This is what that naziesque Shrubya is really best at.
(Now click the pic to make a diff.)
Posted on 05/30/2005 11:25:48 PM PDT by Crackingham
They call her "Ana." She is a role model to some, a goddess to others — the subject of drawings, prayers and even a creed. She tells them what to eat and mocks them when they don't lose weight. And yet, while she is a very real presence in the lives of many of her followers, she exists only in their minds.
Ana is short for anorexia, and — to the alarm of experts — many who suffer from the potentially fatal eating disorder are part of an underground movement that promotes self-starvation and, in some cases, has an almost cult-like appeal. Followers include young women and teens who wear red Ana bracelets and offer one another encouraging words of "thinspiration" on Web pages and blogs. They share tips for shedding pounds and faithfully report their "cw" and "gw" — current weight and goal weight, which often falls into the double digits. They also post pictures of celebrity role models, including teen stars Lindsay Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen, who last year set aside the acting career and merchandising empire she shares with her twin sister to seek help for her own eating disorder.
"Put on your Ana bracelet and raise your skinny fist in solidarity!" one "pro-Ana" blogger wrote shortly after Olsen entered treatment.
The movement has flourished on the Web and eating disorder experts say that, despite attempts to limit Ana's online presence, it has now grown to include followers — many of them young — in many parts of the world. No one knows just how many of the estimated 8 million to 11 million Americans afflicted with eating disorders have been influenced by the pro-Ana movement. But experts fear its reach is fairly wide. A preliminary survey of teens who've been diagnosed with eating disorders at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, for instance, found that 40 percent had visited Web sites that promote eating disorders.
"The more they feel like we — 'the others' — are trying to shut them down, the more united they stand," says Alison Tarlow, a licensed psychologist and supervisor of clinical training at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, Fla., a residential facility that focuses on eating disorders.
Experts say the Ana movement also plays on the tendency people with eating disorders have toward "all or nothing thinking."
"When they do something, they tend to pursue it to the fullest extent. In that respect, Ana may almost become a religion for them," says Carmen Mikhail, director of the eating disorders clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
She and others point to the "Ana creed," a litany of beliefs about control and starvation, that appears on many Web sites and blogs. At least one site encourages followers to make a vow to Ana and sign it in blood. People with eating disorders who've been involved in the movement confirm its cult-like feel.
"People pray to Ana to make them skinny," says Sara, a 17-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, who was an avid organizer of Ana followers until she recently entered treatment for her eating disorder. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be used.
Among other things, Sara was the self-proclaimed president of Beta Sigma Kappa, dubbed the official Ana sorority and "the most talked about, nearly illegal group" on a popular blog hosting service that Sara still uses to communicate with friends. She also had an online Ana "boot camp" and told girls what they could and couldn't eat.
"I guess I was attention-starved," she now says of her motivation. "I really liked being the girl that everyone looked up to and the one they saw as their 'thinspiration.'
"But then I realized I was helping girls kill themselves."
Curvy Lindsay Lohan...hot. Bony Lindsay Lohan...not hot.
Any questions?
This is so sad. In a culture with so much, to see young people starve themselves just makes my heart ache.
http://www.plagueangel.net/grotto/id1.html
I just want to laugh because it's so tragic.
This was featured on an episode of Strong Medicine on Lifetime last year.
Here's an example of this stuff.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/anorexicqueen/
Be sure and read this one especially if you have teenagers.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/anorexicqueen/2717443.html
I went there and was appalled. You're right, I wanted to laugh at the delusional logic, but it is truly tragic.
i was at the pool today with some friends, and they r sooo skinny. not stick thin, but like abrcrombie model thin, with their hot eye makeup and hot swimsuits and straight long hair. they r tinny.
** :sigh:
I just came back from the site you listed... and I'm stunned.
Poetry and quotes celebrating 'ana' - how very, very tragic.
She sounds like she's 13 years old doesn't she?
If we ever completely tapped that potential in our midst, and applied it to other areas outside eating habits and body sculpting, the fact is, we could change the world. Completely.
Maybe even rule it.
Is THAT what they are so afraid of? Is THAT why they strive so eagerly to silence our voices? Could it really be all about power, and the way our lifestyle exposes where it corrupts? Could it simply be that those who wield their pathetic little naked-emperor reign so irresponsibly and selfishly do NOT want word getting out to "the masses" of how simple a matter it is to throw off their chains and exist self-directed? Do they fear we will then realize what they are really up to, what they have been doing all this time in myriad of diverse ways upon a multitude of levels?
Well it's too late. Our eyes are open. The jig is up, the news is out, and IT is ON.
---
Wow, these poor misguided kids throwing their lives away.
...paganism.
If I could tear down those BMI charts off the walls of all school gyms across America, I would do so. Girls who aren't fat are being led to think they are fat. They are starving their bodies. Beating themselves up mercilessly thinking "if only they exercised harder", they'd fit into a column that never took into consideration that girl's bone density, and other matters.
Could it really be all about power, ...
It is about power ... about the sufferer's power to control their bodies.
There's some old material on anorexia here, somewhere. I'll try to dig it as time allows.
I was close to a person whose was anorexic, once. Her mother had ranted at her that she was fat for as long as she could remember, though she looked pitifully thin to me (even in her old photos). There were other cultural considerations in her family (worship of Hollywood stardom, art, money, mafia family history, much pressure for family members to get degrees, radical feminism, frequent ethnic superiority comments, etc.). ...anecdotal, yes, but I'll look for that mentioned info off and on.
You've got to be kidding.
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