchase a mocktail! No one has to know, and it is none of their enterprise, fairly frankly. If any person asks me why I you should not drink, I check with them a question that reframes and deflects the concern back again to them: “Why do you treatment what I am ingesting? What are you ingesting?” And if they have experienced a drink or two, they will ordinarily constantly leap to tell you about what they are consuming. If they continue to keep pushing to know what I am drinking, I usually know they are not the kind of particular person I want to be about — I am not a lover of peer stress!

PS: You can find so significantly emphasis on constructing a help process, but how can folks — particularly in the course of COVID, hybrid function schedules, and distant college — essentially do that?

GR: I adhere to the fundamental principles: Instagram, TikTok, and even Snapchat. Prepandemic, I especially sought out a community neighborhood of people living with my situations. This also led to a collection of IRL meetups, which was definitely empowering. It was wonderful to satisfy with people and also incorporate them into some of my jobs. Now that we are in a put up-COVID environment, digital link is absolutely some thing that’s not likely away, and there are a great deal a lot more means to link with new people today. I still defer to Facebook teams and chat with people by way of DMs. I have satisfied some of the coolest folks by means of these help teams, together with my close friends @izzy.kornblau, @butyoudontlooksickofficial, and @ashley_carnduff.

PS: What do you wish everyone realized about Gen Z’s mental overall health?

GR: It’s imperative to contain us in the conversations, due to the fact though we’re not as aged as you, we’re not kids anymore. We are the era that grew up in electronic-to start with environments that have formed who we are and how we act. As the environment all-around us adjustments, we have adapted to it, and as we’ve finished that, we’ve been given a good deal of pushback from those not wanting to adapt. When it will come to psychological wellbeing, education accommodations, social media literacy, the future of the office, and a lot more, enable us have a seat at the desk.