Who is in control?

If you have not yet had a chance to visit a pro-ana or pro-mia websites, a BBC News article, "Seeking Thinspiration", written by Jaqueline Head, accurately describes their sick content. She explains thinspiration as “pictures of painfully skinny girls…. Comparing dangerously low goal weights and measurements, and team up to ‘keep each other strong’ in their quest to lose weight.’” She also takes note of several posts in which “they swap stories on how they vomit until they cough blood."

Head points out in her article that one of the most disturbing facts about the prominence of these sites on the internet is that it “brings them within reach of a wider audience”. From articles on what diet pills work best to the most effective ways to purge, these websites are blatantly enforcing eating disorders and subtly celebrating a slow and painful death for each reader participating.

Heads major concern outlined in her article is that these websites are leaking from the world wide web onto social networking websites such as facebook and myspace. Head explains, “their presence on social networking websites, which have rules against posting harmful content, raises the groups to a new respectability.” Some of the group names on these networking sites include “Get thin or die trying” and “Quod me nutrit me destruit," meaning that which nourishes me destroys me. To me, these titles do not indicate anything good is coming to follow. On the contrary, they clearly celebrate the fact that they are promoting dangerous and extremely unhealthy ways of life.

The most disturbing part about these websites is that many people are logging onto them who do not psychologically suffer from anorexia or bulimia, but are so desperate to lose weight that they resort to actually trying to become anorexic—which by definition, is impossible. They attempt to become anorexic in the same way someone may try to catch a cold. All I can as is, why? Why would you try to become a tortured individual? Why would you want to make your mind vulnerable to a psychiatric illness with the highest mortality rate? Up to 20% of these individuals die not only from the physical effects of these diseases, but the mental effects cause death as well—many suffering form eating disorders are at high risk for suicidal deaths.

Head closes the article by using individual examples of how these sites influenced eds in an attempt to understand why anyone would use them. In the case of 21-year-old Andrea Schneider, who suffered from anorexia since she was 16, explains her reasoning:

"When you are actively in your eating disorder, you desperately want someone to understand, and a lot of time you find groups like the pro groups on Facebook that are supportive of you continuing your eating disorder," she says. "When you are in the middle of it and don't want to give it up, you cling to these sites that tell you what you are doing is OK. Recovery is hard, staying sick isn't, so it's easier to hide behind these sites claiming that you are making a lifestyle choice, rather than admitting that you are sick and trying to get better."

Schneider makes an important point in her explanation. She points out that the sites allowed her to convince herself that she was consciously making a decision to be anorexic, rather than admit she were sick. The root cause of many eating disoders is an attempt to gain control. The problem is, once the eating disorder takes over psychologically and physically, the individual is no longer in control, and that is when they need to seek help the most. These websites serve as an enabling tool, allowing eds to prolong their disease by not admitting to their disease and saving themselves. As Schneider explains, “recovery is hard, staying sick isn’t.”

I would like everyone participating in these websites to ask themselves, “Who, or what, is in control now?”