Sunday, February 21, 2010

HOW COULD ANY PRO-ANA FIND THESE PICTURES "THINSPIRATIONAL"?

warning

FROM THIS...

anorexic woman, anorexia
anorexic woman, anorexia
anorexic woman, anorexia
anorexic woman, anorexia
anorexic woman, anorexia
TO THIS...

anorexic woman on deathbed
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

Share |

Follow on Buzz

Posted by Medusa at 10:53 PM

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think they don´t find any other way to tell anybody that they need help. Maybe they want to look like them, so everybody can SEE that something goes terribly wrong. I don´t find these pics "thinspirational". Did you pick them from "thinspo sites"? I´m speechless.

February 22, 2010 at 3:21 AM
Lisa K. said...

Most people who claim themselves to be 'Pro-Ana' do not find these pictures thinspirational. In fact most pro-ana sites have such pictures under the file 'Not like this!'.
Girls (or boys) who call themselves 'Pro-Ana' don't want to die. They are craving for a certain image of beauty and this isn't reflected by those pictures.
Those pictures show disease and dead.

February 22, 2010 at 7:13 AM
Medusa said...

Mischa, all but the last picture were taken from a pro-ana site.

They were in the "thinspiration" section.

February 22, 2010 at 7:14 AM
Demonica said...

I shuddered when I saw those pics...I don't understand why anyone would want to look like a living skeleton. It sure isn't attractive, at least not in my opinion.

February 22, 2010 at 8:57 AM
Kourtnee said...

Wow I am speechless. My eating disorder says YES, well the logical part of me says NO WAY IN HELL.

I'm sticking with logic

Kourtnee

February 22, 2010 at 3:38 PM
A.beautiful.mess said...

If anyone out there finds these pictures thinspirational then they have most definitely lost it. There is nothing beautiful or appealing about those pictures. If anyone likes them, it's purely for attention seeking purposes. No one thinks those look good. My mom was anorexic and even then she had no desire to get that thin. She knew she was sick but she had no desire to get better or eat anything. I think she just wanted to disappear. She described it to me as this: it's like when you REALLY nauseous and you know you have to throw up but you really don't want you. You'd rather lie in foetal position and hope the feeling goes away. Anyone who puts those in their thinspirational category cannot seriously want to achieve that kind of body. Sorry for ramblings, I think I just got carried away.

February 22, 2010 at 3:50 PM
Brandee said...

It's like Kourtnee said in that "ana" says "yes" but logic says hell no.
what thse pro ana "idiots" don't get is that what starts out to be a "simple" diet turns into a deadly disease where one can get to this form of emaciation and death.
Ignorance is bliss until it costs you your health, your job, your finances, your friends, your family, your life!
Pro ana "idiots" don't get the severity of it and taunt death.
I set out to drop a few pounds though never looked to pro ana sites. of course there weren't too many of these sites 20 years ago but I didn't need a site to learn to torment, abuse, and starve my body. The disease took over pretty fast and it became too easy to starve and too hard to get out of it like now.
what's sick and sad is when you get to emaciation you see more and more fat that isn't there because you are stuck in disease mode and your body is literally eating off itself (ketosis- very painful I know) including your brain!Delusional at times. very sad.
Great post Medusa!
((hugs))
Brandee

February 23, 2010 at 10:07 PM
Anonymous said...

It's great that you have raised awareness on males struggling with this as well. You're one of the few informative sites that actually recognize this.
I thought of your site when I came across this:
http://i36.tinypic.com/727sec.jpg

February 26, 2010 at 5:34 PM
Medusa said...

Thanks, Anonymous.

The pic you linked to is startling. It's astonishing just how emaciated a person can be and still be alive.

February 26, 2010 at 5:44 PM
Anonymous said...

Hi, Medusa! You said: "Mischa, all but the last picture were taken from a pro-ana site." All but the last pic. - Ok. I´m shocked. These pics are not inspirational at all. Ouch.

February 27, 2010 at 5:11 PM
Anonymous said...

My grandmother used to look like that.

She survived Auschwitz.

March 12, 2010 at 4:20 PM
lovely said...

beautiful

March 14, 2010 at 5:45 AM
Ariane said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
March 15, 2010 at 2:33 PM
Undenied said...

I find this post insulting, considering a vast number of eating disordered people are suicidal already. I think people look at pictures like those to steel themselves against the seemingly inevitable.

May 3, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Medusa said...

Insulting, Yum? Elaborate, please.

May 3, 2010 at 8:13 PM
Anonymous said...

What is it that inspires people to look like this? Just staring at these pictures makes me feel burning all over my body, as if it's happening. They look like death themselves! And the beauty industry doesn't help. Once upon a time, it was fashionable to be of a healthy weight, to have curves. You looked rich, healthy, and beautiful. Whatever happened to that???

July 12, 2010 at 4:06 PM
Anonymous said...

How people can find this thinspirational?

Well, the pictures express how they feel anyway.

So then, why not want to look the way you feel?

September 3, 2010 at 8:11 AM
Anonymous said...

These are disgusting,
Pro ana websites are basically pictures of very beautiful models or pretty skinny girls.
no one should want to look like this. and yet its so easy to see how it happened, the definition of fat and thin just kept changing until one day your that and then still probably see fat in the mirror.
terrifying.

October 14, 2010 at 7:17 AM
Anonymous said...

Honestly, that's how I want to look. Like a few others have said, I want to disappear. I want to be obviously sick. It's not about being beautiful and thin, it's about agony and self hatred. Thinspiration is the wrong word for me, I suppose it's just envy and desire. I don't look like that so I am worthless. I am a 'failed anorexic'. It's not about beauty.

December 6, 2010 at 10:26 PM
Ariane said...

So many of us with eating disorders aren't going to tell you the truth about your website, Medusa -- because we use the site to further our eating disorders.

Your site is one of the most triggering sites that we've ever seen -- more so, in fact, than any pro-ana site I've ever come across. You mean well, but your site ends up glorifying EDs in a way that would make any pro-ana site pale in comparison.

How? You showcase the extreme anorexic here. Those of us with EDs know that you can have an ED -- and die of an ED -- at any size. But this site showcases the physical weight extremes... and highlights these for the general public, thus cementing the eating disorder = 60 pound anorexic myth that has already killed too many of us.

You see, so many of us want help... but feel that because we don't look like the very picture of death, as the people you tend to showcase on your site, that we won't be taken seriously, and therefore don't deserve help. In the meantime, we look at sites like yours to remind us of what we should look like in order to be taken seriously. Thanks for the visual reminders of what people expect "proper anorexics" to look like! Never mind that I've lost 30% of my body weight in the past 5 months... I still have a-ways to go to look like the people you post here.

A few years ago I had a heart attack when I was in my early 20s... my body weighed too little, and my poor heart just couldn't handle the abuse. Would you know that I still got compliments about how I looked? Why? Because I wasn't as skeletal as the people you've posted here. The general tends to equate only extreme emaciation with serious eating disorder. Anything not in that category all-too often isn't taken seriously...and if we don't have a serious problem, then why should we stop?

That's what "thinsiration" is about, for so many of us -- seeking out images of those whose sickness is taken seriously, in hopes that we will one day be among that number... and perhaps then, we can finally give ourselves permission to get better...

December 8, 2010 at 4:04 AM
Anonymous said...

this site is a true eye opener. eventhough i had heard a little about this problem, i never new the underlying reasons for it. and this worries me because the little i thought i know is from therapist treating anorexics and speaking to them. and they mentioned lying, control issues, and brain damage (in essence real anorexics become too stupid to deal with their situation, this is also what the girls liked to say about each other) and the pysiological thing, where even when you eat 5000 ckal a day, you will not gain weight sometimes for years. sorry for the rambling post, but i am truly in shock. the pics on this site.
it is so sad that we have more and more eating problems that are in essence emotional problems.

all can say to starving girls out there is: there are good people out there, and you will find good people to share your life with. and you are girls just let them find you. but anorexics, as i am sure people here confirm, do not go out, isolate themselves simply lack the energy, so there is not chance to meet people. feels like i am writing myself.

through this site i have come to understand that this has nothing to do with looking good. but then if it has nothing to do with looking good, why are the fashion mags and designers propagatting it and why does it influence that way. why do girls want to look like fashin models if not to look beautiful?

to any thinking of going pro ana, this is just horrific. there is no beauty in bone. there is in muscle, but not in bone.

December 17, 2010 at 4:57 PM
Angie said...

I am one of those girls that you think may find that attractive, but I don't..
I shouldnt speak for all of us while writing this.
I saw in a comment that said
"Ana girls and boys don't want to die" sure, at first, we don't..
of course we don't then it's easier just to commit suicide.
But the deeper we get into it,
the more it hurts us,
And me, myself, I wan't to get killed by this some day, I think it's beautiful, I'm sick, so don't listen to me, I don't work properly..

These pictures are not often in proana sites, if so, often posted as negatives..
I assume that I'm also depressed and that's why I see it the way I do.
At first, I wanted a thin body, yes I wanted attention and I wanted to show som people in my life that I could..
I fell into this horrible disease and I never got SO thin, not SO underweight, I am still in this, and still I AM not skinny, at least not enough..
my point?
well, I lose my concentration very easily and especially when I haven't eaten like I should..
my point?
yeah, at first I didn't got in this to kill myself, no, I got in this to NOT GET KILLED..
OK, that's dramatic, I wasn't dying (but now I will be..)
before, I just had issues, with friends etc.
I thought "They just hate me because I'm fat" so I stared to diet, and everything that this disease has given me, is MORE fat..
before I started dieting I was underweight, not much but I was!
can you imagine that?
Well, I was twelve, I didn't know any better (I know some of the people reading this now blame my mother, in which I am living with, but it wasn't like I just stopped eating, I ate less, and less...
some days I didn't eat, When I had the opportunity, anorexics are REALLY good at manipulating, and lying, and as time passed by, I could make a story of the day and what I had eaten by the time my mum had just finished her sentence "did you eat today?"
My mum is not stupid, not bad in any way, she is THE best!
And also, at first, I got through alot of guilt lying to her, it wasn't easy, in fact it was really hard keeping up a straight face to both family and friends, My friends were completely shocked when I told them, Also my mother, she never thought that it would be SO bad..

and now I wonder why I wrote all this inside these "(.....)"
well, here you've got a piece of my story..
And also I'd like to say that I'm fourteen now, Still underweight,
still unhappy, still not perfect, still not fat.
The ppl on the pictures are almost dead, but not many get this skinny, and also this isn't a "size" that we wan't to have, "w"e want to be the size zero girl rather than this, although some of us are suicidal..
it's about showing people that you "CAN", the people you hate because they think you are worthless..
also the ones in these pictures probably don't see their selves as skinny at all, and that's also how it gets to this very point..
My bigger half sister had anorexia when I was little, I don't remember much of that time,
She was a walking skeleton, maybe not like on of these but still, like a ghost my mother said, she almost died at one point when she kept pulling out the feeding tube..
now she is a happy mother and wife with a son that's turning three,
there is hope, and for the ones who are struggling with this, don't give in, you gotta face the fear of the life you ran away from, start living again.
sorry my rambling and also my not very good english (I'm norweigan)..
and for the ones feeling bad, talk to someone about it, don't you EVER consider dieting as a way of denial.

January 10, 2011 at 8:31 AM
Angie said...

I am one of those girls that you think may find that attractive, but I don't..
I shouldnt speak for all of us while writing this.
I saw in a comment that said
"Ana girls and boys don't want to die" sure, at first, we don't..
of course we don't then it's easier just to commit suicide.
But the deeper we get into it,
the more it hurts us,
And me, myself, I wan't to get killed by this some day, I think it's beautiful, I'm sick, so don't listen to me, I don't work properly..

These pictures are not often in proana sites, if so, often posted as negatives..
I assume that I'm also depressed and that's why I see it the way I do.
At first, I wanted a thin body, yes I wanted attention and I wanted to show som people in my life that I could..
I fell into this horrible disease and I never got SO thin, not SO underweight, I am still in this, and still I AM not skinny, at least not enough..
my point?
well, I lose my concentration very easily and especially when I haven't eaten like I should..
my point?
yeah, at first I didn't got in this to kill myself, no, I got in this to NOT GET KILLED..
OK, that's dramatic, I wasn't dying (but now I will be..)
before, I just had issues, with friends etc.
I thought "They just hate me because I'm fat" so I stared to diet, and everything that this disease has given me, is MORE fat..
before I started dieting I was underweight, not much but I was!
can you imagine that?
Well, I was twelve, I didn't know any better (I know some of the people reading this now blame my mother, in which I am living with, but it wasn't like I just stopped eating, I ate less, and less...
some days I didn't eat, When I had the opportunity, anorexics are REALLY good at manipulating, and lying, and as time passed by, I could make a story of the day and what I had eaten by the time my mum had just finished her sentence "did you eat today?"
My mum is not stupid, not bad in any way, she is THE best!
And also, at first, I got through alot of guilt lying to her, it wasn't easy, in fact it was really hard keeping up a straight face to both family and friends, My friends were completely shocked when I told them, Also my mother, she never thought that it would be SO bad..

and now I wonder why I wrote all this inside these "(.....)"
well, here you've got a piece of my story..
And also I'd like to say that I'm fourteen now, Still underweight,
still unhappy, still not perfect, still not fat.
The ppl on the pictures are almost dead, but not many get this skinny, and also this isn't a "size" that we wan't to have, "w"e want to be the size zero girl rather than this, although some of us are suicidal..
it's about showing people that you "CAN", the people you hate because they think you are worthless..
also the ones in these pictures probably don't see their selves as skinny at all, and that's also how it gets to this very point..
My bigger half sister had anorexia when I was little, I don't remember much of that time,
She was a walking skeleton, maybe not like on of these but still, like a ghost my mother said, she almost died at one point when she kept pulling out the feeding tube..
now she is a happy mother and wife with a son that's turning three,
there is hope, and for the ones who are struggling with this, don't give in, you gotta face the fear of the life you ran away from, start living again.
sorry my rambling and also my not very good english (I'm norweigan)..
and for the ones feeling bad, talk to someone about it, don't you EVER consider dieting as a way of denial.

January 10, 2011 at 8:31 AM
Anonymous said...

As someone who [many years ago, so please don't judge me for this] was "pro-ana" to a certain extent, I would like to share my opinion on this. When I was at the point of wanting to "be anorexic" and starve myself to the point of unreasonable thinness, it was very much to do with wanting to show people I was not okay. I had a lot going on in my mind, so much depression, anxiety, confusion, and pain, but no one ever saw it because I kept it bottled up. Thankfully I never fulfilled my wish of "wanting to be anorexic" and I look at my past self with such pity and embarrassment that I was ever so naive and stupid, but really that's what it was about for me. Wanting my internal struggle to be shown externally because I was tired of people being oblivious to what I was going through. Basically, I wanted to look the same as how I felt; Ugly, sick, and fading away (to put it simply).

I think this is true for a lot of "pro-ana"s out there. A big problem, I think, is telling the difference between those who are truly suffering and trying to manifest their pain in a different way - ie those who truly need help and are trying to call out for that attention - and those who are just doing it superficially as a way to lose weight and be pretty. Although perhaps it's fair to say anyone who thinks starving themselves and imitating an "anorexic lifestyle" is a good idea has serious issues. As I mentioned, I am embarrassed to think I ever wanted this and I see that now as a huge insult to those who genuinely suffer from an eating disorder, but I wanted to put this out there because I think anyone who uses pictures like this as "thinspiration" has much more going on than simply being dumb, in which case they need to be educated and supported for what issues they do have, rather than dismissed as idiots.

Sorry if this comment was a bit rambly.

April 10, 2011 at 3:47 AM
Anonymous said...

the woman on the last photo the one on the bed looks like she is from a concentration camp especially as the photo is black and white. if she is its a bit disrespectful to her.

July 22, 2011 at 11:29 AM
Anonymous said...

I am pro ana .. hate to admit it but I can't help how I feel I don't encourage anybody else, infact the opposite but these photos gave me such s fright .. Im going to change my ways but I agree wit a previous commrnt that the pic looks like one from a concentration camp .. I didn't even realise a person could be thst thin its really scary but I think you should take down any pictures u don't have permision for when I die id hate for pictures of my corpse to be on the internet its not fair on the poor woman she didn't agree to it

April 22, 2012 at 11:26 PM
Rikki Ticky Tavi said...

People who find those pictures beautiful aren't attention whores; they're sick, depressed, maybe even suicidal. Unless Ana has ever taken you over then you don't understand the pain that those with it go through. It's just like a person with a disease such as arthritis nobody understands the pain they go through everyday. People can think what they want about anyone they want, but unless you've walked in they're shoes then you'll never really understand it.

July 3, 2012 at 8:19 AM
Rikki Ticky Tavi said...

And also, why in every pro ana picture are the people naked? I know they must've posed for those pictures, but just because they are very small doesn't mean they aren't human...

July 3, 2012 at 8:21 AM
Anonymous said...

This has helped my sister so much shes 13 and suffering from anorexia i looked at the pro ana sites and they really disgusted me no wonder my sister got anorexia!the things they say its horrible and it should be against the law! But its so good to know there is someone out there that is tryin to show the truth of anorexia thank you so much, you are an amazing person. hugs thank you you've helped my sister get back on her feet thank you xx

March 20, 2014 at 4:25 PM
Anonymous said...

We find it inspirational because that is exactly what we aim for: we want to disappear...We are sick and, to everybody's surprise, we are happy to be sick

May 29, 2014 at 11:31 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)