Dress size? Who cares.

In the UK, society's biggest fad is body image. It's the 21st century, I think it's about time we all got over it.

As a lover of fashion, I think it's important to present yourself appropriately for every occasion. Personally, I like to keep up with current clothing trends and play about with outfits. Fashion is a beautiful thing, it allows many of us to express ourselves, however, why is dress size playing such a big part in it? This aspect definitely ruins fashion for me. For as long as I can remember, being skinny has been a vital significance within the female culture - and even within some of the lives of men!

Something I'm unsure of, is whether the nation should create a huge deal about dress size. Because maybe if body image wasn't such a largely discussed topic, people wouldn't care? I'm 17 and day in, day out, all I hear are other girls my age worrying about how fat & ugly they are There's been a point where i've even looked at myself and wondered "Am I

too big, do I need to lose weight?", it's somewhat tragic.

I believe that fashion is the pied piper of eating disorders. It pains me to say that because fashion is a massive interest of mine. But somehow, sometime, we need to change that. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and obesity, all physical and psychological, a lot of people forget the psychological bit, the media seems to brainwash people sometimes! In 1996-97, 419 people suffered from anorexia, while in 2005-06, 620 people suffered from the same disease. That's over 200 more people than in the 90s, showing the anorexic population is slowly rising.

I see weight as a scale (no pun intended), anorexia at one end and obesity at the other, there's no perfect in between because everyone is different, from our personalities all the way to our bones. What's important, especially for young people, is that we focus on being healthy not on being too fat or too thin. Healthy means eating a balanced diet, eating regularly and exercising regularly not starving yourself or bingeing or cutting out certain aspects of your diet or sitting in front of the TV all day.

Who cares what other people say, your happiness is so much more important. Funnily enough, not all guys are attracted to "stick thin" girls, not all guys are shallow enough to hate all girls with curvier waists, some guys actually prefer curvy girls. If you're happy with yourself, then so should everyone else be and if they're not, so be it, are they really that much of an impact on your life?

I was pleased to find out that fashion magazines are beginning to back body image and

are using a range of different models, thin and plus size. As well as this, Mark Fast

shocked the fashion empire when he presented his designs using size 12-14 models as well as thinne

r models. I feel this shows being too thin or too fat is not important but that everyone of different sizes can buy beautiful clothes. There will never be a day when everyone is a size zero.

This is a blog to show my support for changing the trend of size zero models and dangerously obese people, it's about time we accepted not everyone thinks anorexia or obesity is attractive.

Be healthy and be happy!