This isn't where the internet was supposed to take us. The women I know who work in online women's media hoped that the online content they created would provide an intellectual but fun alternative to print publications' predictable fare.

And they have succeeded in using the internet for a new era of feminism. Take Jezebel, for example (tagline: "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion For Women. Without Airbrushing"). The site represents what the internet could do for women that traditional publishing houses couldn't: create truly smart editorial content for female readers without overwhelming them with superficial information about diet, exercise, or clothes, or wildly aspirational images of thin, photoshopped models wearing designer dresses and lounging in mansions. Jezebel's success made way for other sites with similar themes, like the Hairpin. Light on diet and workout tips, the Hairpin has become known, in part, for revolutionizing the advice column. Instead of expected 100-word answers to cliché questions, the Hairpin tackles everything from dating and sex (gay and straight) to household cleaning, with nuanced advice that feels like it's coming from your funniest, wisest friend.

But while sites like Jezebel have found sizeable audiences online, it's taken a lot of work to avoid rehashing the same old tropes. Anna Holmes launched Jezebel with the hope of encouraging women not to obsess over their appearance, materialism, and being thin, but noticed these themes would creep into the site's comment threads anyway.

"We certainly had critiques of the culture in terms of body image, but it was never, 'let's talk about how hard it was to lose that last 20 pounds,'" Holmes says. "Even though I think it was pretty obvious to readers of the site that we didn't have that sort of content, whenever anything came up that skirted those issues" — a post about a study relating to weight loss, say — "some of them reacted really enthusiastically and wanted to talk about it." Some readers would post their height and weight and, Holmes says, "We would go in the comments and say we didn't want numbers." She adds, "I was surprised at how quickly those conversations would happen. Even in a space where it was pretty obvious we were going to harp on those sorts of things, there was still a hunger for it. I found it very frustrating but the fact is people still really want to talk about those things."

Of course, even with the rising popularity of feminist content online, adult women are still conditioned to think about diet and exercise and looking beautiful, Holmes notes, so it makes sense that they'd pin these things, impulsively or not. Women like herself who are deeply aware of things like Photoshop and unrealistic beauty ideals aren't immune. "I'm not a runner, but I want to be a runner, and I keep buying Runner's World thinking I'll be inspired to start running," says Holmes, who is familiar with Pinterest, but does not use it. "Perhaps if it was online I would have pinned it for later use. I think the difference is Pinterest is performative, whereas I dog-ear my magazine, no one's going to see it. You see these things on people's Facebook [pages] about this '6 mile run I just took.' The announcement of one's lifestyle choices become a way of bragging." (Though, Holmes acknowledges, some people use social media healthfully to keep them honest when they're on diets that will ultimately benefit them.)

And let's talk about all that tiny food on Pinterest (which may actually be just as popular and breathlessly enthused over as full-size food). Do pinners see it as a low-calorie way to "indulge" in "bad-for-us" foods? Or do they pin it because it's just adorable the way a lot of small things (kittens, puppies, human babies) tend to be? Or do they really want to try dainty new methods of food styling?