My thinspiration, ’80s style
May 23, 2008 by angelique
Filed under Women's Health
I became anorexic in the 1980s. This means I had no Internet to turn to for my thinspiration, no images immediately accessible with a tap of the keyboard.
But I still had thinspiration. It just came in the form of books and articles.
I’ve always loved to read and when I discovered there were fiction and non-fiction accounts of girls striving to be thin JUST LIKE I WAS, I greedily gobbled them up (instead of gobbling up food.)
I learned a great deal from these thinspo devices… and what I came away with was not what the authors intended, I assure you. In fact, books and magazines became my Ana bibles. Certain passages have stuck with me to this day, and I often have to push them into the back of my head because they’re so embedded in my mind.
Ironically, images never really encouraged me to starve myself; however, the written word was powerful enough to help me get through many mornings when I felt faint from lack of nourishment.
I developed my disorder in the 9o’s when there wasn’t much more than AOL chat rooms and hotmail….. lol
My experience is similar with “thinspiration”. I had photography books of ballet dancers from Russia and Europe I would page through, and various books and poetry, many in their inception having absolutely nothing to do with eating disorders, but I would interpret them this way. I think I can interpret anything at this point into an ED context. HA!
The current thinspiration is the same for me as well. It’s not a trigger, it doesn’t stop me from eating. But days when I felt weak from fasting or purging, it would get me up and moving, and less depressed, less likely to spend the day in bed. It is comforting in a really weird way.
Because mine devolped before I had access to an ED community, I think my perceptions and influences are a lot more internalized. Mary Kate Olson doesn’t effect my self image, and I am not trying to look like her. It’s conflict and expectations and anger inside myself that drive me to do this….