This archive report was first published on 17 July 2019.
July 17, 2019, will be a day Lynda Nyangweso will never forget. It was the day she posted pictures of herself and her family on holiday in Mombasa, only to be met with a barrage of body-shaming comments from online trolls.
‘Somebody called me a whale!’ Lynda recalls, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘It’s one of the more creative ones, I appreciate that,’ she adds with a hint of sarcasm, before breaking into hearty laughter.
But the comment that really got to Lynda was one made about her three-year-old daughter. A cyberbully told her she had no right to have a child because of how she looks. Lynda struggles to fight back tears as she recounts the incident.
She opens up about her own struggles with weight when she was young, revealing that she would eat food in the toilet and even contemplated suicide. ‘My sadness is for other girls who are going through this,’ she says, her voice cracking with emotion.
Lynda encourages her followers to mute people who spew negativity on social media, saying, ‘If I was to sit down with a bully, I would show kindness because that’s what I feel is lacking in this social media space we’re in.’
