If you are sick, you want to get well. Not so members of the Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia movement: They elevate their eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia to a freely chosen and desirable lifestyle. With blogs, forums and Thinspos they motivate themselves and like-minded people to keep losing weight.
Verena is 14 years old, 1.58 meters tall, weighs 39.9 kilograms and is Pro Ana. That’s what it says on her blog. Her ideal weight is 28 kg, which corresponds to a body mass index (BMI) of 11.2. Given her height, she is already severely underweight with her current BMI of 16. The desired weight would be life-threatening.
Article content at a glance:
- What is Pro Ana?
- Pro Mia: Creed of Bulimia
- Anas ester letter
- Thinspos and Ana’s 10 Commandments
- Tips against hunger
- Blogs and forums about Pro Ana
“Light as a feather”: Pro Ana stylizes an eating disorder as an ideal
As a so-called Pro Ana, Verena accepts the potential danger to her life. Because she identifies with her anorexia , which she personifies under the name “Ana”. “Why am I Pro Ana? Ana is my friend. Always there, she helps me. She shows me a new world! The only thing that counts,” writes Verena in her blog.
The theme of blogs about Pro Ana is always the same: stylization of extreme underweight as an ideal, which is described with terms like “light as a feather”, “pure”, “delicate” or “graceful”. And the motivation to be “strong-willed”, to resist hunger and to please girlfriend Ana.
For mutual identification, many followers propose Pro Ana bracelets in specific colors. They are meant to symbolize that someone is Pro Ana, making it easier to identify like-minded people.
Protruding bones as an ideal of beauty
Verena reports in her blog about successes on her way to becoming “thin as an angel”, describes what she thinks the perfect body should look like. What is nice is what objectively indicates malnutrition: “The collarbones stick out, the straps of tops stretch over them, the ribs are easy to see on the décolleté, the ribs stick out a bit more than the stomach, you can see them even when you’re standing spine”. The perfect girl is “cute as a fairy”.
In addition to a “thigh gap”, the gap between the thighs when standing, the ideal of beauty also includes the “bikini bridge”. This is a gap between the abdomen and the bikini bottom caused by protruding pelvic bones.
Pro Mia: Bulimia as a creed
The personified eating disorder bulimia (bulimia nervosa) also offers her friendship on the Internet as “Mia” – either on Pro-Ana pages “as a way to please Ana”, as one blogger writes, or in her own Pro-Mia blogs and forums. However, there are more pro-ana pages than appearances that glorify bulimia on the Internet.
Around the turn of the millennium, the first German-language Pro-Ana websites appeared. Between 2006 and 2007, jugendschutz.net took a closer look at pro-ana sites – the institution was convened in 1997 by the federal state ministries responsible for youth protection. She discovered recurring elements on the websites: a lack of insight into illness, glorification as a lifestyle to strive for and misjudging the risks are typical. The content encouraged trying out and imitating, would have a model effect and would play down the consequences.
“Ana’s first letter”: central manifesto of Pro Ana
The central manifesto of the movement is “Ana’s First Letter”, which has since been followed by others and in which the personified disease introduces itself as a friend. “Allow me to introduce myself: My name, or as I’m called by so-called ‘doctors’, is anorexia. My full name is Anorexia Nervosa, but you can call me Ana. I hope we become good friends,” begins Ana’s first letter . It reveals something about the motivation and fears of the “Pro Anas” as well as their path to the disease and justifies the tendency of those affected to isolate themselves from their environment.
On some blogs you can also find “Mia’s letter”, which is based on Ana’s first letter. Unlike Ana, Mia allows food, but at the same time demands that something be done about the food eaten – for example by means of self-induced vomiting or laxatives. At the same time, these letters make it clear: anyone who wants to be Mia’s girlfriend has to be thin and suffer.
Thinspos are role models for Pro Ana
So-called thinspirations, or “thinspos” for short, are important in the scene. These are photos of bony girls who correspond to Pro Ana’s ideal. These are often prominent models or actresses. However, these are post-processed images of the already super-slim women and girls to emphasize the bones even more.
The Thinspos are the role models that Pro Ana’s disciples emulate. “Fatspirations” or “antithinspos” serve as a deterrent, i.e. photos of overweight people or fat bellies, which are intended to spoil the pro anas’ desire to eat.
Ana’s 10 commandments and thinlines for motivation
Texts by or about Ana take up a lot of space on the Pro-Ana blogs: Ana’s letters, Ana’s creed, Ana’s commandments or sins. Rules of conduct such as “Ana’s Ten Commandments” with instructions on eating and social behavior as well as weighing are standard. It puts being thin above everything, including your own health. “Being thin is more important than being healthy,” is one of the commandments. Such and similar specifications, which are also typical for blogs and forums, stylize the illness and adherence to it as a kind of substitute religion.
So-called “thinlines” or “triggerlines” are also used for motivation – sayings that are intended to encourage starvation or being thin. “Hunger hurts, but starving works!” (“Hunger hurts, but it works”) is a popular motivational slogan of Pro Anas, “Every calorie equals another step towards destruction” is another.
Starving together with a twin
Some pro-ana bloggers offer a twin or group exchange where like-minded people can connect for mutual encouragement. Password-protected forums also offer the opportunity for exchange. Access is only granted if you can credibly identify yourself as Pro Ana.
Tips and Tricks: How do I manage not to eat?
In addition to Thinspo’s and Ana’s rules of conduct, Pro-Ana pages also include countless tips and tricks – which primarily serve the purpose of avoiding eating or weight gain . “If you like something in particular, keep the packaging and smell it when you’re hungry,” is one tip, for example, “Look at the picture of a thin beauty while you eat” another. Answers are also given as to how many calories are eaten per day or how long followers should fast .
Verena posts diets and her experiences with them, tips against hunger and workouts to burn calories on her blog. Tricks are also revealed to cover up anorexia. So it is advised to avoid eating together with others. If it is unavoidable, Verena advises, for example: “Always pass around in a restaurant to try, or share a plate with a second person (then eat as slowly as possible and talk a lot).”
“Ana’s last letter”: those affected know about the wrong girlfriend
Basically, the Pro Anas know their eating disorder is a fake girlfriend. This also becomes clear in “Ana’s last letter”, which is circulating on the Internet. In it, Ana comes out as a scammer who has led her “friend” down the wrong path – the person concerned has actually become uglier instead of prettier with pale skin, dark circles under her eyes and protruding bones.
Many bloggers distance themselves from trying to make others pro-ana disciples. Most of them have posted a warning on their blogs, like Verena: “pro ana blog. Please leave this site if you don’t like pro ana. I take no responsibility for any psychological damage,” emblazoned above every page of her blog.
Numerous pro-ana forums closed
Again and again the call for bans on such platforms is raised – not only from doctors and youth protection organizations. For example, in 2009 the German Association of Philologists demanded that pro-ana and pro-mia sites be blocked for young people. The German protection of minors has meanwhile caused the closure of numerous Pro-Ana forums. However, this did not stop the movement. Rather, the Pro Anas and Pro Mias are now simply giving their websites less obvious names.
In France, the National Assembly decided in early April 2015 to criminalize incitement to anorexia – a regulation specifically targeting pro-ana and pro-mia websites. The idealization and propagation of being extremely underweight will in future be punished with fines and imprisonment.
Haben Blogs und Foren zu Pro Ana auch positive Seiten?
Wie sinnvoll die Verbote von solchen Seiten sind, ist jedoch unklar. Eine 2011 veröffentlichte Studie an der Universität Köln ging den Fragen nach, wer Pro-Ana-Foren aus welchen Motiven nutzt und welche Auswirkungen die Mitgliedschaft auf den Wunsch nach Gewichtsreduktion, Therapiebereitschaft und das psychische Wohlbefinden der Nutzerinnen hat.
The majority of study participants admitted, for example, that they ate less and increased their physical activity as a result of visiting the Pro-Ana forums. However, the Cologne scientists also found positive effects of the pro-ana sides. “To meet people with similar problems and thoughts”, “because nobody else understands me” and “to help others with problems” were the motives for visiting pro-ana sites that were most frequently confirmed. In addition, the users felt less lonely.
The particularly extreme attitude “Ana ’til the end”, holding on to anorexia until death, was strongly rejected by around 70 percent of the study participants. All in all, based on the results, the authors of the study see no general reason to legally ban pro-ana forums.
Healthy people tend not to be influenced by Pro Ana
An assessment that another study published in a dissertation in 2011 confirms. The aim was to find out whether you can “get infected” with eating disorders on the Internet. The study largely gives the all-clear: “For the majority of young women, brief contact probably has no further harmful effects,” the result reads.
For those who are not anorexic, reading the pro-ana blogs elicited negative sentiment, which is seen as a “natural reaction to the content that is perceived as alien and shocking.” However, those who have an increased risk of an eating disorder – according to the study, this is about 30 percent of the potential readership – were more susceptible to the harmful effects of the pro-ana pages. This also applies to self-help websites on the subject of anorexia.