Keep Calm: "Thinspiration" Can't Convince Us That Anorexia Is A Lifestyle Choice

Keep Calm and Thighgap On.

The ‘keep calm and…’ meme has shown itself incredibly popular in the last few years.  It’s gotten itself attached to all kinds of products, from pies to makeup. 

Keep Calm and Pretend To Eat.

It’s attached itself to all kinds of lifestyles and pastimes, some of them as far away form its stiff-upper-lip wartime origins as it’s possible to imagine – in fact, that juxtaposition and that old-world charm is part of its appeal.

But it’s also the slogan of choice for a truly disturbing series of sites that show up how the freedom from social as well as legal controls that the internet offers can be actively dangerous.

The slogans above were taken from so-called ‘thinspiration’ sites, sites that offer their visitors pro-anorexia propaganda. 

To the extent that they package addictive metal illness as a lifestyle choice they show how communities that form online can work to normalize behaviours that are stigmatized by society as a whole.  Sometimes that’s a good thing – online forums for survivors of assault or abuse are doing great work and groups formed to support, for instance, gay and lesbian people living in strongly anti-gay communities no doubt save lives.  But online, any activity or proclivity can be normalized.  And for every online addiction or mental health forum, there’s a site working to normalise the most extreme opinion, like the Jihadi sites terrorists set up or their (so-called) Aryan equivalents where ‘white pride’ believers can come together. 

Then there’s Thinspiration

Thinspiration sites have their mirror in support groups for people recovering from anorexia, like the Team Recovery YouTube Channel, where users encourage each other to eat and draw a clear line between their illnesses and themselves.  Anyone who’s heard much from recovering alcoholics and drug addicts will have no trouble recognizing phrases like, ‘I am not anorexia,’ or in hearing people define their illness as something outside of themselves that they perceive as an insidious and deceitful enemy. 

One of Team Recovery’s three founders is a young woman called Rachel Cowey, who came up with the idea for the channel while in recovery from her own anorexia.  Aged just 19, Rachel’s anorexia has left her with serious health problems including malnutrition-induced osteoporosis.  It’s also left her with a sense of mission to support fellow survivors and to raise a voice in opposition to the welter of content online that celebrates starvation as an achievement and anorexia as a lifestyle choice.

Look for hashtags like #thinspiration and #thinspo and you’ll find Tumblrs, Twitter feeds and more glorifying extreme thinness. 

Try it. 

You don’t have one, right?  Me either.

See Also: Anorexia Is A "Socially Transmitted" Disorder

In fact a vanishingly small percentage of people who are a health weight do.  It’s the far end of the genetic bell curve, not an abberation but certainly very unusual.  The liklihood is that anyone who does have one is unhealthily thin.

And they have plenty of thinspiration to choose from if they want a hand getting that way.  In the two years between 2006 and 2008, the number of such sites increased by 470% - and that trend accelerated.  Thighgaphack.com offers a thighgap workout under the slogan ‘bye-bye thunder thighs,’ while in 2013 a Harley Street clinic claimed it had seen a 240% increase in the number of young women asking for a controversial liposuction-like treatment on their thighs. 

The Backlash Against 'Thighgap' Sites

Unsurprisingly, there’s a backlash against this. 

Vonda Wright, a Pittsburgh –based orthopedic surgeon and fitness expert, told CBS News in October of 2013 that ‘skinny does not mean fit or muscular.  I cannot think of one athlete I deal with’ who has a thigh gap – and Ms. Wright deals with Division I athletes, the kind of people who should be physical role models for the young.

But what headway can that make against commenters like ‘Hilary,’ who responded to a Blastbombshell.com article on thighgap dangers with the statement ‘a thighgap is attainable without going to crazy diet/exercise lengths,’ before linking to thighgaphack.com, a site attempting to commercialise this dangerous pursuit.  ‘Hilary’s’ comment went on to promise that the site offers advice on ‘hunger training’ – sinister enough on its own, but horrifying when you reflect that some of the pictures used on thinspiration sites are those of Holocaust victims.  And what headway can Ms. Wright’s sensible and easily verifiable statement that most healthy people’s thighs are too muscular not to touch make, against ‘Hilary’s’ promise of ‘a separate protocol for women who need to lose fat… [and] those who need to lose the over-developed bulky leg muscles’?

It’s the same story from guys

Disconcertingly, the cruel body image policing that’s resulting in serious illness here is being done by girls to themselves and each other.  Thighgaps can’t be blamed on male sexual fetishization; it’s an intragender competition for an unattainable goal.  Where it comes from is another matter; just because the voices on ‘proana’ sites tend to be females doesn’t mean the pressure to be thin doesn’t come from society at large, though it’s not always that simple or clear cut.  Ms. Cowey says she didn’t want to be thin; she wanted to be invisible.  Nor is anorexia/bulimia a solely female problem, though the stats speak for themselves: 20 million American women suffer from anorexia/bulimia, and 10 million American men.

The journey through thighgap sites is graphically described by ‘Sara,’ a client in the St. Louis-based Castlewood Treatment Center for people with eating disorders.  She agreed to talk to CBS only on condition that her surname be concealed, and said that her experiences on thighgap sites ‘helped to normalize what I was doing to myself.’ 

In Sara’s case, that meant a descent from captaincy of her high school swim team to purging, excessive exercise and damaging her long and short term health. 

Thighgap sites occupied a paradoxical position in Sara’s struggle with anorexia; on one side, they encouraged and normalised her behaviour.  On the other, she says, she’d see those Holocaust pictures or read of people whose eating disorders had killed them and tell herself, ‘well, at least I’m not that bad,’ recalling Rachel Cowey’s reminiscence that ‘I didn’t think I was as bad as other anorexics.’

So where now for the struggle over eating disorders and womens’ bodies? 

The National Eating Disorders Association has its own site, Proud2BMe.org, which promotes positive body image and encourages healthy attitudes about food and weight.  But the most hopeful sign is the emergence of resistance from the very same people who once facilitated the growth of these sites: young women affected by eating disorders. 

See Also: Toddlers Can Get Anorexia, Too

Women like Rachel Cowey.

If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article you can contact a relevant organization: in the USA, that’s NEDA at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/, in the UK it’s Beat at www.b-eat.co.uk/.  Canadians should go to http://www.nedic.ca/, Australians to The Butterfly Foundation at http://thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/.  Go see what recovery looks like at Rachel Cowey, Sarah Robertson and Ali McPherson’s Team Recovery Facebook page!