I've spent time extensively browsing these sites. It really is pretty sad -- they seem to tend to think they're making themselves healthier.

My sister was anorexic for a while. I can see how people would bond over somthing like that - there is pressure to be thin, pressure to be perfect, but to get there many people think they have to become anorexic or bulimic, at which point they are blamed for that, too. It's a perfect underground movement - they think they are doing something good (living up to society's ideals) and they are creating a subculture of people who will support each other.

Terrifying thought, though. Ways to kill yourself, 101 - join a support group with little bracelets as signs of membership in a secret organization!

I'm glad I don't have kids yet.

I'm glad you posted about this. I'm going into the camp industry, where I'll be working with girls of all ages, and it's good to know to watch for these bracelets. Thank you!

That is some messed-up shit. It's like a rosary, except instead of praying to the Holy Mother, you pray to Kate Moss circa 1994. Good luck to Elise in talking some girls out of this insanity.

At first I tought this site would be some sort of sick satire. Sounds so much like an urban legend of some sort, this is really depraved. I have a frind who is 5'7" and weighs 100 pounds. I told her that she had about forty pounds to gain before she could be called curvy much less fat.
Great site BTW.

Blue

I agree with calling pro-ana and pro-bulimia sites as pro-killing themselves, but self-injury is really not deadly. These pro-self injury sites actually make sure that their members stay away from the acts that would be deadly, and are anti-suicide. They tell how to take care of cuts and how to avoid infection. Self injury is nothing like suicide, not even slow suicide like eating disorders are. Just wanted to make that clarification.
I'm not saying that self-injury is a good way to deal with one's issues, but in my opinion, it shouldn't be condemned or put in the same category as eating disorders.

Some, not all, of these pro-ED sites provide the only non-judgemental support network that these women and girls have access to. This assertion is not an attempt at starting a flame war, but I feel there's an inherent lack of understanding in play when all pro-ED sites are seen as sad and horrible places where girls go to breed competition around starving and purging.

Being eating disordered myself, I have leaned on one of these communities (Thin Forum) as a means of community support when traditional treatment has failed me. I've received valuable information about electrolyte balancing, how to protect my teeth, how to manage my ED, not be killed by it. I've gone there, posted, made friends, and have made positive changes without feeling punished or controlled.

It's a fine line, judging an online community solely on the basis of it's given topic. I've met wise women through some of these pro-ED sites, and have been supported, uplifted and accepted by them. And catch this, my ED actually starting becoming more manageable when I tapped into Thin Forum. I was able to learn facts, protect my body with new knowledge, get support and move on with a lot of my issues. My ED is largely dormant outside of periods of high stress, a transition that wasn't possible through therapy, drugs, hospitalization. This change came after I dropped conventional treatment and sought community on the internet.

Read the mission statement:

B l u e D r a g o n f l y :
Eating disorders are not a learned skill or an acquired taste
[The Mission Statement]

I, nor this site, are trying to help anyone kill themselves. I have said before, will always believe, and always say whether I recover on not - Anorexia Nervosa is a mental disease that reflects an imperfection in the make up of your ability to process emotion and stimulus [yes, I made that up, it's not regurgitated pap-speak from some Cosmo, like haters use.]

ANOREXIA NERVOSA IS NOT A LIFESTYLE CHOICE. You will *never* hear me say that. Anyone who believes that it is is wrong. Sorry. If you are indeed anorexic, you have no control over your mind, and can not make that kind of choice over what you put into your body. You crave control, and think that by doing this you are indeed in control, but in fact, you have less control than you ever imagined. This sounds like a anti-statement, but hell, it's true. I even hate the term "ana" because it takes the edge of the seriousness of the disease - makes it conversational. Makes it the in thing. makes it okay.

THIS SITE IS NEVER MEANT TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO BE ANOREXIC. I don't think it's something that you can learn anyway. And even if the tips on distracting yourself can get you to skip a meal or two one day, that does not an eating disorder make.

I don't want anyone here who wants to "lose weight". I do not want anyone here who thinks they are fine but could stand to "lose a couple for their boyfriends".

Tips are to give you fresh ideas on how to stay on track so that you don't fall into a depression and kill yourself - not to teach you how to "not eat".

If you are anorexic, then you do not need tips on how to not eat.
You do not need to be told how to stop eating.
You do not need to be motivated.

You look in the mirror.
Problem solved.

If not... surprise! Go to Weight Watchers. This ain't no diet. This is pure mental sickness.

This site is for support: We pat each other on the backs for our successes [as they are successes to us] and hug each other for our failures. We support each other through the rough patches and demand that you take care of yourself when another is in danger.

So much more than anti-food-ness goes on here. We have a way of being able to bare our souls to each other because we don't need to hide the most basic part of our mental makeup. It is a starting point: we all know where each other are coming from, we don't need to explain that, and we can trust each other more than anyone else in our worlds.

It's a support group in the best sense of the phrase: You're not okay, and that's okay. You can come here and try to find a bit of comfort in knowing that you're not alone, won't be judged and no one is going to tell you to fix yourself. You'll do that on your own when you're ready. And we will support you in that decision as well.

Because that takes the most strength of all: Wanting to be normal.

Cior, it all sounds good on the surface, but that's all that looks like to me--surface excuses. I appreciate that people with eating disorders feel very lonely, but setting up a secret system to signal other sufferers while hiding your disease from family and friends who could help isn't "getting support". It's avoiding getting better.

Well, not necessarily. By the sounds of what Cior is telling us, these sites' approach resembles the "Harm Reduction" model for substance abuse. You don't shame the person and go all authoritarian bad-ass on them. You help them manage the risk and reduce harm teaching them how not to overdose, use clean needles, etc. First, because you're gonna get further in avoiding death and other extreme consequences. Second, because it's a way of introducing the notion of "respecting your body," of self-care, and build on that for recovery. So what Cior talks about sounds similar. I'm not saying I love these sites--I didn't even know they existed-- but there may be more good than meets the eye.

I'm sorry. That's all I have to say. I am just SO utterly sorry.

i'm horrified, but I'm also kind of fascinated. There's something more honest about this kind of bonding than the typical eating disorder support group. Obviously, it's terribly harmful, but I think there's something about eating disorders that do not lend themselves well to the 12 step support group developed initially for alcholics. Why? Because although a lot more takes place in AA than merely not drinking, a baseline of abstenence is required, whereas the problem with eating disorders is that you can never avoid the scary substance--you have to learn how to live with it. To practice moderation. I was a raging anorexic as a girl, and will always have a wanky attitude toward food in one way or another. I have my good days and I have my bad days, but what's helped has been growing older, therapy, yoga. Self-healing, self-reckoning practices.

I can tell you that the groups NEVER HELPED ANYONE. we were competitive with each other. we lied. we were secretive. sometimes i gained tips about how to make myself puke or how to fool the doctors. sometimes i felt scornful toward other girls in the group who gained more weight than me, and sometimes they expressed that scorn toward me. subtly but surely.

My point is that these women have taken the support groups to their natural conclusion--they're finally being honest with each other, even it's to acknowledge that they don't really want to get better. They are being open about being secretive and duplicitious, which is the tenet of eating disorders. You need privacy to truly practice them; no one wants to puke a gallon of ice cream in front of anyone else. Or few do, anyway. It's horrifying but it also makes perfect sense. Obviously these groups don't help anything, but in a weird way i think it's more bonding than the groups usually provide. It's just sicko bonding: the equivalent is the tenuous, queasy friendship between two coke addicts. When one goes sober, the "friendship" loss all basis. THe same for memberships in these societies.

Anorexia is the hysteria of these times. Freud's highly documented hysteria had so much to do with the incredibly limited modes of expression women experienced in the 19th century, to the degree that their rebellion and paralysis had to be written right on the blueprint of their bodies. The unhappy entwinement of capitalism and patriarchy, of pedophilia and spiritual emptiness that we call pop culture these days, is written right in the space between these girls' ribs where we'd more happily find flesh. Here we have the tip of the iceberg.

Cior,
I think I understand your position fairly well and I support it. There are quite a few folk out there that have like situations, they just use different media to address it. Sometimes we can only cope the way we know how.
I understand the threshold between self destruction (pain aleviation) and the value of mere recognition that one is no longer alone, and the consequent relief that permits us to start the basics of taking BACK our own life. I also understand the ignorance of "Why can't you just.............. "

Cior,
I think I understand your position fairly well and I support it. There are quite a few folk out there that have like situations, they just use different media to address it. Sometimes we can only cope the way we know how.
I understand the threshold between self destruction (pain aleviation) and the value of mere recognition that one is no longer alone, and the consequent relief that permits us to start the basics of taking BACK our own life. I also understand the ignorance of "Why can't you just.............. "

The response post by Lisa disturbs me. She makes her points cogently, uses her intimate knowledge of the subject and all its manifestations to make her case intelligently and is quite convincing. That's why I find it very disturbing that I find myself agreeing with her in some part.

What is driving these girls to such depths of emotional desperation and spiritual emptiness that they would chose such a self destructive behavior over something more constructive for their personal growth? Is it that they have no hope for anything better? What are they trying to achieve, some kind of redemption for some fault they feel about themselves? Do they really think they are going to achieve some kind of physical perfection through starvation or is there something more sinister, more all encompassing, and more overwhelming at work here? Is there something wrong with female culture that drives young girls into behavior patterns of self destruction?

I would suggest that these ED "support" groups are only dealing with the symptoms of the problems these young girls face, not with the more profound and more difficult analysis of what lies underneath the immediate issues. Whereas there is a function that these groups can serve they surely must come to grips that their problems are not the problems of troubled individuals seeking salvation through starvation, they are the problems of the insane expectations of female culture which is blasted into their young impressionable minds before they have had a chance to mature enough to be able to discern that the image of female perfection is just that, an image, not reality or something that should be considered achievable or even desirable.

They are too young to have the ability to understand or gain perspective that would let them see these forces at work in their lives. But the power of physical beauty is especially tantalizing and compelling when young girls have ample examples all around them that show them how well the power of beauty works. No wonder they are so susceptible when everywhere they look the beautiful draw attention and get undeserved credit while the plain go unnoticed and underappreciated. Young girls and their slightly older counterparts have been brainwashed by the omnipresent female cultural values that surround us all, a spiritually empty value system that leaves them hollow and vulnerable to excesses of their youthful enthusiasm to seek recognition. We all need recognition but young girls have been taught that the best way is through beauty, not through accomplishments or achievements as whole human beings. What a crying shame!

This is just another disease that is over reported and not really as big a problem as they make it out to be.

what's the sickest is that there's some asshole making a killing off of these bracelets. no pun intended.

Reading these posts prompted me to look at some of the sites, and I was initially very shocked. Not so much after visiting a few of the sites.

The pro-ana sites do appeal to young women and teen girls looking for acceptance and approval, and that's just what they can get there. This type of bonding can be very intoxicating, and not very healthy. On the other hand, I also think it is a way of getting support without being judged for one's behavior. I have assumed that mostly teens and young adult women frequent these sites. There does some to be both a bit of venting one's spleen as well as "atta girl" support. If these women feel alienated and alone, for whatever reason, let's face it, the Internet has afforded some safe, anonymous avenues for getting that support. It may not be face time, but it apparently means something to them.

I'm glad I'm not a teenage girl growing up in this society. The 70's were challenging enough. I applaud parents trying to raise healthy, balanced teens.

"This is just another disease that is over reported and not really as big a problem as they make it out to be."

I am a teacher/coach in a high school. My wife saw a story about these bracelets on the news. I have several students each year that are in and out of the hospital due to these diseases. These are just the ones that have gotten to the point where they can't hide it anymore. There are more that are close, or already are but aren't as sick yet. The statement above sickens me...ignorant. Girls on soccer teams, basketball teams-"healthy" girls that struggle with these disorders. The person that issued that post probably walks by dozens of girls that could be identified with ED's everyday...

I came to this post/site to try to find out more about what these "pro" sites say and what the bracelets look like and such so I could be more aware and let my administrators and counselors know about it. Can anyone point me to a definitive site that explains the ethos behind the Pro-ED camp and what the bracelets might actually look like? thanks.

As a recovered anorexic, I thought I should comment. First off, these sites do not only impact teens. Anyone with an eating disordet is affected by them. While I can see the attraction of bonding with others that can relate. The danger that I have found in the sites is that when I was sick, I found it much easier to rationlize unhealthy behavior by going to these sites. The idea that these sites are not a how to manual also doesn't really fly. While I agree that someone with Anorexia does not need motivatation to engage in the disease I can definately tell you that pro sites give people "new" ways of doing things. But, in their defense you can also get ideas from being in a treament program with other ed sufferers or any support group. I am not sure what my point is, I guess I just want to point out that while some may find it beneifical to find "support" at these sites that same support is enabling and i think can be dangerous even if it is not intended that way. At least in a treatment setting there are professionals there to off set the unhealthy behaviots and thoughts that one may pick up.

Kassie