Amputees by Choice, p. 117 (Carl Elliott, 2003)"It took about ten seconds to find dozens of Web sites devoted to the topic. ... On the Internet you can find a community to which you can listen or reveal yourself, and instant validation for your condition, whatever it may be. ... To discover that she was not alone was wonderful--but it also meant that a desire she had managed to push to the back of her mind now shoved its way to the front again. It occupied her conscious thoughts in a way that was uncomfortable. She says she knows wannabes who subscribe to as many as a dozen wannabe and devotee on-line mailing lists and spend hours every day wading through electronic messages."
Crafting Resourceful Bodies and Achieving Identities, p. 46 (Helen Gremillion, 2003)
"While a slender and fit body signifies autonomy and success for women, it also implies dependence on others' approval. In addition, controlling bodily needs through dieting and exercise paradoxically calls attention to these needs. Anorexia highlights this contradiction; food refusal and compulsive exercising are forms of self-control that continually create the very desires that seem to require control. Of course, dominant cultural representations of fitness obscure this contradiction: fitness naturalizes the values of willpower and self-control by construing the body as a kind of personal natural resource for creating a powerful, fit, and achieving self. At the same time, however, it seems that special efforts are required to create a fit female body. Fitness gendered female is culturally coded as an unending struggle; as I will discuss, women and girls experience a profound contradiction between the injunction to diet in order to create a fit body, on the one hand, and incitements to consume and to serve food, on the other. ... Dieting and exercise then take on a life of their own and become overwhelming preoccupations."
In the world of online communities, there exists a long list of "pro-ana" or "pro-eating disorder"
websites. To the right is an image that serves as a banner for one community on livejournal.com, and to the left is a screenshot of the main page and most recent post on another. This most recent post is particularly convenient, given the discussion by Carl Elliott about online communities. The girl who is posting has been viewing the community for a year, but has finally convinced herself to post simply because she knows that those who see what she writes share the same problems that she possesses. She then follows the standard of these kinds of communities, and posts "thinspiring" pictures of women, and sometimes men, who appear to have eating disorders. A similar community lists in its rules:- "NO TEXT ONLY POSTS. This includes links. There are plenty of pro-ed communities out there for support, this one is for strictly triggering pictures only. I will give you the benefit of the doubt for the first time you post without a photo, the second time you're out."
Emphasis is not added by me, but is exemplary of the goal: these girls want to be pushed further into their eating disorders. That same community also writes, ironically:
- "Please post one of our promo banners in your user info after you join the community. It helps us grow, and the bigger we are, the better for you."
(emphasis added by me)
These communities are also known for personifying their eating disorders, particularly anorexia as "Ana" and bulimia as "Mia." In this way, the girls find imaginary authorities who tell them they are too fat, as is evidenced in the many versions of the Letter from Ana.
One post on a community which discusses this concept:
"Ana, a Man?
Has anyone else ever construed Ana in their minds as a male entity instead of as a female one?
I personally find men to be better friends and easier to listen to. It's much easier to imagine a man giving me orders, telling me I'm not good enough, and generally controlling me. So when I occasionally do have to think of Ana as a solid concept, He is a male diety. On whom I have the biggest crush of my life, but I'm not sure if He knows, so I'd better do everything He says, the way He likes, so He will notice me.
Sorry if I ruined anything for anybody, or if I'm being sacreligious."
Comment #1: amen to that!
Comment #2: Thats really good, I never thought of that. At first when i was reading it I was thinking, id want a guy who i like and who likes me to be sweet and nice to me, but then when i read that "I'm not sure if He knows" that made it. Thats always what gets me with a guy, where its kind of out there, but im unsure so then i want to be my best and most attractive to him. Thats actually happening right now for me. I love this angle.. thanks for bringing it up!
Comment #3: Wow. I've always had this image of this girl telling me all that stuff. I didn't know a lot of people did it! Infact, I thought it made me somewhat insane. I didn't...I dunno.
A guy. I think I should try that!
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This post also exemplifies the ways in which these community members are constantly searching for ways to push themselves further into their disorders. Other examples include daily or weekly competitions or challenges, restricting buddies, exercise buddies, and declaring a theme for the kinds of thinspiration pictures posted (bathing suits, pictures of large people next to thin people, girls with boyfriends, etc.). In the personification of Ana and Mia, the disorder has much more literally taken on "a life of [its] own," and the prevalence of these communities and the number to which each member belongs are clear examples of the way that they, even more than the eating disorders described by Helen Gremillion describes, "become overwhelming preoccupations."
Image and text sources: www.livejournal.com (specific communities privacy protected)
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