Content warning: eating disorders, body dysmorphia
Being a girl on the internet 10 to 15 years ago felt like navigating through the Wild West on platforms such as Tumblr and Pinterest.
It was near impossible to avoid content that promoted eating disorders and unhealthy lifestyles. From posts obsessing over thigh gaps to encouraging hair loss because that meant you were losing weight, having unrestricted internet access meant you couldn’t avoid the content.
Girlblogging is essentially a branch of the “online presence” tree. In a nutshell, the word is simply what it says: a blog where a girl expresses herself in a modern feminine way through the means of written and visual content.
Girlblogging has been around since the 2000s, when blogging was in its prime. It’s always been about living life as a girl — speaking on things such as friends, relationships, music and art all serve important roles in what these blogs are about.
However, girlblogging is starting to shift into harmful behavior for young women on the internet. While it can be a good outlet for young women to express themselves, the content can teeter into a dangerous territory. Posts about eating disorders and self-hatred are sprawling more than ever.
Sadly, this isn’t surprising. Tumblr has always had a shaky reputation from allowing NSFW content to having its main aesthetic be built around pro-anorexia content, or thinspiration.
It should also be known that these platforms have the lowest barrier to entry for someone who wants to get into blogging. You don’t need to know how to build a website if the website is already made for you. Even though Tumblr pages can be altered through coding, a lot of the options are already built into the website, meaning new users can start posting immediately after making an account.
Apps like X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok are even easier. All users need is a device to start making content. Although with the shift of girlblogging moving to social media, it’s also easier for users to make harmful posts.
X is known for fostering an ever-growing community of users who interact with eating disorder content. Posters mask their dangerous habits behind beautifully-organized charts with designated themes full of bows, bunnies and innocent-looking color schemes like white and pink.
It’s true that food consumption and weight loss are unfortunately things that girls will interact with at some point in their lives. According to the Eating Recovery Center, almost half of teenage girls in the United States say that social media depletes their body image.
But, when they log on to use social media, it should not be part of the content algorithms regularly promoted. Girlblogging is not dangerous at heart, but with the influence from social media meddling into the mix, it starts to become murky.
Where do we draw the line when it comes to regulating media?
Tumblr has taken some steps in an effort to remove eating disorder content from its platform. It has posted several updates to its policies, including one from 2012, just when it was about to reach the heights of its popularity as a platform.
Responses from Tumblr’s new policy about eating disorder blogs prove that people are not happy with the changes being made on the platform. Some even argue that the removal of spaces like this will diminish the amount of safe spaces for people with eating disorders to post freely.
Since then, no updates have been made, and pro eating disorder content still flourishes. Inevitably, if nothing changes about the prevalence of this content in something designed for a creative outlet, chances are we will only continue to see lowering self-esteem rates and depression in younger generations.
Marianne Akre can be reached at [email protected]
