I was one of the early users of the website-turned-obsession, Pinterest.com. For anyone unfamiliar with this website, it’s essentially another social media site, where one creates virtual pin boards with different themes to amass pictures of things they like. For example, I have a board where I pin pictures of food (if I click the picture, it takes me to the source link with the recipe). I also have boards for inspirational quotations, crafts, fashion, hair and makeup, and photography, to name a few.

I think part of Pinterest’s allure is that it can be a beautiful mixture of fantasy and real life. My fashion board has 300+ items pinned that I would only own in my dreams. It’s how I would dress if I had a bottomless wallet and endless time to shop. It’s lovely fantasy. It’s also helpful in real life because I can get a better idea of styles I should be buying for myself based on what I pin. I have found over time that I pin a ton of different looks that involve blazers. So now I know that next time I go shopping, that could be a key piece for me to pick up! Again, it’s that melding of fantasy and reality that works so well.

One very real and fun part of Pinterest is that I have created so many of the recipes and craft projects that I’ve pinned. It’s been great for trying new foods, expanding my knitting abilities (I made the scarf in this post’s photo based on a pattern I found on Pinterest), and creating jewelry, which is something I had never done before, but learned that I quite enjoy. As I’m writing, the only thing that sounds dangerous so far about Pinterest could be said for any social media site: it’s an addictive time suck!

But here’s my concern with Pinterest: it can be downright dangerous, especially for young women, striving for an unattainable ideal. Because it’s a social website, your pins are visible to your friends and anyone who cares to visit the site. Its basis is sharing pins and ideas, which is a great concept, but can lead down a dangerous road of “group-think.” When I see my friends, especially young women, posting photos of emaciated models and quotes, such as “Nothing ever tastes as good as skinny feels” to their boards, entitled “Motivation” or “Inspiration,” I cringe.  I see unhealthy “cleanses” being pinned alongside workout plans and quick ways to lose weight that are dangerous and often downright disordered.

It’s frightening because I know how easy it is to get sucked into that mindset. First you pin a “perfect” airbrushed model because you love her bikini (and wish you had her body). Then you see a recipe for chocolate cake and you pin that too, because it looks delicious. But the next thing you see is a pin with a model or a picture of scale on it, saying, “Whatever you eat in private, you wear in public.” You quickly pin that to your “motivation” board and search for some quick ways to lose weight.  You find no shortage of pins to “help” you: ones that tell you to cut out entire food groups all together, ones that tell you to chew a certain number of times before swallowing, ones that push you to exercise harder, saying “If it’s not hurting, it’s not working.” And these are just the beginning. Some of the most disordered pins, I refuse to even write about.

Pinterest has recently e-mailed users that it will be updating its policies to ban pins that encourage self-harm. I hope with everything in my heart that they consider unhealthy diets, over-exercise, and the pinning of unhealthy, emaciated women as “inspiration” to be self-harm. I don’t want to get into an entire debate about censorship versus free speech: that’s for the Pinterest legal team to deal with! But I do know one thing: we can’t just blame mainstream media anymore for their portrayal of the ideal body, face, hair, skin tone, or anything else. We are officially perpetuating the problem ourselves each time we re-pin an unhealthy photo on Pinterest. Sure, even if Pinterest cracks down on disordered links, there will be plenty of other websites for people to get their “thinspiration” fixes. There will always be people promoting crash diets and programs that are clinically untested. But maybe those don’t need to pop up as pictures next to the cute dress I want to buy or the next necklace I want to make.

With all that said, I do want to say that I definitely encourage healthy living. I’m all for exercise and eating well in a way that’s appropriate for each person’s individual body. But Pinterest can’t tell you what that means for you. Your physician needs to tell you that. And if you think you may be out of control (or way too in control) over what you eat or how you exercise, maybe it’s a physician or dietician at an eating disorder center that needs to help you come up with a plan. There are tons of ways to get your body healthy, but I guarantee they don’t include the extremes that some people will promote.

So here’s to Pinterest, as it evolves: may the harmful pins diminish, while the creative pins flourish; may we see more women uploading pictures of their own styles, so that the clothes we like are not just on models; may we guiltlessly try new foods, discover new hobbies and projects, and may our “motivation” pin boards be harmlessly and helpfully filled with truly motivational quotes, such as “Be curious, not judgmental” by Walt Whitman.

We, the users of Pinterest, have the power to decide what gets re-pinned over and over. So let’s make it a place that’s safe, healthy, fun, stylish, humorous, and beautiful. After all, that’s the escape so many of us look for in websites that involve fantasy wardrobes, houses, or vacations. If we keep the fantasy healthy, the reality will be happy. And while you’re drooling over the latest couture or most extravagant interior designs, don’t forget to take a moment to be grateful for what you do already have.

It’s been a year and a half (plus one day, but who’s counting?!) since I got sick. I was just starting to work my way through the Beauty Equation book, doing the assignments, and posting to BE One. I had no idea that I would become so sick that I’d need to stop doing all the things I loved, go on medical leave from my job, and become a full-time patient. So what has made me so sick? I still don’t know. I have been to every doctor/clinic/hospital/treatment center/practitioner you can imagine. At first this yielded very few helpful results. But by the time I needed to stop working, and was essentially wasting away in bed, I knew I had to up my game and figure out what was wrong. It isn’t just one big diagnosis in my case. It’s taking me month after month of exploring to find the pieces of the puzzle. Slowly, they’re coming together. Slowly, little diagnoses are adding up to make more sense of the bigger picture. Slowly, I’m putting one foot in front of the other on this non-linear path called “recovery.”

The reason I’m sharing all this is that I’ve learned an important lesson in the past 18 months. At first, I was so incredibly depressed and anxious. I didn’t know what was wrong; all I knew was that I had basically just lost everything in my life that defined me. I defined myself by my profession, my passions, my activities, my social life, and my future. All of that was gone faster than I could imagine. I didn’t know who I was. Suddenly, all I thought I could define myself by was my illness. There was no beauty in that at all…until I started to look for it.

Someone very wise told me that I needed to redefine how I define myself. She told me all the ways I defined myself when I was healthy were circumstantial. She also told me the ways I defined myself as someone who was ill were also circumstantial. She challenged me to look at intrinsic qualities of myself, those things that never change based on anything external. I started to notice what I did still have, despite my illness. I also started to feel like I could cultivate more qualities that could help me be resilient and beautiful, no matter what. I’m smart. I have a sense of humor. I’m compassionate. I have curiosity. And I’m working on cultivating faith, hope, love, mindfulness, and so much more in my life. I now look for beauty. And I find that it’s everywhere, including inside me, no matter my circumstances.

So I decided to pick up where I left off on the Beauty Equation website. I now have a little energy to do that, for which I am so grateful. I also have entirely new ways in which I view myself, so it will be interesting to see how I would have viewed the challenges in the past, compared to how I view them now. It will be interesting to take photos of a me that is not entirely healthy, but is in a much healthier place than I have been in the recent months. I’m excited to see where I can go with this as the new me: the one who is 18 months into a complicated illness and has changed so much inside and out.

It’s hard (what with all the inundations: looking around on the internet, watching tv, reading magazines) to find an image of what exactly is healthy.

There is this image of Healthy Holly-wooders and Gym Jennies: women in control, a woman who loves and is loved in a perfectly perfect way.

Then there are the Low-Class Lindas who eat whatever they want and refuse to let anything dictate their lives. These Poor Pollies might appear in our minds as older, complacent, boring…not the exciting Model Minny who runs around constantly, receiving praise and love from any and everyone. This is who we want to be because that IMAGE follows us around as our own archetype, our own Diana or Aphrodite. We live in praise of these deified women without thinking, following their desires and being shamed by their shame of what is ugly.

It’s a tough struggle, to fight for the unique, the beautiful, the real. The women who are present, not the gods that don’t exist, high up there on their golden, platform shoes, suntanned to perfection, worshiped by all. The fact is, that Image doesn’t exist except for in your mind, waiting to be realized IN you, as a part of you, a beautiful aspect of your personality just waiting to blossom.

Take a few steps toward embracing! Even just little ones

Start by being honest with yourself little by little, and accept the challenge to accept.

Here are a few sites I would love to share!

A survey on Beauty you can take!!! —- http://healthyisthenewskinny.com/blog/2012/02/health-and-body-image-survey-for-girls-and-women/#.Tywn0hnrm1Q.facebook

A “Natural Model” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/naturalmodelsla

Healthy is the New Skinny Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/healthynewskinny