United Kingdom

I appreciate the concerns around body-image and especially consent are important ones. Nonetheless I find it slightly odd that an article about how happiness has declined since specifically 2009 doesn't mention the 13 years of Tory rule and austerity we've had in that time.

Wow an article pushing a shitty law like the online safety bill.

One big problem I have with online safety bills these people are proposing is that I just don’t think they’ll work. Like it’s a censorship law and politicians are rarely the sort of people who date people due to them being kind, moral, and smart. And they sure ain’t faithful to them.

Additionally I doubt that these proposed changes will improve things. Hating your belly doesn’t come from porn. It absolutely does come in part from the diet industry. But it also comes from being in a culture where “no fat chicks” was a jokey tshirt. The internet didn’t introduce girls to this culture it made it so the people who wear those shirts can talk about how it’s basic cico and mock fat women and basically be immature high schoolers talking about girls (or boys) forever including in your inbox. Meanwhile socially well adjusted adults aren’t using social media like this and are leaving the places the young and immature hang out. Seriously I don’t want to tell kids how as I get older, older women keep looking better and better. We have over a century of telling everyone that that healthy bit of belly that comes from not being starved and dehydrated is too much. And now everyone is talking all the time.

Like seriously I don’t know how we can stop the harassment and body image issues because this clearly isn’t just porn. It means that every creep from Edinburgh to Canberra to Ottawa can be in your inbox if you post a picture. It’s shit like gamergate and it’s consequences. And the whole digital editing thing? Cool but a lot can be done with practical effects and camera work. And I fear it will just be used to police women’s bodies. Does this mean that every incredibly endowed woman is going to have to repeatedly prove that no she really does just have immense back pain?

And then past it all, every hopeless young woman I’ve met isn’t hopeless because of that, she’s hopeless because the environment is fucked and nobody is fixing it. Likewise for the economy.

Unrealistic expectations are a bitch. Grab a pint and give up you hopes and dreams as the men learned long ago.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In figures that Angela Salt, the UK movement’s chief executive, said showed “girls and young women have been let down”, only 17% aged seven to 21 now feel very happy compared with 40% in 2009.

Despite multiple campaigns to change the way female body image is depicted, two-thirds of 11 to 21-year-olds “sometimes feel ashamed of the way I look because I’m not like girls and women in the media” – up from half five years ago.

In several worrying findings suggesting backsliding on gender equality, the number of girls and women who think they are mostly given the same opportunities to do things as boys and men of the same age has fallen since 2009.

“The pressures on girls, particularly in terms of appearance, online harms and sexual harassment, felt particularly resonant as I have watched multiple members in my own Girlguiding units struggle with these issues,” she said.

ChildLine, the charity which runs the 0800 1111 helpline, said the results “reinforce how essential the upcoming online safety bill will be in ensuring girls can use social media platforms without the fear of suffering sexism and abuse.”

“The findings from this survey are sobering and echo the concerns that our trained ChildLine counsellors hear on a daily basis,” said Kieran Lyons, service head.

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