France to Outlaw Pro-Ana Websites

Promote eating disorders as a "lifestyle choice" in France and you could be looking at a fine of up to €30,000 and a two-year prison sentence if you "provoke a person to seek excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged restriction of nourishment" to the point of risking of death or damage to health. The prison term is raised to three years with a €45,000 fine if the person dies.

"The pro-ana movements which spread their messages of death on the web must be the target for special attention," said French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot. "Waif-like, diaphanous, transparent bodies on the walls of our towns, in our magazines and on our computer screens are exerting their power of harmful fascination on our society."

It remains unclear how this law will be enforced, and the nature of the internet makes it impossible to truly ban these kinds of damaging messages. As soon as you shut one site down, ten others will appear to replace it. But what's interesting here is that the law is based on another piece of French legislation that makes it illegal to abet a suicide. With this new law, the French government is recognizing eating disorders as serious, life-threatening mental illnesses and declaring that it is criminally abusive to play into someone's vulnerabilities with pro-ana b.s. But pro-ana websites are usually started by people who are caught up in disordered eating and looking for validation. So in case after case, the criminals and the victims of these crimes will be one and the same. It's a tricky one. What do you think? [The Australian]

Tipping the Scales: Responsible Reporting on Eating Disorders

Reporters search for facts and figures. Stories with shock value are tantamount to striking gold. And that's why when we hear about eating disorders in the news, we get numbers and we get extremes. Two recent examples:

Israeli model Hila Elmalich tragically passed away from anorexia; practically every blog and news outlet made her weight at the time of her death the focal point of their coverage. For a reporter, this number is a crucial piece of information. For most readers, the number instantly distances us from her experience. There is a voyeuristic, freak show effect that washes over us. We shake our heads at the sad reality that someone could make herself so sick. But the truth is that eating disorders are all around us, in every shape and size. We never give details about how much weight we lost when we were suffering with eating disorders for exactly that reason (and to avoid triggering pro-anas, of course). Those numbers are not a measure of our suffering.

A few weeks ago we posted about the Salon story on Diabulimia. Claire noted that the symptoms and behavior described in the article were not new, but the term "diabulimia" certainly was. Reporters quickly latched onto it. Although this eating disordered behavior has long been a problem, it didn't get extensive coverage until it got repackaged with a sexy new name. Check out writer Nancy Matsumoto's account of the personal conflicts she faced when covering diabulimia for People magazine.

If you are a reporter, editor or writer, we encourage you to read these tips on responsible reporting from the National Eating Disorders Association. As a media consumer, remember that every time you see a sensational story about an emaciated anorexic who starved herself to a shocking XX pounds!, there are millions of other people with eating disorders. Their weight might not be so shocking, but their pain is very real.

Eating Disorder + Diabetes = Diabulimia

Remember when everyone was talking about how Halle Berry claimed to have cured herself of Type 1 diabetes? Then doctors chimed in to say she must be mistaken because it could be life-threatening for a Type 1 diabetic to stop taking insulin. Well, there are thousands of girls and young women with diabetes who are willing to take that risk. The reason? Weight loss.

Salon reports on an eating disorder called diabulimia. Sufferers are Type 1 diabetics who willingly skip their insulin shots because of the effects it has on their weight. If they take insulin, they plump up and have to carefully regulate everything they eat. If they skip the insulin, they can binge all they want and watch the pounds melt off. But this miracle diet also results in hair loss, extreme fatigue, confusion, and tingling extremities. And that's just in the short term. In the long term, sufferers will likely go blind, lose a limb or suffer a heart attack. Size 2 today and dialysis down the road? Because a high percentage of diabulimics are teenagers, the future dangers may be harder to grasp than the present benefits.

Diabulimia is not a new disorder. I worked at an eating disorders organization ten years ago and we got several calls a week about diabetes and eating disorders. The connection between diabetes and eating disorders makes sense when you consider how carefully diabetics must structure their lives around food and weight management. What is relatively new, say doctors, is the ease with which diabulimics can find each other online and trade tips and tricks. Yep, there are pro-diabulimics online, too.

In a recent study conducted by the Eating Disorders Institute, of 87 patients diagnosed with diabetes in childhood, 36 percent admitted to misusing insulin in order to control their weight -- but only when they were asked a decade later. Patients with diabulimia have a mortality rate of 34.8 percent per year. It is the die in diabulimia that is the harshest wake up call. [Salon]

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Have Eating Disorders

Pro-ana websites aren't just for teen girls admiring photos of Nicole Richie. Now eating disordered mothers are trading tricks, tips and advice, too. One of these online communities called "ana_moms" has 302 members and another 318 watchers with user names like starvinmommy and wannadisappear. "How do you meal-plan when you plan not to eat? How do you stay thin without giving your kids an eating disorder?" asks the moderator in her introduction to the website.

Here's the thing: If you're spending your time online comparing yourself to Kate Hudson when she was pregnant ("the kind of mom we see when we look in the mirror") and post-pregnancy ("the kind of mom we want to look like"), there is just no way you will be able to help your daughters and sons develop healthy attitudes about food. It doesn't matter what positive messages you give your kids about weight if you're constantly contradicting yourself with your own behavior. Stop worrying about how you will hide your eating disorder from your children and start doing the work to get your disordered eating in check.

The fact that many mothers struggle with serious weight and body image problems shouldn't be such a news flash; the existence of ana_moms is just one extreme manifestation of a much larger issue. After all, it is estimated that ten million women suffer from eating disorders, so it would stand to reason that a good number of them are or will become moms. It's ridiculous to assume that pregnancy and motherhood magically trump all the body image concerns (and sometimes serious eating disorders) we had before. Those problems don't just disappear in some blissed out mommy haze. And sometimes they can actually get worse. Yet instead of real support and solutions, women get Hollywood Bump Watch and Mommy Makeovers. What's going on? We deserve better. [MamaVision]

Has the "No Anorexia" Ad Become Pro-Ana Thinspiration?

The nude image of Isabelle Caro, a 27-year-old anorexic, is turning up on billboards all over Italy and spreading like wildfire over the internet. No-l-ita says they launched this campaign to "use advertising as an instrument to promote awareness of social evils." But many fear that while the image may shock most, it will likely be used as a source of "thinspiration" for those who frequent pro-ana websites, MySpace pages and message boards.

How could anyone strive to look like a startling picture of such serious illness? For starters, pro-anas are ill themselves. And they are looking for validation. Over at MamaVISION, there's an interesting debate going on. Shana, from the "post-pro-ana" site We Bite Back (an online community started by a former pro-ana who got tired of looking for thinspiration and decided to get healthy) had this to say:

"people turn to pro-ana because anorexia hurts like hell. and it hurts even more to think that what you are doing is twisted and sick and wrong and abnormal. so if they turn it around, make starvation holy, coveted and an ideal, it makes their illness almost a… talent. it’s a desperate attempt to feel good. and it can work, just very temporarily."

The image is shocking on its own. That's what severe anorexia looks like. Now imagine a girl or young woman who sees this ad and thinks, "I wonder how much she weighs. Do I have more 'fat' on my thighs? How long will it take before my ribs stick out like that?" For some, that's what anorexia feels like.

Related:
Fashion Statement: Oliviero Toscani
Why is No-l-ita Offering No-Information for Sufferers?

Pro-Ana on MySpace, YouTube, and the Allure Message Boards?

Fashionista posted about their discovery of a pro-anorexia network that is one of many, many others popping up all over MySpace and YouTube (Parents: looking for another reason to keep a close watch on your kids' internet use?). The piece prompted some heated debate and insightful comments, including this one:

"I hate to say it, because I love fashion, but I think people who say the fashion world isn't partly to blame for these scary ideals are deluded. I am 17 and consider myself to be fairly confident and intelligent, but yes; I do feel inadequate in my size 6 jeans when every successful model or actress in my age group looks like she has an eating disorder..."
--Kendall

The way we see it, Kendall should continue to share her opinions because of her love of fashion, not in spite of it. And we should all listen up. The industry doesn't have any control over the fact that sick and troubled young women are finding each other online, but we do have control over how we respond. These MySpace pages are plastered with photos of working models and actresses (many of whom are admittedly sick and troubled themselves) tagged as "thinspiration." And over on the Allure message boards, Radar reports that girls as young as 12 have posted threads like "Starving Myself" and are trading their extreme diet tips. An Allure rep says they are "taking steps to correct this." Women's and teen mag editors: check your message boards to make sure you don't have a similar situation on your hands.

Clearly, eating disorders are complex illnesses with complex causes--people don't develop anorexia just from looking at pictures of Kate Moss and Nicole Richie. But we're worried about something else. As Kendall points out, even girls who are disturbed by pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia sites admit to being negatively influenced by all this thinspiration talk. They might not have eating disorders, but they're telling us they don't feel good enough, pretty enough, perfect enough.

Is it possible to wipe out this empty thinspiration and replace it with true inspiration? This Fashionista commenter isn't so hopeful:

"The fashion/beauty industry and poor body-image/self-esteem will forever exist side-by-side. There's no way around it."
--Bonnie Lass

Really? Can we prove her wrong? We think it's worth a serious effort.