Last night I accidentally started a war on a teenager’s pin on Pinterest. It wasn’t intentional. I was scrolling through the Popular feed and saw the following picture attached to a Fitspo (fitness inspiration) board.

This is a picture of a (probably) healthy girl that has been photoshopped to push in her thighs, “waist” (more like six inches below it), and arms. I commented on how sad I was to see a girl like this morphed into something closer to an anorexic. That’s when all hell broke loose.

I didn’t realize the pinner was a teen. If you’ve ever told one they were wrong before, you can imagine the reaction. She said something slightly rude and a little angry. A different adult jumped down her throat and told her the picture was gross. She defended the picture saying there was no way to know it was photoshopped (see above). Another teenager jumped to her defense. Yet another adult insisted it was a photoshopped image. In the end this teen just asked us all to hush. Fair enough.

I apologized for starting a war on her page and told her that the adults got all up in arms because we don’t like seeing people lied to about what their body should look like. I genuinely felt bad for this young girl. She only believes what she’s been told her whole life. I hope she looks a little more closely at the pictures from now on, and I think I’ll keep my mouth shut. Pinterest is a happy place!

Be careful, friends.

MM