Fred MacGregor aka Fredjmac

I'm a photographer who spent five years working in the fashion industry, often creating completely unobtainable images of the body beautiful. You'd think that by being behind some of this myth-making, I would be able to take a decent view of my own body image. Well, sort of. I've been guilty of electronically polishing skin, slimming waists and plumping boobs and pecks, but while it is good to know that even the hottest of actors, models or pin-ups undergo this digital surgery, when I look in the mirror, I still see areas in need of improvement – the "raw image", as a re-toucher might put it. I wish those who wish to look like models (and inevitably fall short) could see how doctored this ideal is. The thought of vulnerable people comparing themselves to impossible physiques we have worked on over days if not weeks makes me feel most guilty.

What is the antidote? Legislation wouldn't really do much and would be impossible to enforce – after all, we're talking about aesthetics, a subjective topic with a permanently shifting pinnacle. We should be looking at why so many people want to fall into a homogenised look, and try to encourage people to embrace difference as individuals. My personal epiphany came standing naked in a market square in Helsinki with 1,500 other equally bare people. I thought "God, I'm the hairiest person here!", but what was also instantly clear was that it didn't matter at all. That I feel lucky to have had such an epiphany is a poor reflection of our culture.

Jessica Butler aka sequinnedmannequin

I want to be one of those balanced women who have a healthy attitude towards their appearance. Sometimes, in a "fake it 'til you make it" effort to diminish my neurotic tendencies, I even pretend to be such an adjusted human being. More often, I squint at my fellow women with a mingling of envy and suspicion while scrutinising my own looks.

The most destructive aspect of my negativity is the way it makes me look at others. One week, Hot Female of the Moment appears on the cover of a glossy magazine and I am seized with the fervent desire to sell my limbs in exchange for hers; the next she's in the "Spotted!!!" section for me to gawk over her Photoshopped cellulite and I feel pleased, perhaps even vindicated. The jealous desire to rip another woman's head off because she's more attractive than me does a disservice to us both: I, evil she-witch, lose any self-respect I may have had, while her beauty – or my perception of it – becomes a millstone around her neck. I've been on both sides of the dagger, and neither are a walk in the park.

Happening to adhere to cultural beauty norms might seem like tremendous luck, but self-image is more complex than simply being seen by others as "hot or not". Feeling alienated from other women is a barrier to friendship, and being perceived as a threat makes me want to hide in a cupboard with a kitten and never come out. It's unsurprising that my self-image is so unstable when it's largely built on how I compare to others, and how they respond to me. If the government wants to act, a radical revision of advertising that capitalises on the expansion of industries that have a vested interest in maintaining low self-esteem in its customers would be a start.

Marcus Hobley aka MarcusHobley

As a young adult, I was part of what I considered an elite club comprising high achievers on the university sports field by day, doormen by night and a mix of "vanity-street are us" guys. We were all dedicated gym-goers chasing physical perfection. Conversation between sets of lifting weights always revolved around diet – from the nutritional value of everything we ate to the different merits of various cooking techniques. If it wasn't for our meathead looks and testosterone-fuelled grunts over the bench press, you could have mistaken us for a culinary convention. Looking back, some members of this elite club were suffering muscle dysmorphia, at times holding a warped delusion that they were "skinny". Fittingly, the biggest one-upmanship exchange between us was, "you've lost some bulk mate". The comment's venom hit you exactly where it hurt. Even to this day, Facebook knows my weak spots: it regularly shows me adverts promising to teach me how to achieve a six-pack, a constant reminder of the skeletons of my past.

Young men these days get it tougher than I did at the time, with the unobtainable being thrown at them everywhere they turn. I believe our government has an active role to play in fostering good body image by creating strong parameters for which public spaces should be used to advertise and influence our views on health and self-confidence, thus supporting us to define who we are by our depth of character and our contribution to society rather than by how toned or bronzed our torsos are.

Sarah aka SarahAE

As a young girl in the 1970s, I remember feeling ashamed that my mother was overweight. I envied other children their slim, attractive parents and vowed I would never be fat. I read fashion magazines at friends' houses and loved looking at the pictures of models. I soon started saving up my pocket money to buy Vogue in my early teens, which was full of slim girls and hints at how to be thin. As I entered puberty, I grew breasts and hips and was teased mercilessly by my two skinny brothers, so I made sure to lose weight by curtailing what I ate. When my mother went on a sponsored diet and lost about a stone, the house filled with cottage cheese, Ryvitas and diet supplements. I used to steal them and became fascinated about calories, which I also started to count.

I am now almost 45 years old and have never been really happy with my body image. My entire adult life has been dominated by my attempts to be a shape I am probably not supposed to be anyway. I reached 12.5 stone (79kg) a few years ago after I had my son and became even more obsessed, but tried really hard to avoid going on "a diet" as I am fearful of going back to a place where my whole life is dominated by food. I am now a healthy 10.5 stone.

I believe the government needs to ban advertising by diet companies and should consider what is allowable in fashion magazines. The images of perfect and very skinny models does impact on young girls and women and only serves to fuel an unhealthy relationship with food from a young age. For me, this sadly translated into periods of anorexia and bulimia. I now consider myself as recovered, but this has come at a price. I believe it all started with wanting to look like the models in Vogue.

Joanne Blackburn aka JoanneBlackburn

I am no size-zero supermodel, nor am I capable of consuming the gargantuan portions I witnessed recently on Man v Food, a programme that follows presenter Adam Richman on his quest to defeat such calorific meals as the seven-pound calzone. But I have to question whether the recent Ditching Dieting march by women activists was truly in the interest of positive body image, or a pretext for women to excuse the fact that dieting – and keeping the weight off – is just plain hard.

This hardship is felt no more than in January; it is easy for those resolutions to slip away. But in the face of Britain's obesity epidemic any stand against healthy eating is a travesty, and these protesters are fighting against companies that preach healthy eating, regular exercise and an altogether healthier lifestyle. These may be making money from women's insecurities, but is that really anything compared to the billions of pounds made every year by fast-food outlets lining their saturated-fat pockets from the burgeoning waistlines of UK consumers? With the strain of the weight (pardon the pun) of the cost of obesity-related illness starting to show on our already stretched healthcare system, can we really begrudge the £20 monthly fee for which weight loss companies offer a supportive, healthy approach to slimming down?

An inquiry into the issue of body image in the UK is a good thing, however I think its important that it does not become about attacking the companies that encourage healthy weight loss. The inquiry should be looking at the underlying causes of the UK's expanding waistline, so that policies can be implemented to help get to the root of the issue.