The making of Miss Swirl
“Swirl” is a powerful statement I made to myself in front of the mirror. That day I must have been surprisingly hopeful, something that was rare at the time.
By Miss Swirl
I was such a depressed kid, but I hid it very well.
Watching depressing channels, playing depressive games, talking to strangers on chats to avoid revealing the monster that was growing inside of me.
I had everything a kid could have possibly wanted: a loving family, all the toys I dreamt of, an endless garden at the back of the house, few friends (but good ones), many artistic talents that were looked after, a body made for sports.
I should have been perfect, because everything around me was almost perfect.
But I was far from it: my head was a clusterfuck of random thoughts and my chest was haunted by emotions that were too heavy to carry.
ON THE RIGHT: Pre-teen Sara, first period of trichotillomania — eyebrows, eyelashes and at the top of the hairline
I remember the nuns writing notes on my essays saying, “she is too sensitive.” Like, what the heck does that mean? I am 9. How is a child supposed to be? Is there a bar? A percentage? A standard for emotions?
Man, the 90’s in Italy weren’t the same as in the US. The scientific discoveries were only accessible to the people working on them directly, while the rest lived in a bubble of traditions, granny’s remedies, and religious convictions.
Was I dyslexic? Mildly.
Was I dyscalculic? Extremely.
Did I have ADD? Possibly.
Was I given practical instruments to understand how to work around my brain? Absolutely not.
I was given prayers and a fear of going blind if I masturbated.
Nothing in school prepares you for what lives inside of you.
You study subjects that don’t have anything to do with mental health: in fact, some of them make you aware of dangerous behaviors before you can even understand what they really mean.
Why do we get a pediatrician to check on our body, but we don’t get a doctor for our mental health? Isn’t that as important as being fit? Yes, it is. It is as fundamental.
So there I was, perfectly fine from the outside while my mind kept rotting. A growing sense of emptiness fed by all the horrible information you learn at school and on TV, by the standards that the ads make you swallow, and an indescribable series of raw models that should have been illegal.
I had no clue that there was something wrong with me. But I remember precisely the moment I was made aware of it.
I was sitting at the table, having dinner with my parents and siblings, when my mother stared into my eyes for a second more than usual. Her face just changed. She told me: “Sara, what happened to your face? Where are your eyebrows? Oh my god, where are your eyelashes?!”.
I looked at the horrified expressions around me and I just couldn’t tell them. That it was me. I did that.
I was 11. Since then, I could never stop pulling my hair. I was diagnosed with trichotillomania, but before that, they took me to the exorcist. Just in case.
So one day I picked up black eyeliner and drew a huge swirl on the side of my eye that looked a lot like Mike Tyson’s face tattoo, but better. I had just helped myself look different and bolder than everyone else I knew.
And that was me, Swirl.
“Normal standards damage so many people every day. You feel less than all the rest. You feel like you’re not deserving.”
Bottom line, it took me 16 years to heal my mental health. And I didn’t have any particular trauma.
I was just like any other kid, so they didn’t think to check inside my head.
And I hear people still saying that therapy is only for when it is “really” serious. Mental health is always serious, and unless you are completely oblivious to what is happening inside of your mind, you have no excuse to neglect it.
There are more than 50 types of therapeutic approaches. Find yours.
Because the sooner you find it, the better you will overcome the obstacles that life is inevitably going to challenge you with. From within, and from outside.
And this work starts with spreading awareness to the young generations, so they can take charge of their body and mind. They need to see what the future can hold if they stop competing against each other for petty reasons and start helping each other to thrive.
We need schools that are actual schools of life and talent; schools that can help parents, even guide parents, with the difficult job of raising functioning human beings of the world’s tomorrow.
This is why I think it is absolutely mandatory for a caring society to instate a “pediatrician” for mental health. For everyone, from the day you say your first word. Man, the moment you can recognize your parents, they gain the power to also mess you up.
Mental health doctor for kids.
On top of that, we need to ensure that every school has mental health counselors that kids, pre-teens, and teens visit regularly, not only when they need to or when they act out.
It sets a societal standard for which it’s good practice to check in with your mental health and teaches you to seek help as soon as you need it, without a sense of shame or having to hide it from the people you love.
Kids don’t only need guidance when they act out. A kid that doesn’t act out isn’t necessarily happy.
I was one of them.
Mental health counselors in schools.
I am sure a lot of people agree with me. It’s just a matter of funds, laws, and actions.
Unfortunately, I personally don’t have the power to take action on it. Mine are just words and are as valid as the words of whoever thinks the opposite of what I do. Maybe one day I’ll sign up to become evil and try to make it as a politician, so that I may have power.
But for now, I can only lead by example in the industry I came to grow up in: fashion.
Even if the fact that fashion dictates beauty standards is a misconception, it’s going to hold true as long as enough people believe it. At the very least, it’s going to affect the great majority.
So I find myself in the timeline of what I perceive being the bleeding edge of the modelling world. Moving away from a time when being tall, malnourished, unkempt means you look good on camera and that was what you should’ve aimed to look like.
I honestly have no idea if I will live long enough to see the end of the Kardashians era, where you need to dress in expensive, tight, dull clothes and wear 6 layers of makeup over excessive plastic surgery.
But I am seeing the heroin chic era of unhealthy and unrealistic images coming to an end, with more and more advocate models™ rising up to the challenge of being heard and seen. The ones that are not that tall, that lithe. The ones who are not the girl next door or have four working limbs.
I am joining the era of showing off being diverse, until diversity will become represented for every diverse human out there. That’s what we stand for, that’s what I stand for. Hoping that more and more brands will start standing next to us.
Most of the people that follow me on Instagram think of me as this inaccessible person. But I am really not. I’m literally the girl next door. I’ve always been — and you can talk to me about anything. I talk to homeless people when I have time. I sit next to strangers and dive into their lives. I genuinely love people.
Maybe that is why I moved to a city with 8 million of them.
I moved to London once my mental health was in check. I had two goals in my heart:
● Give myself a chance to become a successful model
● Learn more about mental health treatments and their related scientific discoveries
Nothing taught me as much as living in such a diverse, multicultural, populated city like London. It’s weird here, man. If you’re bald and hairless people approach you to say you’re cool. I mean, what? You’re not going to ask me if I got cancer and you can pray for me?
What is that!
I started talking to people about trichotillomania, something that was always difficult to explain back in Italy. Here, they are just curious, open to understanding more. And just talking about it felt so liberating.
For years, I couldn’t even hear the question without my throat closing up and tears filling my eyes. How good it is to just be able to share and be heard.
This brings us to my current project of working with the TLC BFRB foundation, which is expanding from the US to the UK, and now to Italy through our effort as volunteers. TLC supports people like me, with BFRBs, in the most natural way. They don’t make a fuss about it, they just tell you what it is, help you to accept it, and then support you during the times you need support.
So if you speak Italian and have a BFRB, there is now a support group to help you cope with it.
The same that you can find in the US, the UK, and some other countries. And if you want to get involved and run a support group yourself, you can apply to become a host in your country.
That’s how good is done.
And as for becoming a successful model, it is freaking hard. It’s one of those jobs where 1 in a million makes it. Not only do I have to fight against the odds, I gotta fight against my own age. Because modeling is like playing football: you do it when you’re young.
I am not young anymore. And I am not saying that because I don’t feel young, I say it because half the people from my high school are now either married or married with kids and they share it on Facebook.
That’s how old I am.
But that’s how long it took me to get out of depression and be able to embrace what I wanted to do.
If I’d had different instruments, different notions, an actual support system from the state, a school of life and talents, I would have probably found my way sooner.
Anyway, I’m here waiting to see if the pandemic has lowered the chances of becoming a successful model from 1 in a million to 0.2 in a million. If that’s the case, I will curse the Gods, let out all my rage, turn into an evil Swirl, and run for a random evil politics job. I’ll change the world. One way or the other.
If not in politics, then I’ll see y’all on the billboards.
(BUT I still need all the help I can get. So if you would be so kind to support me, follow me on instagram.com/miss_swirl — and as we say in the UK: cheers, thank you, thank you very much, cheers!)
