Sarah Landry Spent Her Life Trying to Fit in, Then She Decided to Start Her Own Party

Raw, heartfelt prose and realistic portraits of motherhood are the underpinnings of Sarah Landry’s growing audience of millions. Still, when we convene over Zoom in late August to chat about the forthcoming launch of the Papaya Sculpt Legging, her candor and authenticity is striking. 

As is often the case with content creators and public figures, there’s no dissonance between the CEO and mom of four’s online and real life persona. 

She’s built an impressive career on laying bare her biggest insecurities; out of loving, ruthlessly, all of the things women are conditioned to hate about themselves. Increasingly, the mainstream beauty ideals Sarah’s been sticking the middle finger to for years are beginning to erode — but it didn’t happen overnight. 

In a media landscape where taut, thin bodies are exalted, seeing a body that looks like yours can be exhilarating. Being vulnerable in an online arena that isn’t always kind to women who don’t fit the mold, only to receive an outpouring of love and support, kindles exhilaration, too. 

Sarah started out in the mommy-blogging and influencer sphere when the blueprint for success afforded little space for anything other than meticulously curated images of cookie-cutter-motherhood. “I was a blogger in the true pits of motherhood 14 years ago,” she says. “I did it from the stance of everything being so perfect. I wanted to fit into this group and they all had such perfect lives.” 

At first, she reveled in hiding behind the camera and focusing on her home and family life. When the age of Instagram dawned, it was her weight-loss journey that first garnered her online attention. “I was put on the cover of a magazine for my transformation story,” she says. “It felt like I was hiding a bit of a dirty secret because I knew what I was doing wasn't healthy.”

She’d bought into the ideals that are packaged and sold to women every day: everything's better when you’re thin. “When you’re thin you get to wear better clothes, when you’re thin boys pay attention to you, when you’re thin social media can blow up for you,” she says. “But I had more anxiety and depression around my body than ever before.”

After hitting what she refers to as “rock bottom,” she knew it was time to make a change. She craved relief, it was time to relinquish the need for social acceptance and validation she’d been gripping for so long. It was time to reveal “the other side” of things. 

She recalls with clarity the moment she decided to dip her toe into uncharted waters. She reached for a Knix bra and underwear — at the time, a little-known brand her friend had recommended — and bared her stretch marks for the first time. With social media at the height of its picture-perfect era, “that was not a known thing to do.” 

Little did she know, her entrepreneurial journey was about to intersect with that of the CEO of an up-and-coming intimates brand called Knix. The first of Sarah’s brazen posts had caught the eye of Knix founder Joanna Griffiths who, at the last minute, slid into her DMs to invite her to an upcoming photoshoot.

She assumed, like other shoots, she’d be expected to mask her imperfections. “Everything I’d ever done, people put me in high-waisted stuff, hiding stretch marks,” Sarah tells me. When she was put in low-waisted underwear she was “mortified” — and when the final image from the shoot was released she felt like she was going to “throw up.” 

“It was everything I’d been trying to avoid my entire blogging career of [trying to be] this perfect woman and perfect mother,” she concedes. “Now I’m this divorced woman with all these stretch marks.” 

But, then, something else happened: the comment section filled with an outpouring of love. People were elated to see a body that looked like theirs elevated to underwear-model status.

“I got to read, for the first time, that there were other people like me and that was such a healing moment,” says Sarah. “I just wanted to be the cool kid. I wanted to be in this group. And, eventually, I just had to start my own party.” 

From that moment, everything changed. As photo captions evolved into journal-style entries, her relationship with herself, and her followers, transformed, too. Cellulite, stretch marks, and unfettered portrayals of vulnerability are the makings of Sarah’s day-to-day posts today — but she’s the first to admit it hasn’t been a “perfect journey.”  

Diet culture has ingrained itself in us, and it doesn’t just involve restricting what you eat. “What it really means is restricting your entire life and everything you love,” says Sarah. Today, her approach to self-love involves no longer hinging “the way I feel about myself on something as variable as a body, I will show up for it because I wanna show up for my life.”

Sarah’s relationship with her fans is uniquely symbiotic. Her openness and honesty inspires self-love among followers — the same followers who provide a safe forum for her to continue to create content and tell stories in a way that’s unrestrained. As her follower count climbs to the 2.2 million mark, it's clear she's struck a chord. 

It’s an evolution she credits, in small part, to Knix. “It’s not just underwear, right?,” she says. “The experiences I’ve had on set with [Knix] have changed the way I see myself, my body, and other women.” 

The launch of the new Papaya Sculpt Legging marks Sarah’s fifth partnership with Knix. Each time, she’s relished the experience of helping design garments that allow people to “move more freely throughout their days.” The new-and-improved leggings, “sculpt you in ways that sort of honor your body,” she says. 

“There’s just something about feeling and looking so badass, but also not having to think about your body because your needs have been met.”