I'll try and not make this post into one long rant but this is a subject that drives me mad on a daily basis! I think body image is something every girl struggles with no matter how confident people appear to be. It is something I have struggled with pretty much my entire life and although I can deal with it better now I still have my good and bad days like anyone else.

Since I was young, even as young as about 6 or 7, I have wanted to change the way I look. I was always too fat, too spotty, my hair was too thin or the wrong colour; I pretty much wanted to change everything! As I got older this only worsened. My entire teenage years were spent standing in front of a mirror hating the way I looked, desperately wanting to be 'skinny', not healthy or happy, but 'skinny'. This is something that drives me mad and I fear the problem is only getting worse for young girls today. This desire to be 'skinny' is becoming a crisis.

Next time you are walking round a town centre, take a look around you and count how many people you see who are size zero, 6ft tall, incredibly beautiful models with no imperfections. The number will most likely be zero. Yet, open the pages of any magazine, particularly fashion magazines, and sometimes over 90% of the women we are constantly exposed to are these 6ft tall 'beauties'. They are the minority. So why do we feel like the ones who are abnormal when us normal women are the majority? I am tired of magazines and celebrities portraying size zero as being the ideal goal. Too often I now see young girls caked in too much make up sipping green juices and trying to starve themselves so they look like the models they see in magazines and all over the internet. As much as I try I am still a victim of this body image crisis which the media has created. I'm a size 10 but sometimes if an item of clothing is too small and I have to get a 12 I either refuse to try it on or feel depressed the rest of the day. Why? Why am I made to feel fat for getting a size 12? That is below the average dress and I would say is still pretty small. But the media has us obsessed with that perfect size 6 or 8 figure that is the ultimate dream. What does a dress size mean anyway, we should be looking at the clothes and how they fit not a number on the label.

Victoria's Secret campaign: yet another way girls and women are pressurised to have the so-called 'perfect body'.