Recently I was online doing some work for Psychology (we're doing eating disorders now) and I cam across something horrifying: a pro-ana website. These sites support anorexic behaviors, give tips on how to be anorexic, all the while pretending to be pretty and innocent sites supporting the "lifestyle choice to be thin."
With a growing expression of horror on my face, I clicked on article after article describing tactics to "slim down and get healthy." These tactics included drinking water instead of eating, chewing gum to satiate hunger, doing pushups if you eat when you're not supposed to, and ridiculous diets that basically advocated eating below 500 calories a day. There were "thinspirations" showing clearly anorexic girls and comments below complimenting them on their achievements.
The fact that sites like this exist makes me incredibly angry. Having struggled with body image myself, I can say that if I had found this when I was vulnerable, it definitely would have triggered some bad eating behaviors and considerably lowered my self-esteem. So I can only imagine what it's doing to other young girls right now who buy into the site's lies and illusions and decide to starve themselves.
Apparently now there are girls as young as 7 with anorexia. 7??? I was eating mac and cheese by the box when I was 7.
What do we do about this???
1 comments:
I think a lot of this has to do with changing social patterns. Until relatively recently, most people lived in small communities and had a very small field from which to choose a prospective mate. Not so any more. Most young people travel far and wide to nightclubs, universities and so on these days, so there's very much more competition and a consequent need to 'work' at acceptability.
Then there's the nature of that acceptability. When my grandmother was young, extra flesh was seen as indicative of prosperity and good health, because at that level of society, people still died from starvation and diseases exacerbated by malnutrition. I gather this still holds true in poorer countries today.
And there's another complication. From what I can gather, far more people are prey to obesity issues than anorexia, and so there's a drive to get people to cut excessive food consumption which has become so rampant in the west. To some extent, therefore, we could blame the fast food giants for creating a situation that encourages the pendulum effect of anorexia.
I would suggest, therefore, that anorexia has its root in cultural conditioning, and that the psychological aspects - though obviously important in treatment - are actually secondary when considering causes. Furthermore, pro-ana websites are only one small angle on a complex phenomenon.
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