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Illustration
by Rebecca Straughmatt |
Perfection taken to dangerous levels
Dominique
Ramirez
Mesa Legend
Anorexia is not a disease, it’s
a lifestyle.
Information can be found posted all over pro anorexic sites like
Ana’s Underground Grotto and 2b thin dot coms.
These web sites advocating anorexia and bulimia target young men
and, mostly, women who are looking for support.
Whether the support these people initially look for is help with
their isolating disease or dieting tips, the friends they find in
the chat rooms and blogs on these sites are not there to help persons
with eating disorders to recovery.
These “friends” give tips on how to take breaks during
purging or vomiting, or how to get by on 300 calories or less a
day.
The sites post disclaimers that attempt to justify the lifestyle.
One such website, for example, states:
“This is a gathering point of sentient individuals who are
working to occur changes in body in conformity to will…This
is not a place for the faint-hearted, weak, hysterical, or those
looking to be rescued…This is a place for the elite who, through
personal success in their ongoing quest for perfection, demonstrate
daily the power and results of applying will, imagination, creativity
and effort, toward meeting their goals.”
Anorexia sites boast the strengths of will power and complete life
control that is displayed through starving themselves.
Unfortunately, this is an all too familiar defensive psychology.
“Anorexia is all-consuming,” said, Susan Pollock, an
instructor in MCC’s Psychology Department.
“The nature of an anorexic person is remarkably strong willed.
Anorexic people ignore all the signs of hunger and starve themselves
to death.”
Nonetheless the obsession continues. There are poems and essays
on the web sites, one was called “An Anorexic Army.”
Ribbons that read support the lifestyle and end discrimination of
pro-ana. One anorexic woman submitted a blog on how she could run
the world based on her strength and control.
Control is exactly what anorexics want and need.
Seventeen-year-old Melissa Lovata, a Corona del Sol senior, has
two close friends suffering from anorexia.
She says they relay in detail their struggles and victories. “I
think it’s a control thing, but as a friend I am supportive,”
Lovata said.
Pollock agreed. “They are trying to keep control, either real
or imagined.”
A 17-year-old Sun Valley High School senior has been struggling
with bad eating habits since the fourth grade, but completely crossed
over to anorexia about a year and a half ago. Her name is not being
used because she is a juvenile.
On making the cross over, she said she headed to the web sites for
confidential help with dieting.
However, through family support, she went into recovery at Remuda
Ranch, a rehabilitation center is located in Wickenberg, northwest
of Phoenix.
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