Not only do these websites advocate that people can choose to have an eating disorder, but they also perpetuate the myth that this type of illness is not a problem, but rather a weight loss solution. For individuals with a relatively stable body image and average self-esteem, these websites may look ridiculous; why would anyone want to engage in eating-disordered behavior? Why would anyone want to deprive themselves from the joys of food, induce hair loss, isolate themselves socially, and risk contracting one of the many dangerous health problems associated with eating disorders, all for the purpose of losing weight? The answer to these questions may be beyond you. But if you are someone with low self-esteem, who struggles with body image issues, who has been belittled or criticized for your weight, you are very likely to crave these exact results and would actively engage in trying to achieve the aforementioned outcomes. You would go to any length to lose weight, even if that means starving yourself for weeks on end and punishing yourself whenever you do not achieve a weight loss goal. In a sense, this vicious cycle of self-harm can be explained by behavioral psychologists as following Mowrer’s two-factor model of avoidance learning. According to Mowrer, individuals are motivated to escape fear; in this case, the fear is gaining weight or not losing weight. Thus, individuals will engage in a series of classical conditioning behaviors whereby they begin to associate gaining weight and food (unconditioned stimulus) with disgust and guilt (unconditioned response). Soon enough, food alone (conditioned stimulus) will become associated with disgust and guilt (conditioned response), and they will no longer desire eating. These behaviors are maintained by operant conditioning, in which their behavior (food deprivation) is paired with a desired outcome, i.e. losing weight. This cycle perseverates via negative reinforcement (taking away the guilt) or positive reinforcement (weight loss).
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
10/22
The French government recently approved a bill that would impose a penalty of up to 3 years in jail and heavy fines against those advocating pro-anorexia websites and publications. Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot claimed that “giving young girls advice about how to lie to their doctors…and encouraging them to torture themselves whenever they take any kind of food is not part of liberty of expression” (Yoo, 2008).
Pro-Anorexic websites, known as pro-Ana sites by their fans, encourage the “anorexic lifestyle” and are focused on maintaining the illness rather than advocating recovery. Viewers exchange tips on how to reduce caloric intake, increase exercise, hide weight loss, and methods of punishment to use on themselves when they have eaten “forbidden” foods (Henry, 2007). Research shows that, even for healthy young women, viewing such websites induces depressed mood, low self-esteem, and increased body dissatisfaction (“Call to Ban Pro-Anorexia Websites”, 2009). Social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace, who are allowed to censor information, have previously shut down groups that were deemed dangerous or were advocating dangerous behaviors; however, they claim that many groups relate to controversial topics and that this alone is not a reason to disable a group. Thus, instead of censoring these groups, they are collaborating with organizations like B-eat to promote ads advocating recovery on these groups so that members are seeing positive messages as well ("Pro-Anorexia Site Clampdown Urged,” 2008).
10/17 : Introduction
Currently, there are over 500 websites advocating pro-anorexic or pro-bulimic behaviors ("Pro-Anorexia Site Clampdown Urged," 2008). Governments are strictly forbidden from interfering with any such distribution of information, as broadly encompassed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Is this a healthcare issue? Should we be concerned because a growing number of young females are developing eating disorders and insurances are paying millions of dollars for the treatment of these disorders? If we can help prevent some individuals from needing these services, why aren’t we doing so?
Is this a human rights issue? Should all individuals have the right to share any information without censorship, regardless of the psychological damage it causes to others?
Or is this a social issue? Do we have the responsibility, as fellow humans, to protect a vulnerable population (such as individuals with eating disorders) from inadvertently harming themselves?
How do we begin to address such a broad topic when both a fundamental human right and a fundamental human responsibility lie at the core of the issue? That is exactly what I intend to investigate.
Letter To Ana
I offer you my soul, my heart and my bodily functions. I give you all my earthly possessions.
I seek your wisdom, your faith and your feather weight. I pledge to obtain the ability to float, to lower my weight to the single digits, I pledge to stare into space, to fear food, and to see obese images in the mirror. I will worship you and pledge to be a faithful servant until death does us part.
If I cheat on you and procreate with Ronald McDonald, Dave Thomas, the colonel or that cute little dog. I will kneel over my toilet and thrust my fingers deep in my throat and pray for your forgiveness.
Please Ana, don't give up on me. I'm so weak, I know, but only you with your strength inside me will I become a woman worthy of love and respect. I'm begging for you not to give up, I'm pleading with my shallow breathes and my pale skin. I bleed for you, suffer leg pains, headaches and fainting spells. My love for you makes me dizzy and confused I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Men run when they see the love I have for you and never return. But they aren't important to me all that's important is that you love me.
If you stay with me, I will worship you daily, I will run miles a day, come rain, snow, bitter cold or searing heat I will run from the pain and in fright. I will do 1,000 sit ups a day and lie to my family about what I eat and how I feel. I will stop weeping when I feel your warm arms embrace my shivering body. I will numb the hunger pains with razor blades and your strength.
Today, I renew our friendship and resolve to be faithful to you year long, life long. I begin each year with a 3 day fast in honor of you. If you give me the strength to fade away I will love you and worship you forever.
When I'm finally faded to nothing, when you've given me the gift of ending this torturous life. I will float on to the next world and be thin and beautiful payment for my undying love for you in this world.
I ask only one more thing you, please Ana, remove me from this hell, from this world ASAP. Please take away this hatred for my pain and allow me to be free and light.
Ana Commandments
2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.
3. You must buy clothes, style your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
4. Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
5. Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself afterwards.
6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
7. What the scale says is the most important thing.
8. Losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad.
9. You can never be too thin.
10. Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and success.
Ana Recipe
Servings: One
Note: The recipe you are about to make is an acquired taste.
Ingredients:
1 cup low self-esteem
2 cup self-control
3/4 cup determination
1 1/2 strength
2/3 cup solitude
2 Tbsp routine
3 Tbsp secrecy and lies
2 tsp jealousy
3 tsp guilt
a dash of anger
and 1/2 cup tears (optional)
Directions:
Combine all ingredients and mix in a fragile soul.
Beat until all feeling is gone.
Place in a shallow bowl and serve with a tall glass of Diet coke.
Dish is ready to enjoy - guaranteed to disappear right before your eyes!!
Ana Creed
I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on this planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention.
I believe that other people who tell me differently must be idiots. If they could see how I really am, then they would hate me almost as much as I do.
I believe in oughts, musts and shoulds as unbreakable laws to determine my daily behavior.
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 calorie counters as the inspired word of god, and memorize them accordingly.
I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures
I believe in hell, because I sometimes think that I'm living in it.
I believe in a wholly black and white world, the losing of weight, recrimination for sins, the abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting.
Letter from Ana found on many pro-ana websites
Allow me to introduce myself. My name, or as I am called by so called "doctors," is Anorexia. Anorexia Nervosa is my full name, but you may call me Ana. Hopefully we can become great partners. In the coming time, I will invest a lot of time in you, and I expect the same from you.
In the past you have heard all of your teachers and parents talk about you. You are "so mature," "intelligent," "14 going on 45," and "you possess so much potential." Where has that gotten you, may I ask? Absolutely nowhere! You are not perfect, you do not try hard enough, and you furthermore waste your time on thinking and talking with friends and drawing! Such acts of indulgence shall not be allowed in the future.
Your friends do not understand you. They are not truthful. In the past, when the insecurity has quietly gnawed away at your mind, and you asked them, "Do I look . . . fat?" and they answered "Oh no, of course not," you knew they were lying! Only I tell the truth. Your parents, let's not even go there! You know that they love you, and care for you, but part of that is just that they are your parents and are obligated to do so. I shall tell you a secret now: Deep down inside themselves, they are disappointed with you. Their daughter, the one with so much potential, has turned into a fat, lazy, and undeserving girl.
But I am about to change all that. I will expect you to drop your calorie intake and up your exercise. I will push you to the limit. You must take it because you cannot defy me! I am beginning to embed myself into you. Pretty soon, I am with you always. I am there when you wake up in the morning and run to the scale. The numbers become both friend and enemy, and the frenzied thoughts pray for them to be lower than yesterday, last night, etc. You look into the mirror with dismay. You prod and poke at the fat that is there, and smile when you come across bone. I am there when you figure out the plan for the day: 400 calories, two hours exercise. I am the one figuring this out, because by now my thoughts and your thoughts are blurred together as one. I follow you throughout the day. In school, when your mind wanders I give you something to think about. Recount the calories for the day. It's too much. I fill your mind with thoughts of food, weight, calories, and things that are safe to think about. Because now, I am already inside of you. I am in your head, your heart, and your soul. The hunger pains you pretend not to feel is me, inside of you.
Pretty soon I am telling you not only what to do with food, but what to do ALL of the time. Smile and nod. Present yourself well. Suck in that fat stomach, dammit! God, you are such a fat cow!!!! When mealtimes come around I tell you what to do. I make a plate of lettuce seem like a feast fit for a king. Push the food around. Make it look like you've eaten something. No piece of anything . . . if you eat, all the control will be broken . . . do you WANT that?? To revert back to the fat COW you once were?? I force you to stare at magazine models. Those perfect-skinned, white-teethed, waifish models of perfection staring out at you from those glossy pages. I make you realize that you could never be them. You will always be fat and never will you be as beautiful as they are. When you look in the mirror, I will distort the image. I will show you obesity and hideousness. I will show you a sumo wrestler where in reality there is a starving child. But you must not know this, because if you knew the truth, you might start to eat again and our relationship would come crashing down.
Sometimes you will rebel. Hopefully not often though. You will recognize the small rebellious fiber left in your body and will venture down to the dark kitchen. The cupboard door will slowly open, creaking softly. Your eyes will move over the food that I have kept at a safe distance from you. You will find your hands reaching out, lethargically, like a nightmare, through the darkness to the box of crackers. You shove them in, mechanically, not really tasting but simply relishing in the fact that you are going against me. You reach for another box, then another, then another. Your stomach will become bloated and grotesque, but you will not stop yet. And all the time I am screaming at you to stop, you fat cow, you really have no self-control, you are going to get fat.
When it is over you will cling to me again, ask me for advice because you really do not want to get fat. You broke a cardinal rule and ate, and now you want me back. I'll force you into the bathroom, onto your knees, staring into the void of the toilet bowl. Your fingers will be inserted into your throat, and, not without a great deal of pain, your food binge will come up. Over and over this is to be repeated, until you spit up blood and water and you know it is all gone. When you stand up, you will feel dizzy. Don't pass out. Stand up right now. You fat cow, you deserve to be in pain! Maybe the choice of getting rid of the guilt is different. Maybe I chose to make you take laxatives, where you sit on the toilet until the wee hours of the morning, feeling your insides cringe. Or perhaps I just make you hurt yourself, bang your head into the wall until you receive a throbbing headache. Cutting is also effective. I want you to see your blood, to see it fall down your arm, and in that split second you will realize you deserve whatever pain I give you. You are depressed, obsessed, in pain, hurting, reaching out, but no one will listen. Who cares?!?!! You are deserving; you brought this upon yourself.
Oh, is this harsh? Do you not want this to happen to you? Am I unfair? I do do things that will help you. I make it possible for you to stop thinking of emotions that cause you stress. Thoughts of anger, sadness, desperation, and loneliness can cease because I take them away and fill your head with the methodical calorie counting. I take away your struggle to fit in with kids your age, the struggle of trying to please everyone as well. Because now, I am your only friend, and I am the only one you need to please.
I have a weak spot. But we must not tell anyone. If you decide to fight back, to reach out to someone and tell them about how I make you live, all hell will break lose. No one must find out, no one can crack this shell that I have covered you with. I have created you, this thin, perfect, achieving child. You are mine and mine alone. Without me, you are nothing. So do not fight back. When others comment, ignore them. Take it into stride, forget about them, forget about everyone who tries to take me away. I am your greatest asset, and I intend to keep it that way.
Sincerely,
Ana