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From a pro-Ana website:

Thin Commandments

1. If you aren't thin you aren't attractive.

2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.

3. You must buy clothes, cut 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.

Scary stuff.

I married twenty five years ago to a woman with an eating disorder. It never goes away and it's consequences are disasterous. The lengths that they will go to in order to deceive is amazing. Normally gifted, bright, intelligent people become preoccupied with it to the point of death. They reach a body mass index of a weight so low that their brain goes into a fog. As they age, this number increases. So a 5'7" woman in her 20's may be able to sit on the BMI fence and function at 90lbs. That same woman at 40 years of age will suffer psychosis and if not stopped by forced hospitalization, will die.

I could give examples of some of the behaviors of these women and the long term effects, but it's beyond your wildest imagination and I won't go there. Just go visit a regional psychiatric hospital which specializes in eating disorders. They run $1,000 per day. The sights and stories you'll experience will boggle the mind. Another thing to realize here is that the article seems to think starvation is the issue, it's not. Most eating disorders are binge eaters who then vomit. Very few percentagewise starve themselves by not eating. They eat all the time. Food in pockets, their glove box, car trunk, desk drawers, etc... They can puke in buckets, soda cups, etc... like a normal person would burp. Their abdomen and stomach gets trained to puke on demand.

This is really sad. I post on a weight loss board and this mindset is rampant there. These women go from one extreme (overweight) to another (thin at all cost). It's that all or nothing mentality that never gets dealt with that is the culprit.

Something about this that puzzles me. Years ago, when I first heard of anorexia, I recall being told that those who suffer from the condition are unaware of it. That is, they would deny that they were anorexic; they honestly believed that they were overweight. It was said that an anorexic of normal weight could look in the mirror and see someone who is grossly overweight.

This article would seem to contradict that notion. These anorexics realize that they are anorexic. They do not deny their condition; they revel in it.

Was I misinformed before? Or are we seeing here something different?

This is not the only manifestation of obsessive self-destructiveness; it is, however, the only one that is validated by Hollywood. (There is a rather disturbing "cutting" subculture that is so far mercifully uncelebrated in Tinsel Town). There was a time when "consumptives" (i.e. tubercular patients) were considered romantic - brave, doomed, and possessed of an artistic sensitivity as a result. These days you have to work a little harder at it to become that unhealthy, but the obsession is the same.

I suspect that control is at least part of the problem, at least among young people who don't really have many outlets for that other than their own bodies (although they do through video games, a factor that no doubt helps to explain the latter's seductiveness and the obsessive nature of its aficionados). Killing oneself seems an odd expression of power, but that it very much is.