Fashion & Fitness: Tobi Ojora is the IG model we love to love

If you’ve come across Tobi Ojora’s IG profile, then you know it’s the perfect recipe for style and fitness motivation. Across her instagram profiles, you can find the mix of dope fashion looks, with meal plans and workout plans that will make you want to get your life together.

We spoke to Tobi about her mix of fashion, fitness and self-love.

As a fashion influencer, what are the brands you feel align with your values?

I don’t have specific favourite brands. I get bored very quickly, so my style changes from one post to the other, because I like to experiment. But if I had to pick a favourite brand at the moment, it’s between I Am Gia and Matte Brand.

I love their creativity. Even though they release collections in the space of two weeks or so, nothing is ever really the same. It’s all so multipurpose also, you can also make their stuff look high fashion but also dress it down.

How do you feel about the lack of diverse representation from I Am Gia? They don’t really represent a lot of dark skin women or different body types.

I’ve definitely noticed that they don’t really market themselves to all body shapes. I like their clothes but I think it’s difficult to say I appreciate their message.

Today, women are so clued in on diversity and appreciating different body shapes and cultures, so I feel like brands occasionally post women outside of their general aesthetic to appease people.

What role does fitness play in your life?

It’s like my whole life. For some people, when they’re going through it they just want to sleep or read, but that’s what fitness is for me. It even helped when I had exams, if I couldn’t concentrate I’d go on the treadmill and write my treadmill adjustments next to my notes, and that made it easier for me to remember what I studied during my exams.

When did you first realise you were very active?

I’ve always been. My mum is a health and fitness specialist, so when I was younger my parents put me into a lot of sports clubs. Honestly, I think they went a bit overboard with it. I’ve been on track teams since I was 7 till about 20. I intended to do track at university but I got injured twice, so I had to stop.

That was really sad for me because I had dreams of going to international competitions and the Olympics. So, when that happened it felt like there was a huge gap in my life. Especially because all my siblings are athletes. I was like what am I supposed to do now? All my friends told me to start a page on fitness, so I decided to start sharing the information I had with people.

What do you think helped you get over it?

Anytime my parent’s friends would ask me what I was doing now, I’d just look at them like “..nothing”. Feeling like I was adding nothing to the conversation made me feel like I needed something to fill that empty space of almost feeling inadequate. So, I decided to start something that will actually help people and that made me feel good. It was basically like therapy.

Plus all the attention was now on my siblings — and not that I was jealous — but I did feel a bit somehow about it.

Do you use fitness or fashion as an expression of self-love?

To me, it’s working on my body and that’s purely because I have a weird relationship with the word “influencer”. I never planned it — I never woke up one day and decided I wanted to represent brands. Honestly, it makes me very uncomfortable because there are people pursuing that but it really just fell into my lap somehow. So, fitness is definitely more of an expression of self-love.

If I’m being honest, I do feel like this whole influencing thing has given me more depth. Everyone wants to talk to me about fitness — and it’s nice, don’t get me wrong — but, I don’t want to be talking about fitness in the club. So, it’s definitely given me something else to talk about.

Do you feel like there’s a pressure associated with the word influencer?

Yeah, definitely. But the conversation is changing around that word: it’s shifting into having a more human approach on social media than just wearing clothes and representing brands. I do like sharing information, but once you add the word influencer into anything, it definitely makes me feel like I have more of a responsibility than I probably do.

What would you say to the person who might see themselves as less than because of what social media portrays?

I can definitely resonate with having social media anxiety. I still get super anxious before I post anything, but that gets better everyday and after I put up the post, I wonder why I was anxious in the first place.

I think the reason that I’m able to see past that is because I moved to LA. LA is one of those places where you think everything is perfect till you’re actually there and you realise it’s not that perfect at all.

I’ve met a lot of these influencers that you see on Instagram, and I hate to say it but not everything is as it seems. Social media is definitely not an accurate representation of who people are. Everyone is going through their own issues. It’s easier said than done, but [what you see] shouldn’t make you feel any type of way about yourself.

I think it also comes down to your self-love: why should X, Y and Z ever make you question yourself or give you any indication on how to feel about yourself? Like when people say goals. I hate the word goals — please, what are “goals”? I have my own insecurities that are so obvious to me, but no one else will ever notice, you know? We place so much of our self-worth on what other people think of us, but it is simply not worth it.