Sometimes I Want to Escape

As someone who worked professionally as a glamour model for over 10 years, sometimes, I want to escape from it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my beautiful photos, but I don’t always love the attention that they bring. I understand that my followers are mostly men, and generally, they aren’t following me for my brains and clever ideas (I’m not saying that’s true of all of them, but the majority aren’t). As I entered into my 30s, I was happy to leave this mostly behind, only getting in front of the camera on modeling endeavors for fun personal projects. I became a full-time editorial writer, a creator, an explorer (and member of the Explorers Club), a producer, and I put together my own wonderful show that I couldn’t be happier with. Throughout these endeavors, I grew an Instagram page with many, many followers where I never posted photos of myself. I simply posted the beautiful world around us from photos I took on my many adventures into the unknown. It was such a wonderful escape, to have people follow me because they love travel and seeing photos of the beautiful world we live in. I didn’t get creepy messages. I didn’t get guys trying to ask me out. I didn’t get people overstepping their bounds and asking very personal questions to someone who is a stranger to them. It was liberating.

Then, somehow, I guess I began trusting the world a little more, so I posted a grouping of photos and one of the last ones had a photo of myself in the environment I was taking the photos from. I felt I didn’t need to hide myself, and I didn’t need to look made up or anything either- it was just a photo of me in a beautiful location at the end of a string of other photos. I had a following of travel lovers who loved the beautiful photos, so I felt safer in this built community. While the majority of my photos and content were still just nature photos, I felt okay not hiding myself, and at times, I began posting a photo of myself in these cool places.

Somehow, this seemed to be an invitation for men to come out of the woodwork and ask why I didn’t post more photos of just myself on the account, to ask me a slew of personal questions that were unnecessary and irrelevant to anything I was posting. And the best part is, when I didn’t reply to them, they would get aggressive and angry. In fact, I get called a lot of nasty things for ignoring total strangers online. I know it’s just the internet and people tend to put it all out there because they can hide behind a computer, but it was beyond frustrating to feel safe behind a mask made of travel, a face that wasn’t my face, and I began second guessing if I should have revealed who I was at all, as it only made things more complicated.

So, I guess I learned throughout this process and am continuing to learn now the value of privacy. I love sharing my unique and exciting adventures to the world, I really do, but sometimes, I just want to escape. I want to be unreachable to anyone. I don’t want to be in a place where people can contact me at all. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become much more of an introvert, and I love that about myself, honestly. And perhaps, that’s why I find myself planning adventures off the grid- at least to an extent- in remote regions across the world. Perhaps, that’s part of the joy for me, to be fully unresponsive, not worrying about having to reply to anyone.

There are honestly many reasons why I travel, just as I’m sure there’s many reason why each of you travel. I can honestly say I’m discovering so much about myself throughout these great journeys, and I’m completely excited to reveal what the future of my travel plans hold soon. Until then, wishing you well, even if you’ve told me off online for not getting back to you.