The Jury is In: I would have been pro ana
November 19, 2008 by angelique
Filed under Women's Health
If I am to be perfectly honest with myself and with you (and why have it any other way), I have to admit that I know in my heart I would have been “pro ana” if we had Facebook, MySpace and the Internet in general in the 1980s.
I so easily and quickly would have glommed onto the pro ana message boards, scarfing up the information and hints (while simultaneously starving myself of nourishment.) I would have surreptitiously taken and posted self-portraits positioned in front of the bathroom mirror, angling my body so viewers had the best shots of my protruding hipbones and ribcage. And I would have gloried in being able to tell other pro anas and pro mias about the numbers on my scale.
Yes, I would have been pro ana. No question. Case closed.
This leads me to have a great deal of sympathy for those who buy into the whole pro ana and pro mia movement. I mean, I get it. I truly do. As much as I do not support it, I understand it (even if pro anas and mias don’t believe me.) At the height of my eating disorder, I would have been super-excited to share my thoughts, feelings, worries, et cetera, with likeminded individuals.
And that really scares me. Because if the Internet had existed when I was a teen with anorexia, I would absolutely, positively not be living the life I am today.
I completely agree with you on this one. I see them (the pro-ans sites) as adding fuel to the fire, and I would have devoured them in an effort to set my ed on the fast track.
Today’s parents have a monumentous battle in fighting everything the world wants to assault their children with, and we need to remember that and choose our words carefully when speaking with young girls and boys.
I WAS into it, and i gotta teel ya, anyone that says those sites are just a place for someone to talk to like minded individuals and arent dangerous are dead wrong. They arent places for people to comiserate and support eachother into getting help even if the arent ready- its a how-to manual on starving, hating and killing yourself. my thoughts were always there, but it was pro ana sites that taught me how to do a lot of what i did, and afterwards it was other pro ana members that gave me congrats and told me it would be ok, i could just starve tomorrow, and to stay strong.
If there was a community for drug addicts or pediphiles to go share tips and tricks on how to get needles or find kiddie porn, and tell eachother its ok they are the way they are, it would be shut down immediately, but for some reason these just get dismissed.
Kelly Turner
http://www.groundedfitness.com
e:
You’re totally right. Parenting is made MUCH more difficult when you have to do battle with Internet sites that are exactly the opposite of what you want to teach your child. (Did I say that correctly?)
Kelly:
I think it’s all about the whole “free speech” aspect of pro-ana sites. And anorexia and bulimia aren’t illegal, though kiddie porn and pedophilia are. So I suppose I understand the dismissals on some level, but it doesn’t make it right.
If you ever want to write a guest post on your pro ana message board experiences, I would be honored!
Kelly:
I mean I’d be honored to highlight the post here so my readers could get a “real feel” for what pro ana sites are and how they are actually used. (I am just not completing my thoughts today.)
I think that the pro-ana (and “thinspiration”) sites not only introduce behavior that would never before have been accessible to an individual, but also encourage a kind of rumination that can be really negative. If you can sit at the computer all day long reading about tips, looking at images of girls who are thinner than you, and even just reading a site like this (but keeping a pro-ana stance and feeling “superior”), you are SO focused on the disease that you can never be distracted from it. You can’t allow yourself to escape, and it can spiral out of control. I’m not sure that taking pro-ana sites out of the mix would solve all of those problems, because individuals can still access magazine images and diet articles so easily online, but it would be an enormous step in the right direction.
For the longest time, I was deathly afraid to look up pro-anorexia sites. As a recovering and relapsing anorexic for the past 9 years (god i can’t believe it’s been that long), I was disgusted and shocked by the idea that there were websites promoting and glamorizing a mindset that ruins lives. More importantly though, I was afraid that I would be inspired by the websites into another relapse. And not because it idealizes anorexia but because whenever I truly relapse, I become extremely competitive about my body and weight loss. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had access to pro-anorexia sites during my earlier and more serious years. But yes, I would have definitely used them.
I did eventually look up pro-anorexia sites, very recently actually. They were actually rather difficult to find and many were password protected. It was a good thing. The reason I looked them up was because I had relapsed again.