Eating
Disorders
Looking for "Thinspiration": Pro-Anorexia Movement Flourishes Online
(July 23, 2004) -- Type "pro-ana" into any Internet search engine and you'll
get a disturbing glimpse into a
deadly obsession with thin.
There are websites with "thinspiration" photo galleries of waif-thin models
and famous celebrities with
eating disorders like Mary-Kate Olsen and Karen Carpenter. And discussion
groups where apple-only diets are earnestly promoted and members sign off with
tags that include their body weight. The groups have their own lingo, like "laxies"
for
laxatives, "mia" for
bulimia and "ana" for anorexic.
"I feel like a big fat whore, my stupid boyfriend drives me nuts with his
encouraging me to eat. I keep bouncing back from over and under 90 (pounds), I
just want to get to 80 already!!" writes a message board member.
This is the online world of "pro-ED" (for pro-eating disorders) - hundreds of
websites and discussion groups created and used by people who say they have the
disorders.
And according to health professionals and educators, it's a subculture so
pervasive and under the radar that it's hijacking prevention and recovery
efforts, and helping eating disorders to spread.
"They're looking for tricks of the trade and how to maintain the lowest
weight possible without dying," says Lauren Goldhammer, a therapist at Bellwood
Health Services in Toronto, which has a residential treatment program for people
with eating disorders.
"They're starving. And how do they keep going? They need some more
encouragement, and I think those websites help them in that sense."
But the online world means more than that, according to those who frequent
it.
Nancy Tewfik spent four months monitoring pro-eating disorder message boards
as a psychology student at the University of Toronto. She also interviewed 12
young women about why they spent time on them.
Some said the sites helped them combat loneliness and feelings of isolation.
Others claimed they weren't doing anything wrong and their eating disorder was a
"lifestyle choice."
Ultimately, she says, what they got from the groups was a circle of friends.
"It's people that understand them. It's people that accept them as they are,"
she says.
But many professionals worry that the Internet is making it easier than ever
for people to swap techniques on how to starve themselves - and keep it hidden.
The websites range in tone from self-loathing to defiance - but there are
many similarities: tips on how to lose weight, tricks for inducing vomiting,
what foods purge the easiest, how to avoid detection, "thinspiration" photos and
quotes and message boards.
At one site, there's a flurry of enthusiastic responses to the thin and
thinner before-and-after pictures posted by a young woman calling herself
AnorexicBeauty:
"You're my thinspiration! How did you do it?" writes one.
"Your collar bones are beautiful - nice job," says another.
"It's an expression by people that are ill who are trying to find support and
justification for their thinking and behaviour," says Merryl Bear, executive
director of the National Eating Disorder Information Centre in Toronto.
What's more, she says, it allows other vulnerable people to be sucked in.
"It's pervasive, so kids actually don't have to go searching for negative
stimuli or negative encouragement to engage in unhealthy food and weight
behaviours," Bear says.
As prevalent as the websites and message boards are, Goldhammer says the
Internet almost never comes up in her group therapy sessions with recovering
anorexics.
"They don't want to bring it out into the light of day," she says, adding
discussion on Internet issues is also a rarity in academic literature about
eating disorders.
The Internet's shroud of anonymity is one reason the pro-ana and pro-mia
movements have flourished. Eating disorders are secretive and isolating by
nature, so the Internet provides instant access to information and people beyond
all geographic borders.
The slippery nature of the web also makes the pro-ED world almost impossible
to control. After major media outlets publicized the issue in 2001, Internet
giants like Yahoo began shutting many websites down. But they crop up elsewhere
- and even today if you type "pro-ana" into a Yahoo group search you'll get
dozens of hits.
So, as for child pornography and digital music piracy, the solutions for
cracking down on the online pro-eating disorder world are elusive.
"For me, it doesn't make a big difference to close down one site because it
will pop up somewhere else," says Bear. "What we need to do is to challenge the
source of the issue."
Haley Mick
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