A body positivity advocate is calling for women who are larger than a size 12 to be normalised.
My Balance Project's Justine Sher says she has always struggled with weight, and growing up there was no-one in the media to represent that.
It comes after media personality Louise Wallace said the idea of being overweight has been normalised and it isn't healthy.
Wallace made the comments on Newshub's AM show last week, saying people's mouths should be "tapped over" with gaffer tape.
She said using "overweight" models in advertisements "isn't right".
But Sher says it's comments like these that cause problems and can be triggering for people, especially women.
"I just really found that her comments weren't helpful, and it's not going to solve any problems by trying to make people who've already had life-long issues feel even worse about themselves, that's not going to help anybody."
Sher emphasised the fact that bodies do evolve and you shouldn't expect to look the same at 40 as you did at 18.
"You do evolve and you carry children and there's different mental health issues that happen, different trauma that you're dealing with, so I think people need to have more empathy for themselves," she said.
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