‘Let’s put some real bodies out there’: TikToker Miah Carter on body-positivity and self-love

Over the course of two years Miah Carter has accumulated 2.8 million followers and 91 million likes on TikTok. Starting her social media journey just before the Covid-19 pandemic, Miah has found happiness promoting body positivity, self love on her page and allowing people took look up to her which is something she didn’t have growing up. Miah spoke with The Tab about her TikTok journey, her tough times growing up and the importance of Black History Month to her.

If you can cast your mind far back enough to the days of TikTok being Musical.ly, Miah recalls finding it all “very cringey” to start with and once Musical.ly was no more, she deleted the app and didn’t have it for years. Once TikTok began to rise in popularity in early 2020, Miah decided to redownload it and didn’t imagine how far it would take her. Miah told The Tab: “I saw my friends start on TikTok and saw they began to get big on the app and how easy it was to go viral. So that’s when I started and literally just went from there.”

The social media star kept on going with her TikTok videos and remembers her very first viral moment. “My first viral video was a video of me crying and how I wanted to start my weight-loss journey. I wanted to lose weight and feel good in my body. The video was literally me crying about how I wanted to start a journey and it got millions of views,” she said. As soon as Miah saw the level of attraction her video got, she began to invest more of her time into social media. In just 24 hours, she gained 50,000 followers and “it started from there.”

From a young age, Miah said she always had the dream of “becoming famous”. She said: “I’ve wanted people to look up to me and call me their idol. A few months down the line, I quit college and a year later look at me now!” Miah doesn’t still do the weight-loss vlogs as much anymore, as she felt that the videos of working to fit into her jeans was toxic. “I shouldn’t be trying to fit into my jeans, my jeans should be fitting me,” she added.

After a while, Miah decided to stop doing the vlogs and focused more on body positivity videos. She told The Tab: “The reason I started doing that is because I didn’t really have anyone to look up to when I was younger. I never really had anyone that I could be like ‘they are my idol’. I thought ‘you know what, I absolutely love helping people, let me put something positive on social media, not all filters, fake bum and fake boobs. Let’s put some real bodies out there’.” It was with these videos, Miah began to gain more confidence within herself.

Miah shared with The Tab a number of TikTokers she looks up to and loves the content they put out. Some of her favourite TikTok stars include Spencer Barbosa, Jess Megan and Megan Carole. Those three TikTokers are one of the reasons Miah began creating body positive content on her social media. Another creator Miah “absolutely loves” is Ehiz. She also loves the Saving Grace podcast with GK Barry. She said: “She is amazing and is so funny. I’m still trying to get on her podcast, I absolutely love watching her.” Miah shared with The Tab that she is trying to set up her own podcast about her being a bigger girl online and other people’s experiences.

Growing up, Miah had a difficult time in school. It took Miah 11 years to be diagnosed with autism and described it as “a very though, deep experience”. She said: “I never had a childhood. I never really got the help that I needed. No one understood me, no one understood why I would break stuff and cry all the time. That’s when my mum started to realise something wasn’t right.” From primary school years two to six, Miah was in the process of a diagnosis but it was delayed and nothing happened. It wasn’t until year 10 when Miah got her diagnosis and was moved to a different school.

“The best two years of my life were in year 10 and 11. If I was in that school from year seven, I would’ve passed my GCSEs. I have never had so much help in my life throughout those two years. It was very hard but I pursued my dream and I would never look back.”

Like every person who is actively on social media, Miah deals with trolls each day. She shared with The Tab how she deals with trolls on social media, with her mainly blocking them. “On a good day, I’ll block and delete them. On bad days, it’ll process in my brain for two days and it will make me really depressed and upset,” she said.

Miah described her bad days dealing with hate as “a box with no lid”. She said: “I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with hate on my bad days. I have an amazing support team around me and so if I ever need anything I know to go to them. I haven’t had a bad day in months now, so it’s clearly getting better. On a good day, it’s just block and delete, it’s all you can do.”

Talking on racism and double standards on social media, Miah said: “I find it so disgusting that there’s still stuff going on like racism. If this world just came together and was at peace, it’d be a better place. There’s still stuff going on today that happened back in the day, like people treating others different because of their skin colour, it’s disgusting. As a Black woman on social media, I haven’t experienced it that much. But I have experienced racism in the street, people calling me the N word and get off TikTok.”

Miah shared with The Tab the importance of Black History Month to her and stressed how “amazing” she finds it. “Me and my family all come together, party and celebrate. I find it absolutely amazing and it means a lot to me. We are recognising other Black people in our community and it’s really beautiful,” she said.

Featured image credit before edits via Iris Laura on Unsplash and Instagram @miahcarterrr.

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