Not Quite 73 Questions with Sadie | A Vogue Inspired Interview

The Wonderful World of Vogue

An interview like this is usually conducted in a video format and focuses on the interesting and everchanging lives of celebrities. The world of Vogue is one where celebrities flaunt their fabulous houses, incredibly healthy diets, and flawless skincare routines for our consumption. We are bombarded with models, actors and musicians who seem to look perfect, act perfect and be perfect. Unlike us… right?

We have all sat at home watching these videos or scrolling endlessly on social media and drowning in the feelings of toxic comparison and insecurity.

‘Why don’t I look like them? Am I too fat? Am I too skinny? Why don’t I have these things?’

While this world may look pretty and glamorous, we forget to question what is real and what has been fabricated. Instead of focusing on this unrealistic lifestyle (which the majority of us are unlikely to live), this interview with Sadie Zanella will focus on her very normal life as a woman going into her twenties and her journey of self-love, fitness, and general insights into her everyday life.

Enjoy.

Who is Sadie Zanella? A Casual Conversation

Interviewer: ‘So, Sadie, first would you like to tell us who you are?’

Sadie: ‘I’m Sadie Zanella, I’m 19 years old, from Hamburg and I’m passionate about fitness’

Interviewer: ‘Cool, how are you doing? Is there anything you’re particularly excited about at the moment?’

Sadie: ‘I’m doing good. I’m excited to discuss this topic and I am also excited about Christmas’

Interviewer: ‘Lovely! We’ll be focusing on your everyday life, growth, fitness, and your journey to self-love during this interview, I hope you don’t mind.’

Sadie: ‘That sounds great.’

Interviewer: ‘Let’s start with your fitness journey. How important is fitness to you?’

Sadie: ‘Super important. When I started working out, I was embarrassed because I didn’t know what to do. The focus was mainly about losing weight and looking better, but the older I got, it’s a big part of how I feel every day. I notice the changes in my energy when I don’t work out. It became part of my routine and health and less about looks.’

Interviewer: ‘Would you say that there has definitely been a shift in your mindset towards fitness from adolescence to adulthood?’

Sadie: ‘100%. I used to see it as a burden. I had a love-hate relationship with it because if I had a bad day at the gym I would feel like I failed.’

‘Now I work for my body, not against it. I don’t hate it for gaining weight, I don’t hate it for feeling tired.’

This sentence in particular inspired me. Often we forget to work with ourselves and the little voice in our head spends most of the day criticising what we do. Sadie continues to talk about the pressures of the beauty industry and how society’s expectations of beauty have influenced her throughout her journey. She says:

‘You’re not going to love yourself every day. It will go up and down. There may be times you will feel extremely confident, and something crushes your spirit. The key here is allowing yourself to feel like this and then taking the next step forward.’

I think we could all learn something from her words.

A Deeper Look into Sadie’s Self-Image and Finding Self-Love

During our conversation, Sadie highlighted her past obsession with achieving a body type and how she reshaped her perception of her own body to empower herself. In her words: ‘Don’t destroy yourself to be someone that you’re not’.

There is an endless cycle throughout generations of us humans trying to keep up with beauty standards and wishing we looked a certain way. Sadie emphasises the additional pressures our generation faces with social media in the age of the internet. ‘We are overstimulated’ she says.

‘We are constantly bombarded with beauty advertisements and influencers who always look amazing online and live completely different lives from us.’

There seems to be a tendency for our generation to forget that there is beauty all around us and right in front of us. We often fail to recognise how the editing, enhancements and changes that are made to photos online and tell ourselves that we have to look this way in order to be loved or appreciated. Sadie believes self-care routines and rituals are essential in order to take care of her mental health and avoid overly comparing herself.

Despite Sadie’s belief that everyone should feel free to alter their bodies, she makes a point about how we should remind ourselves what is enhanced and what isn’t and create a clear distinction between reality and what we see online.

‘I’m still very influenced by beauty standards. I won’t act like I don’t care but there has to be a point where you stop hating yourself. Beauty to me is about feeling healthy just as much as looking healthy.’

Aristotle: ‘Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom’

After being asked what Sadie’s opinion on this statement is, she completely agrees. To her, knowing herself is fundamental to all aspects of her health and journey. From a physical perspective, she mentions getting to know her body and figuring out her limits when it comes to working out.

She enjoys split training and separates her workout into primary and secondary focuses – Primary being legs, back, shoulders and secondary being abs and biceps. The exercises someone will enjoy will vary depending on who the person is, and body type should be taken into.

‘It’s about praising your body for what it can do and enabling it to do these things at the top of its game rather than hurting your body by trying to fit into an unrealistic mould.’

To conclude, it seems important to Sadie to take an intuitive but also disciplined approach to her fitness. This is an area which empowers her. For others, this may be music or the arts. Look within and ‘know yourself’, as the famous Aristotle quoted. There is surely wisdom to be found in this.