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July 26, 2001
It's 2 am, there's too
It's 2 am, there's too much noise, don't you people ever wanna go to bed?
Yesterday I came across something that simply horrified me. Pro-anorexia sites, that call themselves pro-ana. That's right, web sites aimed at the promotion and encouragement of a dangerous and often life-threatening mental illness. Anorexics trade tips on how to starve, how to fend off concerned friends and relatives, how to idolize being reduced to a skeleton, how to distort their thinking out of belief. Doing a few web searches turned up hundreds of these sites, many with large message boards and some even with live chatrooms.
These sites are an abomination. They are the product of a mind that is not just diseased but determined to spread its cancerous self-cruelty onto others. Anorexia is ultimately about control, about power. Anorexics find power in starvation, power in resisting the physical cravings and needs of the body. They find power, as well, in the warped perceptions of their world, where 100 pounds is "fat" and eating a single cookie is considered a monstrous binge.
Why does the anorexic do what she (it still is usually a she) does? How can vision become so distorted, reason become so fragmented, senses disappear? Anorexia is a madness where the world becomes a funhouse mirror, where needs are turned into indulgences and cruelties into kindnesses. And now this disease, sneering at the world's futile attempts to slow it down, is making its insidious presence felt on the web.
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Posted by Tyrone at July 26, 2001 03:05 AM