“I woke up and found my photo had been shared thousands of times. At first, I loved the attention, but then I saw why people were commenting.”
Trigger warning: This post deals with eating disorders and includes images that may be triggering to some readers.
I was 16, very vain and riddled with a myriad of complicated body image issues only a teenager could have when I inadvertently became a poster child for eating disorders.
As a teenager with a blog, I posted photos of myself from time-to-time, as everyone did. But no one really cared about my photos or my opinion on things. I used my blog to write cringe-worthy prose about what I thought love was and reblog photos of Justin Bieber.
So when I got a new pair of denim shorts that had a Union Jack flag on each back pocket, I didn’t think anything of taking a photo of my shorts and posting it online.
Of course, it was posed. You can tell that from the deliberately placed hand on the hip, along with the oversized cross ring. I can’t remember how many takes it took to get the one I ended up with, but I can only assume it was many.
Flash forward approximately 10 hours and I woke up to thousands of people talking about a photo of my shorts. Or, more specifically, my body shape.
Comments like “skinny bitch”, “I want to be her” and “UGH, GOALS” dominated the image, with only a few people saying anything at all about the shorts themselves.