Pro-ana is REAL?!

Ray and I are watching Boston Legal on his telly, with my third season set of DVDs. The episode was called "The Nutcrackers" and among all the other fun and games, such as Alan defending the parents of two singing daughters, all of whom are white supremecists... yikes. Or a woman suing God for the death of her husband. But this one...

A woman who knows Denny Crane came up to him in a restaurant (she was a waitress there) and asked him to help her. Her teenage daughter is anorexic and she wants to have her go to therapy and get better.

Makes sense - anorexia nervosa is a terrible disease. It is a psychological condition, not a physical one but the visible manifesation is one of a too-thin person (I say person because while much less prevalent, men do get anorexia nervosa. Crazy (no pun intended) but ture). Someone who looks like a corpse has anorexia or bulemia (related but with an added element of methodology for extreme weight loss). Well, that or they live in a country with no food.

There was a young woman on the squad that joined the Wednesday night crew when I had either just left it. She was young, maybe 19 or 20. She was pretty, and quite thin. When I saw her I immediately was wondering if she was a victim of it. I mentioned it to the Captain at that time. She wasn't on very long and about a year later she died from heart failure. Don't kid yourself, the heart failure was a direct result of the anorexia, which killed her. I don't know anything other than her mother and sister had her put into a rehab place or something like that.

So watching this episode has some memories, but not a lot; however, I was appalled to find out that there are groups that are pro-ana - the misguided thinking that anorexia is a lifestyle choice, not a psychological disease. WHAT?!

A lifestyle? Is anyone so misguided that they might think this is just a neat way to live - with your collarbones not merely there but so prominent that you could hang your shirt from them? Or that losing your period because your body can't live with the loss because you weight so much less than you should? Or having extra hair growing everywhere because your body is bringing out the heavy-duty attempts to keep itself alive by getting you warmer? This is a lifestyle?

Very often, television shows want to work things up and make them exciting. I get that, to a point. However, while there are times when they are a little over the top, for the most part their information is accurate. (They did an episode where Jerry Espinson fired a guy from his firm for being a Scientologist; the things Alan Shore brought up were dead on - plus a few weird details I'd missed when I had heard and read about them.) In this episode, "The Nutcrackers", I was sure someone made up "pro-ana". I thought no one could come up with something so dispicable as to make a disease that is a silent killer look like something you want to have. My faith in the human race is always being destroyed by something. And this is surely one of them.

I went online and too many sites came up when I put in "pro-ana". Including Wikipedia, which is generally (not always but generally) a good source of information. How scary is this:

"Pro-ana refers to the rejection of the idea that anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. It is often referred to simply as "ana" and is sometimes affectionately personified by anorexics as a girl named Ana.

Pro-ana is a loosely descriptive term rather than an organized social movement, and as such encompasses a wide range of views. Many pro-ana organizations state that they do not promote anorexia and acknowledge that anorexia is a real medical disorder, and that they exist mainly to give anorexics a place to turn to discuss their illness in a non-judgmental environment: some promote recovery while still supporting those who choose to defer or refuse medical or psychological treatment. Others go further, disputing the prevailing psychological and medical consensus that treats anorexia nervosa as a mental illness rather than a "lifestyle choice" that should be respected by doctors and family. One study defines pro-anorexia as "a way of coping and a damage limitation that rejects recovery as a simplistic solution to a symptom that leaves the underlying pain and hurt unresolved."

The lesser-used term pro-mia refers likewise to bulimia nervosa and is sometimes used interchangeably with pro-ana.

As an encouragement to further lose weight, members often exchange thinspiration (or thinspo): image or video montages of slim women, often celebrities, who may be anything from naturally slim to emaciated with visibly-protruding bones. Conversely, reverse thinspiration may be photographs of fatty food, overweight or obese people intended to induce disgust and motivate further weight loss. Pro-ana blogs often post thinspirational entries, and many pro-ana forums have threads dedicated to sharing thinspiration. Thinspiration can also take the form of inspirational mantras, quotes or selections of lyrics from poetry or popular music. 94% of pro-ana websites have this type of content.

Visitors to pro-ana web sites include a significant number of those already diagnosed with eating disorders: a 2006 survey of eating disorder patients at Stanford Medical School found that 35.5% had visited pro-ana web sites; of those, 96.0% learned new weight loss or purging methods from such sites (while 46.4% of viewers of anti-anorexia sites learned new techniques).

A 2006 experimental study at the University of Missouri on 235 female undergraduates found that those subjected to a single viewing of a pro-ana site created by the study designers reported lower self-esteem and were more likely to become preoccupied with exercise and weight loss, as compared to control groups. A greater likelihood to exercise and a reduced likelihood to overeat or self-induce vomiting was also reported by the group viewing the pro-ana site. The study was limited by reliance on self-reports, possible non-generalizability of the results beyond viewing in a laboratory setting, and the assessment of only immediate effects.

A larger study by the University of South Florida of 1575 girls and young women in 2007 found that those who had a history of viewing pro-ana websites did not differ from those who viewed only professional anorexia websites on any of the study's measures, including body mass index, negative body image, appearance dissatisfaction, level of disturbance, and restriction. Those who had viewed pro-ana websites were, however, moderately more likely to have a negative body image than those who had viewed no websites on anorexia. It was not clear whether a causal relationship existed."

It's real. It is actually out there. Something totally ruinous to the human body is celebrated as a lifestyle and is actually permitted by the social networking sites, such as MySpace (meatmarket!), Facebook, etc.: "Most pro-ana material is disseminated over the Internet, through tight-knit support groups centred around web forums and, more recently, social networking sites such as Xanga, LiveJournal, Facebook and Myspace. These sites typically have an overwhelmingly female readership and are frequently the only means of support available to socially-isolated anorexics."

How can this be?

Well. I love this country, and I love what we stand up for. Freedom. Forget appending anything to it. Just plain old, beautiful freedom. But maybe this is the price we pay for the freedom we want and enjoy. While I have the freedom to blog and say anything I want, others have the freedom to start groups like this - almost subversive in praying on sick young women (again, anerexia does affect men but not nearly to the point that it does women) who refuse to see this as the sickness that it is.

Sometimes, I really hate the freedom we have...