Ana and Mia

I wanted to write my research paper on the effects of advertising and brand image. For example, if Chanel releases a campaign showing athletic women in their clothes, will people begin to associate Chanel with athleticism? Or elegance with athleticism? Will rich athletes be more likely to shop at Chanel? Unfortunately, after trying four of the best fashion institutions in Paris I couldn’t find a compendium of advertisements for any brand. So now I’m writing on the effects of anorexia on the fashion world, and vice versa. Original, right? Oh well, at least there’s already huge amounts of research. I kind of got sidetracked with looking at a bunch of pro-ana websites. This is apparently a huge phenomenon of mostly teenage girls writing fasting tips and thinspiration to one another. It’s pretty bad…no, it’s really bad. One woman wrote about how she was going to be deemed an unfit mother if she didn’t cut out her anorexic habits. A high school girl described how she had to break her fast for a salad at her parent’s anniversary dinner because it made her mom cry when she said she wasn’t hungry. There are people on the site trying to fight their anorexia and get back to healthy weight, mixed in with those who are trying anything to drop (one girl at 5’8” mentioned her goal weight is 96 lbs). These sites are really troubling, and haven’t been getting very much media attention according to wikipedia. France passed a law to ban any pro-anorexia websites last week, but facebook and myspace say it’s too difficult to draw a line between support to get better and pressure to lose weight on many of the sites. After seeing the livejournal one I see what they mean; when one girl posted her pictures (which actually looked on the skinny side of healthy) people were telling her she looked great, not specifying any suggestions to lose or gain. Anyway, I didn’t really realize how much the thinspo/mia/ana community comes together. The creepiest thing is that their messages sound like those of normal teenage girls, “OMG I feel like such a fatty I had ½ granola bar for breakfast and an apple for lunch. Hope I can get out of dinner if my parents let me but probs not UGH!” With maybe some frowning faces at the end. Girls with the same stats email each other to plan diets to lose four pounds next week etc. I’ve seen a lot of bulletin boards and web communities but never like this. My high school hypothetical internet equivalent would have been something like “UGH can’t get E Major up to 160 BPM my teacher says it’s too fast anyway but I’m stuck at 120! Anyone want to coordinate metronome speeds next week?” I don’t need to ask to know that those bitches on the clarinet board would never coordinate their metronome practice with me. I just think it’s sad that the ana group I looked at is the most supportive and friendly internet group I’ve ever seen. If these girls were getting this kind of emotional support in their school lives, would things be different?
The way one girl conceptualizes ana is as a girl who lives inside you and only gets the food that you deny yourself. If you eat too much, she dies. If you don't eat at all, you die. I think it's safe to say I killed ana. Whoops.