Zoella is without a shadow of a doubt the biggest beauty blogger in the world right now. She has over six million subscribers on her main channel ‘Zoella’ and over one million on her second chanel ‘morezoella’. On this second channel, Zoe Sugg (24) has been vlogging every day in September and seems to be continuing into October. She films herself and her activities every day to let her followers get an insight to her daily life.

Events this month included the launch of her new cosmetics brand ‘Zoella Beauty’ – a range of accessories and products that Zoe had part in designing herself. The vlogs also follow the debut author as she finalises the details of the release of her first book ‘Girl Online’, showing her viewers features such as the cover of the book as it reached it’s final copy.

What I wanted to talk about today was the vlog Zoe posted on October 1st titled ‘Your Skin Doesn’t Define You‘. This, of course, is relatable to many of her audience, mostly made up of teenage girls aged between perhaps 12 and 16. She has talked about her skin consciousness in videos previous, concerned about acne and blemishes that most girls have.

She said in her video that she has realised more recently that the condition of someone’s skin really does not matter – she talked for between three and four minutes, describing passionately about how much this feature just doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.

Zoe then decided that people should post photos of themselves on Twitter and Instagram with no make-up and the hashtag ‘#BareFaceAndWhat’. I think this is fantastic – Zoe is a very influential and inspirational young English girl and many of her audience will really take confidence in someone as fantastic as her encouraging them to be happy in their own bodies and their own skin. 

And obviously I couldn’t support a movement such as this without posting my own contribution.

Is this a shameless plug for my Instagram? A little bit.

But following me on Instagram isn’t the focus – within minutes of the picture being posted, two girls that I have never interacted with before found my photo through the tag and liked it. One of them even going to the effort of commenting to compliment me and tell me I should be more confident.

This is the kind of positivity I’m glad Zoe is encouraging people to share – without her idea this photo wouldn’t have been posted, without her hashtag those girls wouldn’t have found it and perhaps without the influence of Miss Zoella, they wouldn’t have commented to tell me they think I’m pretty.

There’s no arguing this isn’t a flattering photo – the bags under my eyes are awful, my cheeks are bright red and my whole face is shiny but I don’t think I mind.

I have a lot of opinions on YouTube culture and whether YouTube should really ever be a sustainable career but if it gives thousands if not millions of young girls confidence, inspired a girl in her flat in Brighton, I don’t think I mind.

‘My name is Sophie and here’s a picture of my completely naked face on the internet’