Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia sites abound on the Internet. A study by Optenet actually revealed a 469% increase in pro-ana sites in just a short period, from 2006-2007!
Pro Ana and Pro Mia are the terms used to describe a support network of (mostly) girls and young women supporting anorexia and bulimia as a lifestyle choice.
This is important to understand. Most parents are not familiar with this concept and will not even realize they should look out for it since “support” groups are usually for positive efforts. But imagine a pro-alcoholism group where people support each other in their efforts to drink more, drink more often and to help one another hide their drinking problem. Now replace alcohol with the idea of starvation. Girls helping one another to place severe limits on calorie intake, encouraging each other to exercise beyond exhaustion and to reach weights where heart failure becomes a real risk. Frightening and shocking isn’t it? Bit it is an epidemic.
I am no longer shocked by much online but occasionally I find something that catches me off guard. I did a random search on Yahoo answers for pro-ana and discovered that just in the last 4 days, 14 girls posted questions there seeking pro-ana tips and pro-ana buddies. A pro-ana buddy is someone who helps another girl to limit her calorie intake. They support each other primarily online and usually do not know one another personally. And guess what — for each girl seeking help to be anorexic, there are lots of enthusiastic responses.
Keep in mind, this is not some underground website kept hidden from the eyes of monitors or parents. This is Yahoo — providing a platform for matching girls with anorexic support buddies. Join me in contacting Yahoo and asking them to take steps to eliminate this activity from their platform. Some web hosting services do not accept Pro-Ana web sites and will remove them when someone reports them.
Why should Yahoo contribute to the phenomena? Write to Yahoo and express your concern. Ask them to remove such posts.
You can sign a petition to remove pro-ana websites started by Vogue Magazine
Banning this is horrible idea! For some girls, this is a necessary lifestyle.
Ana-Kate, I recognize that there is some population who have made an effort to present eating disorders as a lifestyle choice. It’s very sad. It could be likened to the idea that drug use, excessive gambling, viewing pornography obsessively, are also lifestyle “choices”. But it is important to make the effort to be honest with yourself. A behavior that places you in physical or emotional danger, that alienates you from family and friends, that inhibits your ability to function normally, is not “lifestyle”. It is self destructive behavior. Granted, some people manage to maintain some level of normalcy that the outside world can observe. For them, it is actually easier to live in denial because they somehow manage to get by. But the bottom line is that eating disorders are not lifestyles like being eco-friendly, living on a boat or practicing meditation. It’s a way to live in denial of having a serious disorder that is a kind of ultimately harmful coping mechanism to deal with real emotional pain.