Pro-Ana: Promoting Thinness or Encouraging Eating Disorders?
By Sarah Stefanson March 15, 2010
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The fashion industry is notorious for hiring extremely thin models, especially for runway shows. Fashion magazines often use airbrushing to hide imperfections and slim down their cover models. There have even been eating disorder related deaths of fashion models around the world. All this evidence seems to indicate that the fashion world is complicit in inspiring eating disorders. Girls who succumb to the pressures of appearing as emaciated as their fashion role models usually try to hide their bad eating habits from family, friends and doctors. There is one place they can turn to for an understanding ear and help in maintaining their extreme diet and exercise routines.
Pro-ana (short for pro-anorexia) or pro-mia (short for pro-bulimia) are terms that those with these eating disorders use to describe their attitudes toward their conditions. Pro-ana websites have been popping up on the internet since its early days in the 1990s. A pro-ana site usually features a forum where eating disordered girls can meet and communicate, which is a major draw for someone who is feeling alone and misunderstood. The members share tips for diet, exercise, appetite suppression and hiding their disorders. These sites also include what pro-ana girls refer to as thinspiration (or thinspo), photos and videos of incredibly thin women who may be celebrities, models or average girls.
Some pro-ana websites claim to be support groups where girls in recovery can go to find help getting healthy again. Most, however, claim there is nothing wrong with anorexia and blatantly encourage it. Members of pro-ana sites attempt to normalize their condition by banding together and declaring that their eating habits and weight issues are important aspects of their personalities and indications of their exceptional self discipline.
A list on one pro-ana forum shares some tips for deterring one’s self from eating including eating in front of a mirror and drinking coffee or sugar-free energy drinks to suppress appetite and provide the energy one would normally get from a well-balanced diet. Calling friends to provide distraction is also suggested, as well as calling a boyfriend when feeling the urge to eat: “you don’t want him to hear you chewing!..and it will remember you he won’t want a fat girl!” (sic)
Naturally, there are many medical professionals and eating disorder information groups that protest the existence of such sites. The furor over pro-ana sites has provoked varied responses from social networking sites, which pro-ana girls usually use to host their online groups. Many of these sites include in their terms of use policies a statement that prohibits groups that promote or endorse self-harm. Sites like Yahoo Groups and Facebook have banned pro-ana groups and regularly search for these sites in order to delete them. LiveJournal has not made their position clear on pro-ana sites and continues to allow them to exist, claiming that their presence may help friends and family discover that their loved one has an eating disorder. Instead of censoring pro-ana pages, MySpace has chosen to work with eating disorder support groups and run banner ads for pro-recovery organizations.
Politicians around the world are getting in on the remonstration too. Forty MPs from the United Kingdom tabled a motion to encourage the government to take action against pro-ana websites in February 2008. A bill banning pro-ana material was tabled in the French National Assembly, but was dismissed by the Senate in June of 2008. Both French and English MPs have attempted to pass bills requiring disclaimers on photographs that have been retouched to show an unreal body type. In the spring of 2009, the Dutch minister for Youth and Family requested that all pro-ana websites on Dutch hosting services be fitted with warnings that visitors must click through in order to view the content. The issue of free speech seems to be the major impediment to these governmental attempts at censoring pro-ana sites.
While the world’s governments haven’t had much success trying to shut down pro-ana sites, the media is doing its part to expose them. Publicizing the existence of these sites means that it will be harder for them to operate in secrecy and hopefully help to bring anorexic and bulimic girls out of the shadows where parents, teachers, doctors and eating disorder associations can start to help.
The pro-ana attitude has already disseminated among young people to a considerable extent. Girls and boys, with eating disorders and without, are increasingly viewing pro-ana websites searching for tips and support for their radical weight loss goals.
While there are people and organizations out there to help young people with eating disorders, it is difficult for them to combat the constant barrage of images of extraordinarily thin models and celebrities. It certainly doesn’t help when a young girl reads that a fashion icon like Kate Moss has said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
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Submitted on March 15, 2010 in Model Intelligence.
Sarah is our Western Canadian correspondent. She recently left a long-standing position as editor and writer for TheSoko.com, DriverSense.com & LiveDress.com to focus on book and novel writing. Sarah continues contribute weekly articles to AskMen.ca and Models & Moguls. Sarah thinks she might have been a model if it weren’t for the blessing of Slavic hips and thighs.
Sarah Stefanson has contributed 64 articles to Models & Moguls.
I feel so fortunate that during the times I haven’t even been able to fit into my fat jeans I’ve never had the compulsion to starve myself. I think we’re either prone to such things or we’re not. I haven’t looked at these sites myself because it makes me feel ill and squeamish to see such images, but the kinds of things Sarah quotes from them sound so juvenile. These are clearly not girls and women in control of their lives and to see this as a choice born of free will is delusional – which is the whole problem with these disorders, isn’t it?
And I’d be inclined to disagree with Kate – I love my food!
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[...] eating disorders have the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses. I get pro-ana girls writing to me saying I “just don’t understand”, and that it’s about self [...]
[...] eating disorders have the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses. I get pro-ana girls writing to me saying I “just don’t understand”, and that it’s about self [...]