Ever since Urban Outfitters admitted to their thinness preference via their controversial shirts labeled “Eat Less,” the emergence of a “trendy” or “hipster” lifestyle has promoted a fetish for skinny women and men. This attraction to extreme thinness may be due to the innate nature of fashion, or simply because dirty hipsters love their vintage icons with lithe bodies as embodied by Audrey Hepburn and Twiggy.
Either way, the unfortunate side effect to this trend is that it has transcended generations to much younger people, particularly girls and boys 12 to 16 years old. This phenomenon can be traced to the blog site Tumblr.com, which features sites labeled #pro-ana (pro-anorexia), among others. To this date, Tumblr admins and administrators have made no effort to acknowledge these sites and their growing popularity.
Given, there are some gems on this blogging website. After all, the majority of content consists of interesting stories, inspiring art pieces and old photographs that can help portray your interests and inner-self to other bloggers. This is the absolutely wonderful part about blogging that displays the diversity and wealth of interesting stimuli that Tumblr has to offer.
However, the blogging trends of the site’s growing youth demographic should be a cause for concern for Tumblr’s creators. Users as young as thirteen have blogs dedicated entirely to eating disorders and body mutilation such as bulimia, anorexia and cutting.
The frightening part is that these young girls and boys post pictures that, for example, show their hand wrapping around their thigh with inches to spare. Other users applaud these pictures and demonstrate their appreciation by “liking” or sharing posts on their own blog. By reinforcing this type of messaging, pro-ana blogs have quickly become filled with purging tips, glamorized pictures of bones, and models that are recovering anorexics.
For example, user “xo-lovelybones” explains in a post titled “Purging Tips” that, “It’s really something you have to play around with and find where and what makes you gag…. So wiggle, push, spread your fingers out and wiggle then bring them together and push down on your esophagus a little (be careful not to push anywhere too hard).” Xo-lovelybones is 17 years old.
Tumblr’s growing influence has the potential to trigger real-life behaviors and habits. For example, user “just-get-skinny” admits that her eating disorder originated after joining the site, explaining that “there are so many beautifully thin girls on Tumblr.” The post was tagged #personal #ed #eating disorders #tumblr #fat. This user is 15 years old.
Fortunately, there are blogs fighting pro-ana themes.
“The Pro Health Campaign” is a blog post with a picture of Isabel Caro, the late model who lost the fight against anorexia, with text asking users to post it on their sites with a goal to ban all pro-ana sites. The campaign argues that because bodily insecurities arise during and after puberty, young people are the most vulnerable to anorexia or bulimia. In support of this campaign are other blogs labeled “fit-spot” or “pro-curves” that try to promote health, fitness and bodily happiness.
Anorexia and bulimia are serious yet common mental afflictions that can affect anyone, regardless of online influence. An individual’s anorexic or bulimic symptoms could have manifested before such exposure to reinforcing imagery and messaging; Tumblr may simply be the convenient resource and means of prideful expression for those with anorexia or bulimia where there exists no other.
To be clear, the creators of Tumblr are not to blame for anorexic tendencies, nor are the owners of Urban Outfitters or even the young people themselves who take pictures of measuring tape around their stomachs. In a skinny-lovin’ society such as ours, this long-term trend is nothing out of the ordinary and one that our parents and their parents passed through as well.
To solve the issue, Tumblr and other popular blogging sites such as Blogspot or WordPress should first recognize their power and influence over young people. Some pro-ana blogs are girls and boys looking to recover from their disorder(s) through the use of blogging with others in recovery. This community of support may lead to healthy advances and should, without a doubt, be promoted. It is the pro-ana blogs glamorizing purging, binging, and starving that should be stopped and shut down.
Online blogging should be a public, uncensored atmosphere for everyone with the desire to post whatever they want. But when it comes down to it, influential blogging sites with a membership composed of young, vulnerable teens should not permit tips on potentially fatal, life-defining actions and behaviors to be easily accessed by impressionable adolescents, and that is exactly what’s happening right now.