Pro-Anorexia

 

 

Discussing starvation and salvation on the Internet

 

We know that millions of us will continue to starve, purge, exhaust and overextend ourselves, many to the point of death, whether a Web site told us to or not. Whether we encourage it directly, indirectly, or not at all — it’s happening, and will continue to happen.”

This is an excerpt taken from “Mondays in April,” a support blog made for those who have eating disorders and are searching for a place to confide in others. Only, visitors of this site aren’t seeking out professional help or looking to share their recovery stories. They want desperately to be thin, and through this site and many others like it, they hold up the electronic foundations of the pro-anorexia community.

Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia affect as many as ten million women and one million men in America, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders. An estimated six percent of serious cases lead to death.

For those who live with an eating disorder and have nowhere to turn, the Internet offers an anonymous way to either fuel the desire to stay thin or to seek help within the online community.

Dr. Natalie Boero, a sociology professor at SJSU and Dr. CJ Pascoe, an assistant professor of sociology at The Colorado College, are writing a book about the pro-eating disorder community. Their studies have monitored how and why people have created these pro-anorexia, or pro-ana, online communities and what goes on in them.

A unique part of Boero and Pascoe’s study is they are looking at a nonclinical population, meaning most of the people have never been in recovery or were not in it at the time they were posting to the sites.

“These people [on the Web sites] are pro-anorexic, but not in terms of proselytizing or trying to recruit people,” Boero said. “But they are ambivalent about their own disorders and they go looking for these accepting communities that are not recovery-based.”

These Web sites are monitored by creators of the sites to make sure the people who claim to be anorexic are telling the truth, keeping the “wannarexics” out of pro-ana communities. Wannarexics are people who pretend to have anorexia and are using it as a diet to quickly lose weight.

“Looking over the course of a year, we began to understand people’s patterns and we began to read beneath the surface of what people were saying,” Boero said. “Sometimes they were being very tongue-in-cheek, using humor, aggression and insults to the wannarexics.”Boero said she believes that the media is only one piece of the reason why girls develop eating disorders. “We live in a fat-phobic society,” she said. “We live in a society that values thinness and all that it represents and it is part of the problem.”

We certainly live in a body-conscious society, but what sometimes happens is becoming thin and staying thin turns into an obsession and an addiction. For Christina*, a senior SJSU student, what started as losing some unwelcomed weight quickly turned into an addiction to the idea of losing weight.

“Every time you would lose a bit of weight and then a little more, you kept getting that satisfaction,” she said. “[I thought] the more you lose, the happier you will get.”

In pro-ana Web sites, Christina could talk to people like her — people who could relate to what she was feeling emotionally and physically.

“I couldn’t talk about [my anorexia] with other people without them thinking I was crazy,” she said. 

When Christina first came across the pro-ana sites, she thought that many of the people posting comments did not have any intention of recovering or getting better. It was later, when her anorexic habits became more frequent that Christina realized that she had more in common with those on pro-ana sites than she thought.

“I was still eating. I was just eating less than I should have and exercising more than I should have,” Christina said. “Everyone seemed worried and I didn’t know why.”

Although many of them claim to be nothing more than safe places for people with eating disorders to discuss their thoughts and feelings, there is often some contradictory content found on these sites. Pictures of overly thin celebrities that have often been scrutinized for their slim frames can be found on the sites, often referred to as “thinspiration.”

Most pro-ana sites have messages stating that the site is not meant to teach a person how to have an eating disorder or promote it to someone who does not already have one.

“This site is for support: We pat each other on the backs for our successes [as they are successes to us] and hug each other for our failures. We support each other through the rough patches and demand that you take care of yourself when another is in danger,” according to the webmaster for the site “Blue Dragonfly.”

“Mondays in April” lists a similar disclaimer: “Mondays in April exists to provide support for those who are eating disordered and are not ready for recovery. For those individuals, MIA is here to help you cope with whatever struggles you have, without judgment or condemnation.”

A majority of sites are up and running to support people who have nowhere else to go, offering a place without any pressure to seek recovery. Some sites have the National Suicide Prevention helpline on their pages, showing that if visitors need to seek serious help, the right resources are available.

With professional help, Christina has been able to fight the blog posts, the bony images from the media and the Web sites dedicated to eating disorders. Her anorexic habits have decreased over the past year. Looking back, she affirms that these social pressures had little to do with her personal struggle.

“You don’t do this to yourself because you want to look like Victoria Beckham,” Christina said. “You do it because the person you see in the mirror is not what you want to see.”

            *The identity of this person has been changed to protect her privacy

 

Sidebar – Thin Commandments

 

1)      If you aren’t thin, you aren’t attractive

2)      Being thin is more important than being healthy

3)      You must buy clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner

4)      Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty

5)      Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself afterwards

6)      Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly

7)      What the scale says is the most important thing

8)      Losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad

9)      Thou can never be too thin

10)  Being thin and not eating are signs of true willpower and success

 

Jasmine Duarte