A 20-Year-Old TikToker From Toronto Is Going Viral Because Of Her Confidence & Self-Love
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This Toronto TikToker has gone viral for being confident and is making a living off of her attitude.
Megha may just be Toronto's next "it girl," and her driving force is confidence with a flair of vulnerability, and the catch is she's not selling perfection.
In less than two years of downloading the app, authenticity has landed the 20-year-old almost a million followers on TikTok, brand deals, loads of PR packages, and a new career path.
If you're doing it right, Megha says this career can pay anywhere from six to seven figures yearly.
What is she doing?
If you swipe on Megha's TikTok account @meghamind_, you'll find a striking woman with a colourful fashion palette –which she believes to be reminiscent of a young Cher — and a seemingly unshakable sense of self.
She can be seen strutting around Yonge-Dundas Square in a floor-length low-waisted silver gown with cutouts that could make a Euphoriacharacter blush.
"I just finally don't care about what people think of me," she says in the TikTok as she twirls on by. "You can't hate me more than I used to hate myself."
Megha uses her platform of around 60,000 Instagram followers and over 765,000 TikTok followers to discuss her own issues with body image, acne and growing up in a predominantly white school as an Indian Canadian woman.
@meghamind_ Do what makes you feel ✨alive✨ it’s the cure for everything!! HAPPY DIWALI 🪔 💗 #confidence #selflove #diwali #indian ♬ original sound - Rukaiya khan
She does this all while serving up high fashion looks, dancing to trending songs and promoting self-love, body positivity and a general bad b*tch attitude.
Growing pains
Megha wasn't always so confident.
Her parents immigrated to Canada from Indore, India, when she was one year old, and growing up in the GTA came with its set of challenges.
"I was the outsider," Megha told Narcity. "I was the girl you see in the movies."
High school wasn't a safe or welcoming space for Megha, who says her peers often bullied her, and she struggled to feel free to express herself.
"Through my fashion, I also try to show my culture a lot and because I not only wanted to conform to everyone's style but I also wanted to conform to being white that skewed my confidence a lot."
Body image also came into play with Megha as she struggled to accept her thinner frame, which she says wasn't the "conventionally attractive."
Comments about her body from family members and peers took a toll on her as well, and Megha developed an unhealthy relationship with food.
"I force-fed myself way too much. I have health problems from how much I ate, but I was so desperate to gain weight in whatever way possible."
Despite her internal struggles, Megha excelled in school until the second semester of her senior year and when her grades dropped, and no one reached out to help her.
In 2019 Megha attempted suicide before graduating high school and survived.
Life gets better
In the summer of 2019, she took a trip to Greece and started her undergraduate degree at Western University, where she found friends, student clubs and help from on-campus mental health resources.
During her first year, she downloaded TikTok, which wasn't mainstream yet. After making a few TikToks, she decided to delete the app.
Megha reached out for help at Western as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and connected with a therapist from student resources. She attributes receiving that help as a large part of her mental shift.
While at home that summer, she deleted all of her social media accounts, and began creating a persona of the person she is today.
"I completely unplugged and started doing yoga and dancing around my room and doing whatever made me happy and really learned how to live in the present moment," she said.
"From there, I had so many thoughts running through my head I had to put them out somewhere, so I just started writing them all out or making voice memos and breaking down all the factors and forces that have shaped me into becoming someone I never wanted to be, in the sense of being insecure."
Towards the end of the summer, she started taking editorial-inspired photos of herself because she finally "felt good" in her body.
That fall, she started casually posting on TikTok, and before her account blew up, she privately decided to leave school after the winter term.
Going viral
Despite taking month-long breaks from the app, Megha's videos of her talking about her confidence journey kept going viral with hundreds of thousands to millions of views.
"I didn't post consistently. I didn't have this master plan or anything," she said. "Within the first few months of me posting, I was everywhere."
Since leaving school, Megha has been a full-time content creator, although she wouldn't consider herself an influencer.
"I'm just someone that wants to attract people that want to make a positive change in their life."
Her quick rise to internet fame first reared its head IRL with classmates recognizing her, and today she is being stopped on the street by people who know her from TikTok.
However, she tries not to get bogged down with creating content for other people and instead focuses on creating content for herself, and sometimes that means taking long breaks and prioritizing her well-being.
"I want to be the person that I needed growing up."
@meghamind_ Never saw a Barbie that looked like me so I just became one xoxo #indian ♬ original sound - Kiera Lyons 🕯🕰🗝
Now Megha is working with brands she couldn't afford as a kid, and while she appreciates being the representation she wanted, she doesn't want to be known as the "brown it girl."
"I want to be the girl who's doing all these things that just happens to be brown. I don't want to be the brown it girl. I want to be the it girl, in general, and that to me means someone you take inspiration from on a daily basis to be the best version of yourself."
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or mental health concerns, please reach out to a trusted peer, parent or health care professional. You can also contact the Crisis Services Canada helpline, which is available 24 hours a day, or consult these additional resources. If you need immediate assistance, please call 911 or go to your nearest hospital. Support is available.
