The rejection of the idea that anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder has been called Pro Ana. Tips and tricks, as well as other informative material and discussion groups and forums are spread all over across the Internet. Anorexic persons tend to refuse support and contact with their family members and with medical staff, so the Pro Ana tips and tricks may help them find understanding and a starting point for sharing thoughts and methods to make anorexia safer. Scientists have investigated anorexia nervosa and bulimia in a lot of studies, but opinions sometimes differ, as some groups consider them to be eating disorders, while others frame them into the mental illnesses category. Regardless the scientific findings, anorexics see it rather as a lifestyle choice, so there’s no wonder they are scouring the net, searching for pro ana tips and tricks, to make their life easier and to help them share experience with people like them.
Pro Ana Tips And Tricks Criticism
It’s easy to understand that medical associations and scientists’ opinions are mostly negative, concerning the appearance of websites which share pro ana tips and tricks for their readers. These activities are perceived as encouraging teenagers to strive for perfection by becoming anorexic.
I think the roots of this eating trouble come from nowadays social standards of beauty, which many times impose that women are skinny. Only look at the fashion parades and shows and observe the top models: they all look like they are always starving, their bones are prominent and many times their face shows illness and malnutrition. If this is beauty, why then are we concerned when we see the young generation trying all kind of pro ana tips and tricks, from collective weight loss diets to tips on how to induce vomiting or on how to hide weight loss from doctors and from their parents?
While I tend to agree that being fat is harmful to a person’s health and well-being, I cannot understand the attraction of looking like an extremely poor person who cannot afford to eat. There are so many children in this world who would give everything to eat at least one meal every day, that it is outrageous to think that somebody would eat with the sole purpose of vomiting everything as soon as possible after that.
But I suppose I’m not entitled to judge anybody, and as long as the net would exist, there would always be places where anorexia sufferers would share their pro ana tips and tricks.
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6 Comments
You state that you think anorexia is from the society that shows thinness as being beautiful in women, this is a contributer, yes, but this is not the reason that people are anorexic or bulimic. An eating disorder is a form of control. Though the pro ana and pro mia websites do have tips and tricks on them, there are forums that offer support and understanding. A place to go where people understand and one is not ridiculed or judged for being maladaptive and sick. Eating disorders are a serious illness but no, you do not have a right to judge as you do not know each and every person that suffers with a disorder and you do not know the trauma or difficulties that they have faced in their lives that has led to this. In addition, your comment on you not being able to understand why someone would intentionally eat to purge it asap, it is also a form of control. Eating disorders are usually a manifestiation of emotional issues that one either has not or can not deal with. If people would take the time to consider what the younger generations are facing then one might see that this is not some pleasure that teens are partaking in like drinking, it is a serious problem that needs help and a counselor to deal with the underlying problems as well as a support system. No one understands eating disorders to the full extent, even those who suffer from one, and NO ONE that has never had an eating disorder, not a diet, will never understand the emotional turmoil and obsession, fear, rejection, hatred, and all the other emotions that coexist with the disorder.
Heather you could not be more right. who ever wrote this article needs to take a good hard look at themselves and show a little understanding instead of ridiculing the many people living with an eating disorder. shame on you.
Hey, ladies, no offense, I was just expressing my thoughts about the topic. I’m not ridiculing anybody, I’m just trying to understand why those people are doing that to themselves and why they love their eating disorder that much, that they hide it as well as they can. Thank you for your comments and I’m sorry if I offended you in any way. I really believe that each of us has the power to change and that we don’t need counselors for that. A strong desire and motivation could be enough to let go of old habits we don’t want part of our life anymore.
I have suffered from anorexia nervosa for over 25 years now, and am now terminally ill because of multiple organ failure caused by my eating disorder. I have met well over a thousand other individuals who also suffer from this horrible illness, and have spent years studying eating disorders, psychiatry and ALSO I have studied and gathered statistics on those horrible pro-ana websites. I am anti-pro ana, which means I am against this horrible subculte and speak out online about this.
I would like to correct much of your article, because I was VERY offended and angered by your spread of misinformation. Do you know how much damage this can cause to the eating disordered population?
Do you know how many times people stop us on the streets to make fun of us, to yell names, throw things at us, take photos of us to laugh at? I have been beaten and raped all of my life because I look *different* then most people, becuase of my low weight. This only makes my eating disorder WORSE. Now I’m dying, and nothing can stop my multiple organ failure. I can no longer have a chance at recover, I live in a hospice centre because I can’t even get out of bed on my own, or use the bathroom on my own, I need help from medical staff. The misinformation being spread to the public about people with eating disorders has caused us SO MUCH harm and ridicule.
People are ALWAYS happy to judge us, make horrible comments, and actually physically harm us because of the lack of understanding they have of this horrible illness that we have NO control over. It is NOT OUR FAULT that we have this illess.
Anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders are MOST COMMONLY CAUSED BY RAPE AND ABUSE, NOT because of the media. My own eating disorder was caused by rape and abuse, as well, and I am disgusted to see all of this horrid misinformation being spread, you people are only causing us even MORE harm. You are no better. LEARN MORE BEFORE YOU SPEAK. Why don’t you actually seek out some of us to see how it truly is to be this way FIRST, before you go out and spread this shit?
NEXT, the majority of the pro-anas (some 90%) do NOT have an eating disorder AT ALL. They actually fit the diagnostic criteria for another mental illness called MÜNCHHAUSEN’S SYNDROME. This is a mental illness where the afflicted will feign mental illnesses for attention and sympathy. Pro-anorexics are VERY DIFFERENT from those who actually suffer from eating disorders, and most people who actually have eating disorders are DISGUSTED by the pro-anorexia/pro-anas and their horrible websites. Myself included.
If those pro-ana idiots knew what it was TRULY like to be eating disordered, they would NOT speak so fondly of it. They would realise that there are no tips or tricks to “becoming anorexic,” it is POUNDED INTO YOU FROM DAY ONE from HORRIBLE causes like abuse, rape and neglect. These websites are BELITTLING all of the pain that we have been forced to go through and glamorizing these terrible illnesses that have DESTROYED our lives.
Thinspiration is useless when you hate yourself this much, anorexics don’t need it, and many hate it and want NOTHING to do with it. (Again, myself included)
Pro-ana people often steal photos of very sick anorexics and repost them without permission, causing huge emotional damage to the people in these photos.
I have been a victim of MASS photo-theft from those stupid pro-anas. A horrible man who abused me for a long time have forced me to pose naked in photos that I leter found online on a fetish website. I got this webiste taken down, but not soon enough. Some pro ana idiot found those pictures and reposted them all over pro-ana websites, and soon my photos spread like wildfire. I have been so emotionally damaged by what they have done to me. I have attempted suicide and self harmed so many times after getting flashbacks of my rapes when accidentally finding these photos that I was forced to have taken of me on their idiotic websites.
This is not an uncommon thing, either. I have had MANY friends who ALSO have had their photos stolen by the pro-anorexics, only to be emotionally damaged just as much as I have been. They hate the pro anas as much as I do, for this horribly selfish and disgusting act of degrading and exploiting us for their own personal gain.
THIS is what the pro-anas are doing. They are degrading and exploiting the lives of anorexics for their own disgusting personal gains. They are faking illnesses they don’t have, just to get attention and sympathy from people online and then sucking even more people into this. They are HURTING PEOPLE and even KILLING PEOPLE and look what everyone is doing about it? FUCK ALL.
THESE SITES MUST BE BANNED AND THE CREATORS HELD FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
The only country, so far, that has done something about this is France. France recently issues a law that says anyone found creating a pro-ana website can be fined up to 50,000 euros and put in prison for up to 5 years. I hope more countries follow in France’s footsteps.
Please think more before spreading information that can cause severe harm to other people, Simone.
While I am glad people are bringing light to the dangers of these websites, the least they could do is get their information right so that people are given the CORRECT information.
Thank you so much, Bony Pink, I appreciate your input a lot and I’m happy you took the time to write such a detailed and in-depth analysis of this terrible illness. I agree with you, pro-ana websites shouldn’t exist, and that’s why I wrote this article, to draw an alarm signal that they are bad.
Thank you for hearing me out, Simone. I really appreciate it, however I still do feel that you have spread some misinformation about eating disorders with this article and this worries me because it effects how people look at those with eating disorders and also how they treat them. It can mean a lot of horrible treatment to various people in the future, just like what happened to me.
Much of my abuse could have been prevented, and that REALLY upsets me. I still deal with ridicule and verbal abuse from people daily, even though I am living out my last days in hospice and hospice is meant to make one who is dying comfortable and painless for their last days. Instead, mine are filled with pain.
People in hospice don’t understand eating disorders. The patients throw things at me and call me all sorts of hurtful names. Many staff members are very rude to me and also verbally abuse me. One staff even will refuse to give me my medications, and forced me to beg for the medication that is keeping me alive. (I have to call over another staff just for her to give it to me) Now, while this isn’t as bad as the sexual abuse and physical abuse I dealt with most of my life, I am still greatly hurt and my eating disorder is only worsened by the hurtful comments and actions of others. These people only know the misinformation that is spread about these terrible illnesses, so they continue to judge and to hurt. Maybe if they knew more, it wouldn’t be so bad for me here. Maybe they wouldn’t say as many cruel things as they do to me.
I remember when I used to be able to go outside and my father would wheel me around in my wheelchair, people would stop and stare, some would take out their camera to take pictures of me, because I looked like a freak. They would yell things at me, telling me to eat or saying I looked like a crack whore. Mothers would point and laugh as they told their children, “honey, look at that skeleton girl! haha!”
One mother actually walked up to me and slapped me in the face, despite me being tubed and in a wheelchair, she then said, “You are horrible, disgusting person. It’s people like you that cause girls to want to diet. I hope you die a horrible death you pathetic piece of shit. You deserve to suffer.” (well, I guess I’m going to do so, she would be happy to know how I am now.)
Because of all the misinformation spread about anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders, people think it’s all our fault, or that it’s just simple for us to stop. They think we want to be this way, that we like looking they way we do or that we think everyone else around us must be fat because they are bigger than us. ALL OF IT IS UNTRUE.
Most people think anorexia is about looking pretty, or like a model, or that they are doing this for attention, this can’t be further from the truth.
Anorexia nervosa is primarily caused by rape or sexual abuse and is an unhealthy coping method for these traumatic events. It is not about looking beautiful, sexy or pretty. It’s usually the completely opposite. Many anorexics usually strive to become emaciated to look sexually unappealing so that people will not harm them or they will leave them alone. They want to disappear from sight so people can’t hurt them. They don’t want attention, they want to be left alone.
Anyways, I hope that you have learned something from the information I have given you, Simone. Maybe someday you would write another article about the misinformation spread about eating disorders and how this damages people, hehe. If you ever plan this, I could help you out if you like. (I’ve left my email address here, either that or if you want to reach me, search up “Bony Pink” on facebook. I am on there most of the time when online. Beware, though, some people have been known to create false profiles and pretend to be me. If you find more than one, mine should be set on private viewing and I don’t post any photos of my body on my profile. Usually people who impersonate me use those stolen body pictures.)