"Food Is The Drug We All Must Quit ..."

I recently learned of some new words: "pro-ana," "pro-mia," "thinspiration." "Ana" as in anorexia, "mia" as in bulimia, "thinspiration" as in pictures of super-slim cadaverous bodies, like those seen below.

There are thousands of websites out there devoted to supporting eating disorders. Just google "pro-ana" and you'll see what I mean. For the most part the authors are high school to college age girls. There is only one way for these girls to achieve that model body and it's through starvation. Most of the sites speak of any smidgen of body fat as being disgusting, protruding bones as beautiful, food as the drug/enemy, sticking to an ED regimen as the ultimate test of self-control. The websites generally contain poetry or prose about ED, tips to keep to the regimen, "safe" foods with caloric content, "thinspiration" photos, workout ideas and advice on hiding the disorder from friends and family. At the same time, if you look carefully enough, there are subtle hints of self-hatred on many of the websites and a recognition of "having a problem." Some sites also contain information on self-mutilation (cutting etc.)

Here are some excerpts from various websites. Of the poetry/prose/quotes:
Ana Commandments
If you aren't thin you aren't attractive.
Being thin is more important than being healthy.
You must buy your clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
Thou shall not eat fattening foods without punishing one self afterwards.
Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
What the scale says is the most important thing.
Losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad.
You can never be too thin.
Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and success.

I believe in Control, the only force mighty enough to bring order to the chaos that is my world.
I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on the planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention.
I believe that other people who tell me differently are idiots. If they could see how I really am, then they would hate me almost as much as I do.
I believe in perfection and strive to attain it.
I believe in salvation through trying just a bit harder than I did yesterday.
I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures.
I believe in hell, because I sometimes think that I am living in it.
I believe in a holy black and white world, the losing of weight, recrimination for sins, abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting.

You will be FAT if you eat today. Just put it off one more day.
You don't NEED food.
Fat people can't fit everywhere.
Guys will be able to pick you up without struggling.
You'll be able to run faster without all that extra weight holding you back.
People will remember you as the 'beautiful thin one.'
If someone has to describe you, they'll say, 'oh, she weighs like 100, 110 lbs.'
Guys will want to get to know you, not laugh at you and walk away.
Starving is an example of excellent willpower.
You will be able to see your beautiful, beautiful bones.
Bones are clean and pure. Fat is dirty and hangs on your bones like a parasite.

"Men prefer sick thin girls, than healthy girls with bulging thighs."
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Tips for the anorexic/bulimic:
Leave foodwrapers and plates around the house... people will think you allready ate.
Go look at beautiful skinny model stat's, then compare them to your own.
Stand in front of the mirror naked and draw a map of your body and document everything thats wrong with it.
Take sleeping pills and just sleep all day, that way you wont eat.
For every 500 calories you eat, go one day of fasting, if you eat 1000 calories go 2 days etc.
make up make up make up!... add some color with peachie sparkling blush, foundation and some light pink lipgloss will make you look healthier too.
No Sugar Added, Fat-Free Fudge Pops. These are the reason I am alive. They have 40 calories in one and taste exactly like chocolate ice cream. If you must binge, try eating a whole box of these. There are 560 calories in a box of 14, and they are easy to purge.
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Thinspiration examples:





Obviously there is something wrong here. It's not surprising that as the ideal female body type as portrayed in the mass media, the fashion world, hollywood, even pornography gets slimmer and slimmer, the people barraged with these images come to accept them as "normal" and themselves as "abnormal," "fat." So as the ideal becomes harder and harder for the average woman to reach they take more and more drastic measures to get there. The interesting thing about ED is that it seems easy to fall into the trap then of not only desiring the flat stomach, but seeing any fat on the body as undesirable. Thus it leads to glamorizing the skeletal frames of the bottommost models shown - more free of fat than the upper models and thus more beautiful.

My biggest problem with seeing the fat-free body as normal for women, is at what point do these women lose their reproductive cycles as the body shuts down into "basic maintenance mode," and how can this ever be considered to be "normal," "healthy" and "good?"

For some interesting discussion of the changing ideal female body: Dissatisfaction with Our Bodies