Introducing Me! Stephanie
Who I Am:
Hello everyone! By now, you have read a few intuitive eating blog posts I have created with the help of Robin. I have been Robins’ intern since the end of May, assisting her with her social media presence and production. My name is Stephanie Marceron, and I wanted to take this opportunity to talk more about myself and my background. I have been attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, since the fall of 2021, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Media and Communication Studies. I am a senior about to enter my last semester and will graduate in December. I want to start a career in either public relations or marketing in the cosmetics/skincare industry.
Why I Chose This Internship:
When I received an email from my professor and then from Robin about this internship, I was very interested in using the skills I had just learned from my Adobe Suite class that I took in the spring semester. I wanted to use my skills and help Robin increase her social media presence and engagement. I wanted to learn more about the analytics side of social media marketing. Specifically, I wanted to see how many people we could reach with both of our artistic styles. I was excited to see that the internship was one for social media content creation because social media is the purest form of marketing. Every post, every image is a person trying to market themselves to their audience, whomever it may be. I was very excited when Robin asked me to help her with the blog because now I can have published works in my name when I apply for a marketing or public relations job!
When I looked through her website and Instagram, I was interested in working for Robin. The positive speech and images she used to depict the body instilled that she wanted to present her practice as a safe and professional space. I had never heard of intuitive eating before I was introduced to Robin. After researching the practice, I wanted to learn more about it! I had never been introduced to it before, and I wish I had known of its existence in high school. From a visual design standpoint, I loved that her main colors were blue, known as a calming color. Her speech for all of her posts is very affirming and positive. Her goal is to help those who have struggled in the past with diet culture.
Positive Food Moment:
A key food memory actually happened to me very recently. My partner took me to Sequoia in DC for my birthday and Sunday brunch. Since working with Robin, I slowed down my eating and savored the crabcakes in front of me. It was a buffet-style meal, and I didn’t eat past fullness just because the food was abundant and readily available. I savored the meal and listened to my inner hunger and fullness cues to tell me when I was satisfied and full. I kept the food police from telling me that I shouldn’t be eating so much fish and that I should have only eaten what diet culture would have deemed as “sufficient.” But I didn’t; I enjoyed myself and enjoyed my food. I could leave enough room because the waitress brought over a dessert for my birthday, and I wasn’t overly exhausted from excessive eating; it was a delicious chocolate mousse cake!
Trigger Warning: Disordered Eating
In this section, I will discuss disordered eating and my experience with it in high school. If you do not feel comfortable reading this, please skip to the next section. I was obsessed with America’s Next Top Model starting my freshman year. This was a time in my life when I wanted so desperately to be a model; I wanted to look just like the women I was watching more than anything in the world. At this time, I was 5’9 and still growing, so I already had the height I needed if I wanted to be a model. When I heard the weight numbers of the models, those numbers became an aspiration. I just had to sustain this number as a 14-year-old, and then I could make it! I stopped eating when I was at school. Whenever it was time for lunch, I would just give it away to a friend, and I would sleep through lunch. The only time I would eat was before soccer practice and a game so that I could still perform. This habit continued until I was 23, when I met my partner and his family. They all showed concern about my size, but they encouraged me to repair my relationship with food and form healthy eating habits. When I met Robin and really started to understand Intuitive Eating, it all finally connected to what I needed to change. I stopped giving the food police total control over me and my eating decisions.
What I’ve Gained From This Internship:
Since the start of this internship, I have been able to hone a creative sense that I felt that I lost when I fell into my eating disorder. I have been able to speed up the process it takes me to create Instagram posts for Robin, but I’ve also been able to form new ideas about my relationship with food and eating. I’ve published my own work, which will give me an advantage when I graduate in December and start looking for PR jobs. Learning about Intuitive Eating has helped me look at how I view food and how I have grown to respect myself and my decisions regarding eating. I really owe a lot to Robin for taking a chance on me when I didn’t have experience working for anyone regarding social media in the past. She has been a huge support and cornerstone for my journey through Intuitive Eating and this internship. I can’t thank her enough for the amount of trust and encouragement she has given me throughout this experience.
