Leanne Maskell was 24 and living in Australia when she began to plan her suicide.
No one knew or could have guessed because she seemed to have everything. Leanne – 5ft 11in, a beguiling, pale-blue-eyed blonde – had worked as a model for more than a decade (appearing in Vogue and I-D), having started at 13 years old. She had graduated with a law degree in London then taken off to Bondi Beach. Her Instagram page showed her modelling bikinis for big brands, partying on superyachts and travelling on private jets.
From a young age, Leanne knew how it felt when the way your life looks drifts far from reality. Modelling thrives on creating perfect images. The constant pressure from agencies and clients to lose weight had led her to an eating disorder. At 14, she was modelling wedding dresses. At 21, she was strapping on fake bellies for maternity swimwear. (‘My sister was pregnant at the time and said, “What are you doing? Pregnant women will look at those pictures and have no idea that the models are young size eights!”’) Those bikini shoots in Australia were so heavily edited that Leanne didn’t think they even looked like her, and the photos on her own feed were carefully Photoshopped by Leanne herself.
‘By the time I was 24, I was really self-obsessed,’ she says. ‘My dimensions had to be perfect. And I had to get the same number of likes each time.’ The people she tagged in her pictures weren’t real friends – she hung out with them simply to create content and raise her profile. And even her following was fake: as instructed by her agency, Leanne paid for Instagram followers and likes and comments. All the models she knew did the same.
In her new book The Reality Manifesto, Leanne, now 29, brilliantly sets out the multiple ways that ‘living virtually’ – immersed in social media, cut off from real life and close relationships – impacts brain health, especially in the young. But back then, aged 24 on Bondi Beach, the ultimate ‘influencer playground’, she had no idea why she felt so bad.
‘My life looked perfect,’ she says. ‘I had amazing opportunities, money, “beauty” – although I didn’t feel beautiful – but I was waking in the middle of the night crying, thinking, “Why am I still alive?”’ she says. ‘I thought I must have some serious mental health disorders and I remember googling them – bipolar, borderline personality disorder – and thinking, “I’ve got all of them.”’
After finding the perfect ‘suicide spot’ (for weeks, Leanne obsessively viewed its location on her phone) and setting a date to do it (a Sunday), she decided to enjoy her last week alive. ‘I had one week left to live, so I should be able to eat what I wanted – it didn’t matter if I got fat. I began each day with a chocolate almond croissant. I’d never have allowed myself that before,’ she says. ‘I stopped using my phone so much, and doing things to create “content”.
Very soon, she began to doubt that the problems she was hearing about from parents and their children could all be down to ADHD. The teenager who wouldn’t come out of his room; the 15-year-old who was part of a ‘self-harm squad’ at school; the countless young people who had diagnosed themselves with ADHD because they’d seen it on TikTok, who couldn’t sit through a 45-minute maths lesson or even get to the end of a YouTube video because a 15-second TikTok clip was all they were used to.
‘Parents were calling me about their children who were self-harming or suicidal or isolated or unable to focus, and the one thing that seemed to link all of the stories was a serious addiction to social media,’ says Leanne. She suspected that many of them didn’t have ADHD, but instead had variable attention stimulus trait (VAST), a term used to describe what happens when ADHD-like symptoms (lowered attention span, inability to focus) are caused by technology, social media and screen addiction.
Digger said
May 8 4:42 PM, 2022
Been saying this for a long time. Social media narcissistic obsession is damaging.
Syl said
May 8 7:05 PM, 2022
It's not hard to see why social media ruins lives.
It's all false, like a Stepford world, it's just not real.
A couple of weeks ago we were in a restaurant and a neighbour came in, we sat together, and she started showing us some pics on her phone.
I oohed and aahed a bit at her daughters pics, then she showed me a few of herself and her new boyfriend.
This lady lost her husband a couple of years ago. She is lovely, has been a model, she is now 50, still looks 30, she has had a bit of work done, but still looks natural face to face.
However, I just didn't recognise her from the pics she was showing me, which she has shown on her social media sites. They were photoshopped so much, it was like looking at a blank face, like the ones Katie Price and Madonna have on their social media pages....all clones of one another.
I don't know why...it's like form of brain washing.
Maddog said
May 8 7:34 PM, 2022
Syl wrote:
It's not hard to see why social media ruins lives. It's all false, like a Stepford world, it's just not real.
A couple of weeks ago we were in a restaurant and a neighbour came in, we sat together, and she started showing us some pics on her phone. I oohed and aahed a bit at her daughters pics, then she showed me a few of herself and her new boyfriend.
This lady lost her husband a couple of years ago. She is lovely, has been a model, she is now 50, still looks 30, she has had a bit of work done, but still looks natural face to face. However, I just didn't recognise her from the pics she was showing me, which she has shown on her social media sites. They were photoshopped so much, it was like looking at a blank face, like the ones Katie Price and Madonna have on their social media pages....all clones of one another.
I don't know why...it's like form of brain washing.
It's not hard to see why social media ruins lives. It's all false, like a Stepford world, it's just not real.
A couple of weeks ago we were in a restaurant and a neighbour came in, we sat together, and she started showing us some pics on her phone. I oohed and aahed a bit at her daughters pics, then she showed me a few of herself and her new boyfriend.
This lady lost her husband a couple of years ago. She is lovely, has been a model, she is now 50, still looks 30, she has had a bit of work done, but still looks natural face to face. However, I just didn't recognise her from the pics she was showing me, which she has shown on her social media sites. They were photoshopped so much, it was like looking at a blank face, like the ones Katie Price and Madonna have on their social media pages....all clones of one another.
I don't know why...it's like form of brain washing.
I get that no one wants to look like a sack of hammers on their photos but I do think that you have to be realistic about what you do to your images. As you get older you get less inclined to pose for the camera, or perhaps you just get less vain. And people who have cosmetic surgery while still in their 30's and 40's is just madness.
Syl said
May 10 12:02 AM, 2022
A few of us have posted pics, none are filtered or photoshopped. or whatever they do with the pics.
It must be quite depressing to make your pics look flawless, then look in the mirror and see reality.
Maddog said
May 10 2:19 AM, 2022
Syl wrote:
A few of us have posted pics, none are filtered or photoshopped. or whatever they do with the pics.
It must be quite depressing to make your pics look flawless, then look in the mirror and see reality.
A few of us have posted pics, none are filtered or photoshopped. or whatever they do with the pics.
It must be quite depressing to make your pics look flawless, then look in the mirror and see reality.
I may need a filter on this one.
You look perfectly normal. Lovely baby.
Syl said
May 10 11:36 AM, 2022
the deity known as Maddog wrote:
Syl wrote:
A few of us have posted pics, none are filtered or photoshopped. or whatever they do with the pics.
It must be quite depressing to make your pics look flawless, then look in the mirror and see reality.
I may need a filter on this one.
hahaha...I love it when little ones look at the grownup, and you just know they are thinking "why doesn't he act his age?".
Magica said
May 10 11:36 AM, 2022
Vita wrote:
Jaclyn Smith out of Charlie's Angels posted this yesterday.
Facelift, not normal at all
Digger said
May 10 1:59 PM, 2022
Magica wrote:
Vita wrote:
Jaclyn Smith out of Charlie's Angels posted this yesterday.
Facelift, not normal at all
She's also using a photoshop filter called healing brush and a high pass filter. You can tell because there's not a pore or flaw on her face. Which is not even natural in 20 year olds.
Vita said
May 11 2:12 AM, 2022
Digger wrote:
Magica wrote:
Vita wrote:
Jaclyn Smith out of Charlie's Angels posted this yesterday.
Facelift, not normal at all
She's also using a photoshop filter called healing brush and a high pass filter. You can tell because there's not a pore or flaw on her face. Which is not even natural in 20 year olds.
Looks like a completely different woman. I always thought Farrah Fawcett was the best looking of Charlie's Angels. Her death was overshadowed because she died on the same day as Michael Jackson. The Burning Bed was Farrah Fawcett' best film.
Syl said
May 11 11:55 AM, 2022
I liked Farrah too, she had a glow about her.
I did think Jaqueline Smith was the prettiest Angel, but she should have aged more naturally imo...she looks plastic now.
Magica said
May 12 4:03 PM, 2022
Syl wrote:
I liked Farrah too, she had a glow about her.
I did think Jaqueline Smith was the prettiest Angel, but she should have aged more naturally imo...she looks plastic now.
I always thought Farrah was the prettiest tbh. All very attractive though.
Syl said
May 12 6:11 PM, 2022
Here's the other original angel...she still looks nice.
Leanne Maskell was 24 and living in Australia when she began to plan her suicide.
No one knew or could have guessed because she seemed to have everything. Leanne – 5ft 11in, a beguiling, pale-blue-eyed blonde – had worked as a model for more than a decade (appearing in Vogue and I-D), having started at 13 years old. She had graduated with a law degree in London then taken off to Bondi Beach. Her Instagram page showed her modelling bikinis for big brands, partying on superyachts and travelling on private jets.
From a young age, Leanne knew how it felt when the way your life looks drifts far from reality. Modelling thrives on creating perfect images. The constant pressure from agencies and clients to lose weight had led her to an eating disorder. At 14, she was modelling wedding dresses. At 21, she was strapping on fake bellies for maternity swimwear. (‘My sister was pregnant at the time and said, “What are you doing? Pregnant women will look at those pictures and have no idea that the models are young size eights!”’) Those bikini shoots in Australia were so heavily edited that Leanne didn’t think they even looked like her, and the photos on her own feed were carefully Photoshopped by Leanne herself.
‘By the time I was 24, I was really self-obsessed,’ she says. ‘My dimensions had to be perfect. And I had to get the same number of likes each time.’ The people she tagged in her pictures weren’t real friends – she hung out with them simply to create content and raise her profile. And even her following was fake: as instructed by her agency, Leanne paid for Instagram followers and likes and comments. All the models she knew did the same.
In her new book The Reality Manifesto, Leanne, now 29, brilliantly sets out the multiple ways that ‘living virtually’ – immersed in social media, cut off from real life and close relationships – impacts brain health, especially in the young. But back then, aged 24 on Bondi Beach, the ultimate ‘influencer playground’, she had no idea why she felt so bad.
‘My life looked perfect,’ she says. ‘I had amazing opportunities, money, “beauty” – although I didn’t feel beautiful – but I was waking in the middle of the night crying, thinking, “Why am I still alive?”’ she says. ‘I thought I must have some serious mental health disorders and I remember googling them – bipolar, borderline personality disorder – and thinking, “I’ve got all of them.”’
After finding the perfect ‘suicide spot’ (for weeks, Leanne obsessively viewed its location on her phone) and setting a date to do it (a Sunday), she decided to enjoy her last week alive. ‘I had one week left to live, so I should be able to eat what I wanted – it didn’t matter if I got fat. I began each day with a chocolate almond croissant. I’d never have allowed myself that before,’ she says. ‘I stopped using my phone so much, and doing things to create “content”.
Very soon, she began to doubt that the problems she was hearing about from parents and their children could all be down to ADHD. The teenager who wouldn’t come out of his room; the 15-year-old who was part of a ‘self-harm squad’ at school; the countless young people who had diagnosed themselves with ADHD because they’d seen it on TikTok, who couldn’t sit through a 45-minute maths lesson or even get to the end of a YouTube video because a 15-second TikTok clip was all they were used to.
‘Parents were calling me about their children who were self-harming or suicidal or isolated or unable to focus, and the one thing that seemed to link all of the stories was a serious addiction to social media,’ says Leanne. She suspected that many of them didn’t have ADHD, but instead had variable attention stimulus trait (VAST), a term used to describe what happens when ADHD-like symptoms (lowered attention span, inability to focus) are caused by technology, social media and screen addiction.
It's all false, like a Stepford world, it's just not real.
A couple of weeks ago we were in a restaurant and a neighbour came in, we sat together, and she started showing us some pics on her phone.
I oohed and aahed a bit at her daughters pics, then she showed me a few of herself and her new boyfriend.
This lady lost her husband a couple of years ago. She is lovely, has been a model, she is now 50, still looks 30, she has had a bit of work done, but still looks natural face to face.
However, I just didn't recognise her from the pics she was showing me, which she has shown on her social media sites. They were photoshopped so much, it was like looking at a blank face, like the ones Katie Price and Madonna have on their social media pages....all clones of one another.
I don't know why...it's like form of brain washing.
The filters are something else.
I wish women would stop doing that..
🤷♂️
Madonna 2032.
I get that no one wants to look like a sack of hammers on their photos but I do think that you have to be realistic about what you do to your images. As you get older you get less inclined to pose for the camera, or perhaps you just get less vain. And people who have cosmetic surgery while still in their 30's and 40's is just madness.
It must be quite depressing to make your pics look flawless, then look in the mirror and see reality.
I may need a filter on this one.
Jaclyn Smith out of Charlie's Angels posted this yesterday.
You look perfectly normal. Lovely baby.
hahaha...I love it when little ones look at the grownup, and you just know they are thinking "why doesn't he act his age?".
Facelift, not normal at all
She's also using a photoshop filter called healing brush and a high pass filter. You can tell because there's not a pore or flaw on her face. Which is not even natural in 20 year olds.
Looks like a completely different woman. I always thought Farrah Fawcett was the best looking of Charlie's Angels. Her death was overshadowed because she died on the same day as Michael Jackson. The Burning Bed was Farrah Fawcett' best film.
I did think Jaqueline Smith was the prettiest Angel, but she should have aged more naturally imo...she looks plastic now.
I always thought Farrah was the prettiest tbh. All very attractive though.
Here's the other original angel...she still looks nice.