Pro Anorexia on Xanga and Across the Web

Pro Anorexia on Xanga and Elsewhere

While conducting some informal research on topics under the general heading of anorexia and eating disorders, I was surprised to find a significant pro anorexia (or ‘pro ana’) community alive and well on the web, including entire web sites, pro anorexia discussion forums, and blog rings that are pro anorexia on Xanga. Although the American media fixated on pro ana web sites for awhile in 2001, with the growing popularity of blogs, the phenomenon seems to have moved into another phase altogether.

(A ‘blog’, short for ‘weblog’, is often understood as an online journal, although blogging software can be used for many different types of publishing. A ‘blog ring’ is a set of interconnected blogs, often covering similar areas of interest. Xanga is one popular site which provides a paid service for keeping a blog and for browsing other people’s blogs. This article itself, originally posted as part of the main CounsellingResource.com publishing system, is now being delivered to you by blogging software.)

On the basis of my brief survey, pro anorexia destinations on the web appear to be frequented by people with three distinct types of backgrounds in terms of their experience of anorexia: those who are not anorexic but would like to become anorexic, those who are already anorexic, and those who fight vehemently to suppress any expression of pro anorexia viewpoints. The last category seems to include both former sufferers of anorexia and their families and others who, for a variety of reasons, take a strong interest in the topic. Visitors in the first two categories (i.e., those who actually are pro anorexia) offer mutual support to one another and mutual validation of the idea that becoming anorexic can be a deliberate and legitimate life choice. They may provide tips on hiding anorexia from family members, ‘thinspirational’ articles designed to help readers maintain their motivation to be anorexic, or even articles on how to become anorexic in the first place.

Legitimate Medical Concern vs. Respect for Pro Anorexia People

Perhaps almost as plentiful as pro anorexia sites themselves are the sites admonishing against pro anorexia sites. Many of the most popular seem, to my mind, like anti-pro-anorexia sites. In other words, they are not so much pro-health, or pro-nutrition, or pro-mental health, or even pro-treatment; rather, they are anti-pro sites. They focus on meeting the advice or the slogans or the general outlook of the pro anorexia community head-on, countering the advice with their own advice, responding to the slogans with cleverly re-worded counter-slogans, or attempting to undermine or belittle or deconstruct the general pro anorexia outlook.

I can’t help but feel that something is being missed in much of the furore surrounding pro anorexia sites and the corresponding anti-pro sites: namely, the real individual people underlying all the slogans and the crusading. I can’t help but feel that those who would label themselves ‘pro ana’ probably have a hard time getting listened to — really listened to — and taken seriously.

Before I explore that notion more in the next section, let me state one thing in no uncertain terms: anorexia nervosa, understood as a clinically defined eating disorder, is potentially life-threatening and brings with it a serious risk of other health problems short of actual death. Nothing in this article is intended to conflict in any way with these fundamental facts. (And I recognize that a large proportion of material that is pro anorexia on Xanga and elsewhere completely fails to acknowledge the reality that anorexia is life-threatening.)

However, I believe that legitimate medical concern for the well being of people who are anorexic (or who aspire to be anorexic) remains entirely compatible with fundamentally respecting them and the choices they make with regard to their own bodies.

A Therapeutic Perspective: Pro Anorexia, Psychological Contact and Empathy

From a therapeutic standpoint, I believe one of the primary preconditions for working effectively with a client is establishing psychological contact. Originally popularized by Carl Rogers, founder of the person-centred approach to counselling and psychotherapy, in the present context psychological contact means that some kind of relationship must exist between counsellor or therapist and client. Once established, one of the primary means by which this relationship can be extended, deepened, and developed into something therapeutically meaningful is by way of empathy: as a counsellor, I must try to grasp something of what the client’s experience is like for the client (including pro anorexia experience). More than that, I also must communicate that understanding in such a way that the client knows I have accurately understood something of their experience. So, whether or not I might believe anorexia nervosa is life-threatening, whether or not I believe an eating disorder could help an individual meet their goals or aims in life, it remains a top priority from a therapeutic standpoint to establish psychological contact and to work hard to understand the client’s own pro anorexia experience.

This priority is simply not well served by railing against the pro anorexia perspective or by attempting to enforce my own views in preference to those of the client. The strong initial judgement against the pro anorexia perspective which I have read expressed on so many anti-pro sites is, to my mind, a highly effective means of ensuring that few if any individuals inclined in a pro anorexia direction will ever stick around long enough to take their messages seriously.

Protecting vs. Respecting

But surely, I can hear some mental health professionals commenting, surely your first responsibility as a clinician is to safeguard the health of your clients, whatever that may require? Actually, no: I am not medically qualified to do anything of the sort. Of course I regard client health as a top priority, which is why, when faced with issues of outright medical concern, I invariably discuss with clients some of the available options for involving their primary health care provider or other health professional (including, where indicated, a psychiatrist). But do I take that prioritization of health to be a sufficient excuse for attempting to impose anti-pro views on a client? Not at all: I do not believe that dismissing a client’s pro anorexia experience or desires out of hand, refusing to take seriously the client’s own legitimate perspective on the world, would, in the general case, be helpful to the client’s health anyway.

In my view, the question ultimately comes down to prioritizing respect for the client over the therapist’s desire to protect the client, wherever those two aims come into conflict. For the most part, I believe, the medical profession and the psychiatric profession come down on the side of protecting, while at least some in the counselling profession (including myself) come down on the side of respecting.

Ultimate Danger? Pro Anorexia on Xanga or Elsewhere

Is the perspective expressed in pro anorexia blog rings or elsewhere on the web ultimately dangerous to the health of individual visitors to those sites? I believe, without a question, that it is dangerous. By normalizing pro anorexia views, by helping to make it seem entirely OK to undergo a potentially life-ending eating disorder, these sites explicitly attempt to increase the attractiveness of a path forward that may ultimately prove fatal.

Are the usually well meaning anti-pro web sites ultimately dangerous to the health of individual visitors to those sites? I believe it is entirely possible that they are dangerous, too. By increasing the volume of noise surrounding the potentially pro anorexia visitor that says “your perspective is not worth listening to”, or “I’m not even going to try to understand where you are coming from because I am too busy promulgating my own views”, these sites risk implicitly perpetuating an anti-therapeutic relationship between the potential pro ana and the rest of the world.

From a therapeutic perspective, the alternative for those who care about people suffering from anorexia or who want to become anorexic, is to listen, to establish psychological contact and to attempt to understand — however uncomfortable or disagreeable it might seem — to attempt to understand how the world looks from the other person’s perspective. When it comes down to it, the opportunity to be listened to and understood isn’t just something that potential pro anorexics appreciate; it is something that almost everybody appreciates.

Editor’s Note on Soliciting Pro-Ana Tips

After several visitors posted their personal contact details and either offered or asked for pro-ana tips, I have regretfully taken the step of going back and deleting those personal contact details. As guests on CounsellingResource.com, I would like to ask that all visitors please not use this site as a point for soliciting or giving pro-ana tips. If you would like to comment on the content of the article itself, I welcome open discussion, but the intention of the article was not to create a meeting point for the exchange of pro-ana tips. In future, such posts may be deleted in their entirety.

Thank you.