KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Tshenelle Bethel-Pe­ters, known on so­cial me­dia as Nel­ly B, is on a jour­ney to re­dis­cov­er her per­son­al style. The con­tent cre­ator—a grad­u­ate of Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va—re­cent­ly start­ed dab­bling more with fash­ion and beau­ty re­views. She, how­ev­er, is not the typ­i­cal fash­ion in­flu­encer mar­keter.

Bethel-Pe­ters is con­sid­ered plus size or full body. “I start­ed do­ing con­tent cre­ation in 2012 about nat­ur­al hair,” she re­called. “I had just gone back nat­ur­al, and I had not seen many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do­ing nat­ur­al hair con­tent cre­ation on YouTube.

“From there it ex­pand­ed in­to all things beau­ty, lifestyle, and a lit­tle bit of trav­el.” About a year-and-a-half ago, Bethel-Pe­ters re­alised she did not know what was re­al­ly her style.

“There is a mis­con­cep­tion that you have to lose weight to dress nice or look good,” she said. “My re­sponse to that is no, this is the body that you have now; dress it and dress it well.

“There is noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng to have a health­i­er lifestyle, but it does not mean that you have to look frumpy or not well put to­geth­er at the size that you have now.

“That’s been my main thing, show­ing peo­ple that no mat­ter what size you are, you can look put to­geth­er.”

The con­tent cre­ator de­scribed her jour­ney as an in­ter­est­ing one. “I’ve been told in one or two in­stances that I didn’t have the look for what a par­tic­u­lar cam­paign or ini­tia­tive was look­ing for,” she said.

“When you press down fur­ther, what do you mean about the look? It boils down to my size. It can be a bit dis­heart­en­ing, but at the same time, I firm­ly be­lieve what is for me is for me. I just take that as this is not for me.”

Point­ing to her body, she added, “If they are not will­ing to look past this and fo­cus on the con­tent of my char­ac­ter and the qual­i­ty of my con­tent cre­ation, it is what it is.” When it comes to sourc­ing cloth­ing, Bethel-Pe­ters said it can be chal­leng­ing lo­cal­ly. “I hard­core sup­port lo­cal as best as I can, from what I wear to prod­ucts that I buy for beau­ty, skin, and hair. There are some lo­cal brands that, even if you want some­thing cus­tomised, they are not re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in cater­ing to plus-size women, un­for­tu­nate­ly.”

On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, there has been an ex­plo­sion of the body-pos­i­tive move­ment.

“Plus-size mod­els were in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to fash­ion la­bels and fash­ion weeks,” Bethel-Pe­ters added pos­i­tive­ly.

“On the lo­cal front, it has hap­pened, but on a small­er scale. I still feel like there is so much more that can be done.”

Bethel-Pe­ters said it was eas­i­er to source cloth­ing in her size now than it was pre-COVID. “There are some lo­cal brands that will do cloth­ing up to 7X. Now I think they are more preva­lent, but I still think that oth­er brands can jump on board.”

With a grow­ing fol­low­ing on her so­cial me­dia plat­forms, Bethel-Pe­ters de­scribed the feed­back as ‘beau­ti­ful’.

“I would say 99 per cent of the feed­back has been beau­ti­ful when peo­ple mes­sage you and say they didn’t know that these brands do these sizes or say they just like how the con­tent looks or that you are re­al­ly con­fi­dent,” she said.

“I’ve had one or two neg­a­tive com­ments where peo­ple im­plied that be­cause of my size, I shouldn’t be do­ing it.”

Pre­vi­ous Nel­ly B would in­ter­nalise things, “But now I say that’s on you. The peo­ple who I want to feel em­pow­ered by the con­tent that I do, based on the feed­back that I’ve got­ten, are feel­ing em­pow­ered.”

The UWI grad­u­ate who did her un­der­grad­u­ate in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Stud­ies nev­er knew she would end up be­com­ing a con­tent cre­ator.

Her ad­vice to up­com­ing con­tent cre­ators: “Your con­tent should in­form, in­spire, ed­u­cate, and en­ter­tain. Work with what you have and build. You may not have the high­est qual­i­ty phone, just start.”

Bethel-Pe­ters works full-time with Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (CAM­SEL) as a Dig­i­tal Con­tent Spe­cial­ist.

“I am part of the dig­i­tal team. It’s my vo­ca­tion to work for my faith and be a part of some­thing big­ger for the grand scheme of things,” she said.

“We are re­spon­si­ble for quite a few of the faith-based plat­forms for the arch­dio­cese.” Bethel-Pe­ters has been with CAM­SEL for the past nine years.