When fitness blogger Ashy Bines exploded onto the online sphere, few could predict how divisive her success would be.
Immediately, her taut tummy and blonde braids seemed to sell a promise – ‘do-as-I-say-to-look-how-I-look’.
Of course, when Bines fell onto our radar when fitness wasn’t yet a commodity, and social media was a land of blurry selfies – not brand building. We had no blueprint for what it meant to be an online success. The messy overlap between being a ‘fitness blogger’ and promoting health advice to the public quickly became problematic, and with that, so too did the brand of Ashy Bines.