Inside Pro-Ana: Why Would Someone Be FOR Eating Disorders?

This question was raised in response to my recent post about self-righteous dieters. Pro-eating disorder sites referred to as "pro-ana" and "pro-mia" are all over social networking sites, blogs, YouTube, etc. A casual viewer sees (usually girls) exchanging secrets about how to hide food and hide their disorder from other people and even more alarmingly sharing pictures of bony (usually women) who are within an inch of death to inspire one another to continue crash dieting.

When I first learned about this, it sounded like downright cruelty. First of all, a woman who is starving to death is not beautiful, she is dying! No one should want to look like that or encourage someone else to be that way. Second of all, if someone already feels bad about themselves, why show them images that are going to make it worse?

I didn't really understand pro-ana until my freshman year of college when I gained the freshman fifteen. I was going through a lot of emotional difficulties as well. I had just ended a friendship with a former (female) abuser and I felt like I had nothing left. Even though she was abusive, manipulative, evil, etc, I still loved her more than anything and would rather suffer myself than see her hurt. She set a standard, a cruel standard, for who I was and who I should be. If a woman who used me and threw me out like trash, telling me that I didn't even have basic sexual object worth to her, could approve of me or even like me (and she did for a while) then I felt like I had succeeded at something amazing. Other people's approval felt like passing a simple multiplication tables test versus passing Multi-variable Calculus with an "A." I had shit self-esteem and only the cruelest and harshest critic could make me feel any better.

I left anyway. I couldn't stand her anymore and the more I dealt with her destroying herself and expecting pity for entirely self-made problems when I was quietly dealing with the aftermath of her abuse. I left because I had to, but I didn't feel like a better (or stronger) person for it. I felt like a failure. I hated the idea that I had lost. That she might hate me now. That I had no one to obsessively love and to structure my fantasies and insecurities and expressions of pain around. This happened around the time when I started outgrowing my jeans. I had the same skinny body from 7th grade through 12th grade and that was how my abuser remembered me. Skinny. A cup. Practically pedophile-bait even when I turned 18. Now I was getting fleshy like a woman and I had no idea if she'd still find me sexually appealing. If she'd bother raping me at this point. Remember, my self-esteem sucked.

I didn't stop eating because of her. I stopped because I could feel containments in my body. Fat didn't feel like body matter, but like dirt. Filth. My OCD flared. I felt like there was feces under my skin for how dirty it was. So I joined a website where the calories of every food known to man can be added daily to keep you in line. It's supposed to be for healthy people dieting safely with a doctor's advice, but come on. If that were true, they'd be tracking meals and health, not counting calories.

I reluctantly joined a pro-anorexia site too. It had the most active 24 hour chat I have ever encountered because no one stays up later than starving people. It distorts your sense of time essentially, because meals mark morning, noon, evening. Besides, I didn't want to sleep with memories of the abuser I left. I didn't want to get in bed where my vibrator was sitting and fantasize about being raped knowing my poor roommate could probably hear the damn toy and knew what I was doing. So I avoided sleep. I went to bed between 5 and 7 a.m. sometimes. And there were always girls (and sometimes boys) online to talk.

Pro-ana was kind of a fantasy world. Everyone on there at least somewhat believed that we were going to be beautiful eventually. We were flawed, but for once there was a solution. It sometimes felt like the all-night vapid slumber party with popular and cute friends that I never had in high school. People assume (I think) that members of pro-ana sites are mean. It's not entirely true. They would ask for each other's stats (body mass index, weight, ana or mia, e stats: body mass indexes, goals, etc) but no one in my experience criticized other people. Sometimes people the exact same size as me or even smaller told me my size wasn't bad. We didn't think other people's fat was gross. We just thought our own was (at least most of us).

When it was really late at night, sometimes you found people on there who were very interesting. One girl in particular whose name I don't remember was engaged to a man despite feeling like she might be a lesbian. She was Christian and she knew what God wanted (or thought she did). But we exchanged photos and talked. We were both lonely and desperation was mutual for once. She believed you have to repent to be forgiven and didn't believe she could honestly regret spending her life with a woman she loved enough to repent. We found each other pretty and when I was hungry enough she would encourage me to eat. We didn't want each other to hurt or suffer, we just didn't have the same hope or care for ourselves as we did for one another.

Girls personified Ana (anorexia). She was a cruel abuser who would force your finger down your throat, swat away food, tell you you're fat, hold up a mirror to your ugliest and worst insecurities. She was the harshness and the standards I missed in my abuser. And the girls I met on the pro-ana site were the comfort.

I watched documentaries about other people with anorexia. I wanted to understand what I was falling into. The girls who had never found pro-ana or thinspiration were hospitalized for avoiding all intake including water. A girl in the documentary thought water had calories. No one on pro-ana believed that. Pro-ana sites tell you what has calories and what doesn't. They're honest with you about the dangers of crash dieting (some are anyway) and they provide you with recipes that will keep you alive (and eating) while you deal. Perhaps it's stupid, tiptoeing around Ana to keep her from hurting you. But there were ways. 90 calorie banana brownies. Orange slices. Lollipops that make your appetite go away. Eat at least one meal a day, the one you eat with your family and friends. No one would suspect a thing.

It's not good to keep secrets perhaps, but the girls I talked to all ate. The girl I was enamored with had half a peanut butter sandwich every day. It was actually surprising how many pro-ana girls were lesbians. So many of them were doing it because they had failed someone's standards (usually their own). Maybe they weren't exactly like me, but we understood each other.

Many people would say, "sure it gets them eating but it doesn't get them therapy." Maybe. Having been to four therapists and one counselor in my life I can tell you that I don't trust therapy too much.

1. In the documentary I saw, girls who were starving were immediately expected to cram fattening clogging food that would be disgusting by anyone's standards into their mouths as fast as possible while nurses stared them down. These are girls who are already insecure about eating, whose stomachs might have shrunk from lack of use. A lot of girls were showing real effort to eat, but if they didn't finish dinner fast enough they were forcibly dragged off to another room and restrained while someone jammed a tube down their throat and forced food into them.

This, to me, is inexcusable. A lot of anorexic girls are rape survivors. To hold them down and forcibly penetrate them, then force things they don't want into their body is criminal I think. To me, forcing people to eat is only addressing the obvious physical problem. Like with many things, anorexia is a symptom. If you were raped, being held down and forced into something that unpleasant and awful, all you're learning is that you have no agency and other people have the right to force their will onto you. I can fully understand why someone wouldn't want to do that kind of treatment.

2. My friend in high school told me that whatever I did, I should avoid the mental hospital. People come out of it silent, even suicidal. It's not a good place and anyone whose been there will tell you that.

Of course I hope everyone with an eating disorder will get better. But I'm "better" and I feel just as much like I failed as I ever did. I feel like I'm not allowed to be thin, not allowed to be pretty, and everyone who tells me that I'm beautiful the way I am makes me want to vomit (sorry...I don't mean literally I was never a purger). To try to treat the problem of victim hood and depression, you have to address the feelings of worthlessness and lack of control. Being forced into things will not help someone who feels like they have absolutely no agency or power whatsoever and is exercising abusive power over their own body.

People who are pro-ana aren't always really pro-eating disorder. They're pro-sufferer. They told me to eat peanut butter. They told me not to starve. They told me to exercise a bit less. They knew therapy doesn't always work and they knew I was an adult and had the right to make my own decisions. But they encouraged each other to eat, and maybe it's important to keep a victim alive on 90 calorie brownies until they work up the strength to deal with their emotional issues and work their way back up to a normal diet. I'm not condoning or supporting pro-ana but I want people to understand that people who support it are not evil, sick, irrational monsters who want to see other people suffer. Also that the therapy system is not perfect.

Psychology is a new science and it's not even agreed upon what an eating disorder should look like. Over 50% of people with diagnosed eating disorders have Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified because they don't fit anorexia OR bulimia. If we don't even know what these disorders are yet, how can we perfectly treat them. There is also the fact that therapy has been shown to be ineffective in people who don't want to change or aren't ready. I can't entirely oppose pro-ana because it's one of the only ways to attract people with eating disorders to food without forcing them to admit problems that they may not be ready to admit yet.

Gripes

So I broke up with my girlfriend the other day, mainly because she was angry at me for thinking that she doesn't listen to me...which she naturally responded to by yelling at me and, well, not LISTENING to me xD. Killer logic there. I'd like to pretend I wasn't thinking of having my sadistic angel, Larissa, give her a good verbal lashing but it occurs to me that I don't actually care enough and likely, neither does Larissa so it's kind of a pointless point.

And, because my life is Degrassi on crack, the biggest, formalest, danciest dance just HAS to be this Friday. Being the "I WILL NOT GO ALONE I ALREADY BOUGHT SHOES OMGGGGGGGGGGGGG" person that I am, I asked a lesbian friend of mine. After calling my best friend to confirm that I really meant it when I asked for a "friend-date" she said yes, so I guess at least I've got a date. Is it weird to go on a friend date with someone you've already gotten drunk and made out with right after some girl pulled a John Tucker between you two and some bisexual chick? My inclination is "yes, extremely weird," but I'm going to try not to focus on that and at least focus on "hey I have a date."

She doesn't want to be more than friends, though, because she at least knows on the surface level that I was raped and that I've been through so much hell that she's scared to hurt me. That's understandable, I guess, but I can't help but feel like my best friend's date will marry him and they'll live in a big castle in the middle of a beautiful meadow with ponies and kittens and have beautiful golden-haired children even though he's ethnically Jewish and she's brunette.

Oh and one of the most awesomely esteemed therapists in the area diagnosed me with PTSD KNOWING that my rape was astral. I consider that something of a victory...to have documented PTSD over a non-physical, "magical" rape. I want to carry the signed diagnostic note in my wallet as a charm almost...but no I have to give it to the disabilities office so they can tell teachers I need "reasonable accomodations" ie: if the lesson is about rape they can't get mad at me for running out of the room screaming. Joy.

By the way I really wish that people would stop giving me the "think about whether or not you're ready to be in a relationship" business. If you tell me I need to think MORE about anything, unless it's feces, penises, or crawly worms you're probably wrong because I think way too much about everything else. If you think I should think more about feces, penises, or crawly worms I'll ignore you anyhow.

Speaking of penises and crawly worms, a new/old friend of mine is still friends with my rapist's ex, the boyfriend she was dating when she raped me. That is a pretty hardcore brand of awkward.

I really wish people wouldn't tell me to stop "acting" complex, to stop "dwelling" on my issues, or to just "be happy." People don't get that it isn't that fucking easy.

Answers

About a month ago, my best friend and I started talking about the reality of my situation and agreed that there was absolutely no way I was ever going to find answers. My rapist was never going to admit what she did to me, and I would never know if the incredibly fucked up double-life as a victim and sex slave to a girl I barely knew in my waking life was entirely my own sick depraved inner fantasy.

About three/four weeks ago, I reunited with an old high school acquaintance whose boyfriend lost his virginity to the woman I believed to be my rapist. I kept trying to get at why this acquaintance hated Rapist so much, but was only getting trivial answers like, "she told on me when I stole something for her in 8th grade," or "she's a total bitch," but the absolute despising my friend had for this woman suggested that she was guilty of more than tattle-taleing.

The conversation progressed and I confessed that I was still having nightmares about this woman, at whichpoint my friend said fairly blankly, "My boyfriend wants to speak with you about her."

Within a couple of hours, I was on AIM with the guy and he confessed to me that my rapist is definitely a physical rapist and at least an attempted psychic rapist, and that he was her first victim...she raped him when she was a fucking virgin. When I heard this, I burst into tears. I had convinced myself that I loved this woman for YEARS to keep the truth from being "she invaded my mind and raped me, enslaved me if you will, for THREE YEARS."

Next morning I left her a message saying simply, "I can't fucking wait to see you on Maury when karma fucks you harder than your rape victims you stupid piece of shit!!!!!!!"

Not the most mature thing ever, but I was fucking pissed. And "dearie" if you're reading this right now (which you probably aren't, because you hate the internet) I hope you understand, genuinely understand, that I was the only person on your side for a long time...the only person with an IQ higher than their age who sincerely wanted to believe in your goodness despite a LOT. If somehow I'm absolutely psychotic and wrong about you, you have my permission and plea to try and explain yourself. You've put a lot of people through hell, and owe us all that much at least.

Don't...

However far I try to pull myself away from her, no...the farther I pull myself away from her, the more chaos I run into. It's always at the point when I'm just starting to get over her (as if), just moving on with my life, just making things happen for myself and someone ruins my buzz and reminds me of her...and gives me this tiny window of hope that I could touch her somehow. Not touch her as in physically...no I'm far too romantic, far too scared for that right now. I was offered her phone number, and I want to hear her. I don't remember her enough, yet I know I'd recognize her voice anywhere...I have never heard anyone who sounds remotely like her. She has wanted me before, she has even cared about me before...so why won't she come back for me? Now I suppose she has a baby on the way, but why never before? Why wasn't I good enough? My best friend thinks I'm too good...but it sure as hell never feels that way...when you fall in love with someone...a rapist no less...and they won't take you when you hit rock bottom and strip your pride and make yourself a sacrificial offering. Is this disgusting you, dear reader? I don't blame you...it disgusts me too, because of its lame...emotional nature more than its "you poor dear you have no self-worth" aspects.

Somebody told me women can't rape today. It later became a "no that's not actually what I said, yadda blah" and she wouldn't listen to anything else I said, then tried to act like she was being the reasonable one and I was just attacking her. I'm sorry but what she said sounded pretty much like an attack to me whether she meant it or not...I think the thing that riles me more than anything in the world (this isn't an exaggeration) is people failing to realize that I'm not wrong...that I'm legitimate in my feelings and that they can't just decide I did something when I didn't and bitch me out...without due process of law...ugh.