Amanda Taylor, ’22: @theunplugcollective

The Unplug Collective, started by Barnard senior Amanda Taylor, was created in 2019 as a platform for telling stories of health and body discrimination. With 54.7k followers on Instagram, a team of ve Black women, ranging from ages 18 to 23, share the stories of individuals using the medium of written personal narratives, photos, and video campaigns, in addition to other methods. e platform aims to inspire others to rede ne topics such as wellness, mental health, healing, and beauty and works to deconstruct topics such as fatphobia, diet culture, medical discrimination, and desirability. e team at the Unplug Collective also conducts educational research aligning with their mission of “radical self-acceptance” which can be located on the @theunplugcollective Instagram page. By telling the stories that individuals have “never been allowed to tell” through the intersection of fashion and mental health, the platform describes the genuine experiences of Black women and gender-expansive people. e platform uses its power on social media to discuss topics that may not be openly discussed in our communities through posts such as “Why Medical BMI is Medical Discrimination,” “Tired: An Ode to Hair & Anxiety,” and “ e Struggle for Self-Acceptance: Battling Internalized Fatphobia.” rough exposing the biases existing in how Black women and gender-expansive people are portrayed in the media, the Unplug Collective hopes to allow others to realize the media’s negative e ect on mental health (including topics such as selfworth, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and negative body image) of Black women and gender-expansive people. e work e Unplug Collective has done in making these untold stories free and accessible to all has been recognized by major media outlets such as Vogue, InStyle, and Good Morning America, to name a few. Visit the @theunplugcollective on Instagram or check out theunplugcollective.com online to learn more about the tremendous work this platform has done in upli ing the community of Black women and gender-expansive people through sharing true and untold stories.

See Instagram @theunplugcollective for more posts!