‘I Love you to the Bones’: Constructing the Anorexic Body in ‘Pro-Ana’ Message Boards

Abstract

With reference to an ‘online ethnography’ (Ward, 1999) carried out in the ‘Anagrrl’^[1] pro-anorexic (ana) asynchronous^[2] web based community, I explore the radical, underground web-based pro-ana movement. The ‘pro-ana’ movement challenges established biomedical ideas surrounding the treatment of anorexia, based on the ‘normalisation’ of the body shape and weight. For participants of the pro-ana movement, the anorexic condition represents a form of stability and control: a state to be maintained. The group offers non-judgemental support and guidance in managing anorexia. Referring to feminist writers such as Bordo (1993), MacSween (1993) and Brain (2002), it is suggested that feminism enables a conceptualisation of anorexia that prioritises social and cultural discourses, which emphasise the bias in the West towards representations of female beauty focusing on the slim, lean body. Feminist approaches to anorexia have also highlighted the emotional and psychological factors inherent in anorexia and building on this integrated approach I use the data to illustrate the way in which the pro-ana movement enables the emergence of an embodied anorexic ontology and epistemology. It is suggested that the emergence and perpetuation of this group offers a model of ‘being’ and ‘knowing’ that facilitates the emergence of a coherent anorexic subjectivity. This is sustained by the development of an ‘ana-language’ and the formalisation, legitimation and validation of ana rituals and behaviour patterns.

Keywords

Anorexia Eating Disorder Embodiment Feminism Online Community Pro-Ana

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abraham

, and Llewellyn-Jones

(1997) Eating Disorders: The Facts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bordo

(1993) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Brain

(2002) ‘Unsettling Body Image: Anorectic Body Narratives and the Materialisation of the Body Imaginary’, Feminist Theory, 3(2). 151–168.

Brooks

(1997) Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms London: Routledge

Bruch

(1973) Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia and the Person Within. New York: Basic Books

Brumberg

J-J

(2000) Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa. New York: Vintage.

Chernin

(1993) Womansize: The Tyranny of Slenderness. London: The Women's Press.

Chisholm

(2002) Hungry Hell - What it's really like to be anorectic: a personal story. London: Short Books.

Davies

, and Lipsey

(2003) ’ Ana's gone Surfing, ’ in The psychologist, 16(8)

10.

Dias

(2003). The Ana Sanctuary: Women's Pro-Anorexia Narratives in Cyberspace, accessed via: http://www.bridgew.edu/SoAS/jiws/April03/DiasFINAL.pdf.

11.

Doward

, and Reilly

(2003). ‘How Macabre World of the Web Offers Fresh Insight on Anorectics’, The Observer, 17 August 2003. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1020383,00.html

12.

Fox

, Ward

, and O'Rourke

(2005a) ‘Expert Patients’, Pharmaceuticals and the Medical Model of Disease: The Case of Weight Loss Drugs and the Internet’, Social Science and Medicine, 60(6): 1299–1309.

13.

Fox

, Ward

, and O'Rourke

(2005b). ‘Pro-Anorexia, Weight Loss Drugs and the Internet: An Anti-Recovery Explanatory Model of Anorexia,’ in Sociology of Health and Illness, 27(7) 944–971

14.

Gordon

R.A.

(2000) Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic. Oxford: Blackwell.

15.

Gooldin

(2003). ‘Fasting women, living skeletons and hunger artists: spectacles of body and miracles at the turn of the century’. Body and Society, 9(2): 27–53.

16.

Gowers

S.G.

, Weetman

, Shore

, Hossain

, Elvins

(2000) ‘Impact of Hospitalisation on the Outcome of Adolescent Anorexia Nervosa,’ in British Journal of Psychiatry, 176: 138–141.

17.

Gremillion

(2003) Feeding Anorexia: Gender and Power at the Treatment Centre. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

18.

Grogan

(1999) Body Image. London: Routledge.

19.

Jackson

, and Elliott

(2004). ‘Dangers of Pro-anorexia websites,’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3580182.stm

20.

King

S.A.

(1996) ‘Researching Internet communities: proposed ethical guidelines for the reporting of results’, Information Society, 12: 119–27.

21.

Lindsay

(2000) Conquering Anorexia: The Route to Recovery. Sussex: Summersdale

22.

Luck

; Morgan J.F., Reid

; O'Brien

; Brunton

; Price

(2002) ‘The Scoff questionnaire and clinical interview for eating disorders in general practice: a comparative study’, British Medical Journal, 325: 755–756.

23.

Lupton

(1994) Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies. London: Sage.

24.

Lupton

(2002). ‘Consumerism, reflexivity and the medical encounter’, in Nettleton

, and Gustafsson

(eds.) The Sociology of Health and Illness Reader. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 360–369

25.

Macsween

(1993) Anorectic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge

26.

Malson

(1998) The Thin Woman: Feminism, Post-structuralism and the Social Psychology of Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge

27.

Marx

(1998) ‘An ethics for the new surveillance’, Information Society, 14(3): 171–186.

28.

Mellor

A, and Shilling

(1997) Re-forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity, London: Sage

29.

Mendelson

(2003). ‘Gentle Hugs: Internet listservs as sources of support for women with lupus,’ in Advances in Nursing Science, 26(4): 299–306

30.

Mitchell

(2003) ‘Autism Emailing Lists, ’ in Health Information on the Internet, 33: 3–4.

31.

Nettleton

, and Gustafsson

(2002) The Sociology of Health and Illness Reader. Cambridge: Polity.

32.

Orbach

(1993) Hunger Strike: The Anorectic's Struggle as a Metaphor of our Age. London: Penguin.

33.

Patton

, Selzer

, Coffey

(1999) ‘Onset of Adolescent Eating Disorders: Population based cohort study over 3 years’, British Medical Journal, 318(7186), 765–768.

34.

Reid

(1996) ‘Informed consent in the study of online communities: a reflection on the effect of computer-mediated social research’, Information Society, 12: 169–74.

35.

Shelly

(1997) Anorectics on Anorexia. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

36.

Turner

B.S.

(1999) Medical Power and Social Knowledge. London: Sage

37.

Turner

(1995). ‘Recent Developments in the Theory of the Body,‘ in Featherstone, M, Hepworth, M and Turner, B.S. [Eds.] The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, London: Sage

38.

Turner

, Grube

, and Meyers

(2001). Developing an Optimal Match Within Online Communities,’ in Journal of cOmmunication, 51(2): 231–51

39.

Urwin

, Bennetts

, Wilcken

(2002) ‘Anorexia nervosa (restrictive subtype) is associated with a polymorphism in the novel norepinephrine transporter gene promoter polymorphic region’, Molecular Psychiatry, 7(6): 652–657.

40.

Williams

J, and Bendelow

(2000) The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues, London: Routledge

41.

Ward

K. J.

(1999) Cyber-ethnography and the (Re)construction of the Virtual Community, ’ in Sociological Research Online, Vol. 4, No. 1, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/1/ward.html

42.

Wolf

(1991) The Beauty Myth: how Images of Beauty are used against Women. London: Vintage.