I am shocked by a subculture I just found on flickr, which I should have already guessed was present, since it’s widespread on the Internet through personal websites… The pro ana people.
:(
One of my photos has a shot of the cover of the book “Thin” (Greenfield, Lauren, David B. Herzog, and Michael Strober. 2006. San Francisco: Chronicle Books), which is a photodocumentary about girls in an inpatient eating disorder clinic. It’s an extremely disturbing book (especially the photos of diary excerpts), and I imagine it’s highly triggering for people with eating disorders. Today it was favorited by someone with “thin” in her flickr user name, and started to get a bad feeling as I went to check out what other images she had favorited… her favorites were all thinspiration.
Book queue, 2007
Today I discovered that people with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have been posting revealing self-portraits on flickr, showing off protruding bones and disturbingly concave areas… I feel so sad and scared when I look at these photos, not only because some of them are very young, but because there are predatory flickr users making approving sexual comments about these photos, praising the girls for being sexy. It’s the worst combination. You have these people with a mental disorder, suffering horribly, and then you have the sexual predators encouraging them and giving them the attention they want so badly.
A psychologist once told me that in an inpatient psych ward, you’ve got to keep the people who think they’re Jesus separate from the people who are seeking Jesus.
I took some screenshots of a few image/comment pairings that I found, which are behind the links because I don’t want to display them out on my main blagoblag page. I used a mosaic filter to preserve identity and modesty of the girls, but you get the idea. I did not hide the identity of the flickr users who commented.
![[1]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2629/3815038805_284ce9df0c_o.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/3815038755_528264c639_o.jpg){kind=link}
![[3]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3620/3815039007_5a838d8355_o.jpg){kind=link}
![[4]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3548/3815849816_7eaf54f8e2_o.jpg){kind=link}
![[5]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2542/3815050601_55af51426a_o.png){kind=link}
![[6]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2589/3815038863_5435eb714f_o.jpg){kind=link}
The girl in photos 4, 5, and 6 also had posted cell phone pics of herself receiving feeding through nasogastric intubation at an inpatient treatment facility somewhere.
6 Comments
I’m seriously feeling nauseous just looking at those pics (the comments especially). I pray for a special place in hell for these assholes.
I know, Ario… it’s so sad. It is so, so sad.
I just finished looking at more pro-ana stuff on flickr and I have this strange feeling like I’ve just been to a funeral.
oh jesus. i used to obsessively read pro-ana stuff. i haven’t thought about it in years. at the time, i thought i was just reading it in a train-wreck sort of way, but even so, it still totally fucked with me. like fucked with my self esteem and body image. it’s hard not to have that shit effect you. :(
I know, and the worst part is… it hurts bad, and we are only watching the train wreck. We aren’t the ones in it.
I suppose that the ability to feel empathy is good in this case, though. I mean, some day we might be in a position to make a choice wise enough to help a friend move through something like this. (I know you can’t “fix” people that have problems like this, likewise with drug addiction, but I still hold on to the belief that there is *some* type of helping behavior that friends can perform!)
I have Ana, and there is no “helping” anyone with it. Not unless you yourself have gone through it. So this whole mindset that you have that you can be a savior to ana’s girls is a fantasy. Not all “proana” sites support the disease, either – in fact, the largest ones are recovery sites. Grouping together girls and boys who suffer from it. We actually KNOW what the other is feeling, we’ve felt it. Not just speculation and pity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to yell at you. It makes me kind of happy there are people who actually care, instead of seeing us as vain or selfish. But it really is an underground world. The only real way to recover is find it in yourself to, and the only ones who help are those who have had EDs – they understand more than anyone. But doctors and scared friends usually only make it worse.
Keely, thanks so much for your input. I really appreciate it.
I have to say that I have been there myself too– but I was never as entrenched as some of my friends. It was easier for me to escape, and not so for the others. However, I do know it is possible for medical professionals to help patients without having experienced an illness themselves. (I’m saying this as a recipient of the help.) When the provider is competent, and the field is understood, good things can happen… I just don’t think that people understand eating disorders very well, yet.
One of my worst memories regarding eating disorders is from high school… I had a friend who was bulimic, and we were in the same youth group together. I watched her try to get help from the youth pastor, who turned her away, and the rest of the youth group shunned her. It was what eventually led me to leave that church (and Christianity completely). I was just so taken aback by their behavior.
From my perspective, I see eating disorders as a group of illnesses that are incredibly misunderstood by many physicians. Some people are doing good work to help sufferers– a lot of people are not.
What is especially terrifying to me is that eating disorders share a lot of characteristics with traditional drug addictions. Addiction treatment too is shoddy. Not a lot of great effective ideas… From watching my friend go through an inpatient treatment program for bulimia, I know too well how easy it is to fool the staff and start right back in with the same old behaviors once you get out.
I don’t have any answers… just spread the word that there are health care professionals who are not jerks, who care, and who really want to understand. Some of them even *do* understand. I think more of them have been in your place than you might realize. I do agree that some people enter the helping professions to be “saviors”, but some do it knowing they will be a small part of making a small difference in many different people’s lives. The more we spread around knowledge, the more likely it is that healthcare professionals will be able to contribute something useful, instead of something harmful and/or shaming.
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