The most important thing, I think, is to be aware of all of the harm that social media sends out there, and as a community I think that we should embrace girls of all body types so that everyone feels good about themselves, and healthy in their lifestyles.

I think the internet can be a helpful tool for aspiring to better health, but (as with anything) extreme exploitation of it can be harmful.

While I appreciate and commend these sites for addressing the issue, I can’t help but feel like girls with these distorted perceptions and misguided goals will only continue, just under different means. And you never can tell which is more dangerous.

Blogs like Vintage Virgin, Native Fox and Atlantic Pacific come first to mind when it comes to tipping the scale of most popular fashion blogs. And even though girls like Nadia Aboulhosn have a certain crowd of followers too, I can`t help but wonder where in all this is the real girl? The girl who might not be a size zero, OR have the body of a plus size model? Where is the girl next door?

This topic is quite personal to me as I`v struggled myself to fit in to one of these frames. Being an average size 14 (UK) I clearly do not fit in to the image of a modern day thinspo beauty queen, however am also somewhat rejected by the plus size industry – as I am not particularly plus sized. I am just a regular woman (statistically speaking in the UK for example). I have been told that I have a pretty face and am photogenic, as well as tall and proportional – yet if I`d wish to make a career for myself in the modelling industry I`d either have to loose half of my body mass (to be a size of a normal model), or gain one fourth of it (to be considered as a plus size model).

Yet what bothers me the most is not even the fact that I, or women and girls like the average sized me that I am, are underrepresented in the fashion world (because let`s face it, we might as well get used to it already) – it is the fact that we seem to be not so popular in the blogging community. Which is a community mainly consisting (again, statistically speaking) of normal girls, like me and you. The girls next door. We are what make the community. We are the ones who run blogs of our own (filled with images of our normal selves), yet choose to make popular the blogs representing either sides of two extremes of body images: overly thin or overly curvy. It seems we ourselves disqualify OURSELVES from the blogging scene! And that is truly scary (compared to the fashion industry which is mostly driven by money and capitalism when it tries to drill in to us the ‘acceptable’ frame of a womans body, which in comparison with me is either the too skinny one, or the overly curvy one).

>’.'<

And I have to say I agree on the comments about real girls. Just because a girl is bigger, doesn’t make her any more real than someone who is naturally thin.

More add campaigns, fashion magazines and, of corse, blogs, should indeed feature curvy women to whom most women can relate with.
However, and like other people have written, banning pro-anorexia sites off the net will not keep people from developing eating disorders, they will always find it elsewhere. But controlling them would be a start.
One thing that should never be controlled are the photos people share of themselves! For instance, I easily put on weight, but my friend Andreia looses weight when she’s under stressed and no matter how hard she tries to put on weight, she hardly ever does!

I have never, and will never, admire one blogger over the other because of their skinny appearance! In fact, one of the blogs I follow and love is The Cherry Blossom Girl, and it’s not all about her beautiful sets! One of the things that inspire me the most in her blog are the photos in a bathing suit or lingerie, because she’s curvy and I can relate to that!