Wednesday, March 26, 2008

An explanation of why we use only faces

Today a friend asked why we show mostly faces.
There is a phenomenon within pro-ana communities calling "thinspiration" which Faces of Pro-Ana disagrees with. Thinspiration takes pictures of people, often people sick with an eating disorder, drug addiction or other disease, and uses them to motivate pro-ana members to lose weight.
We show face pictures and the occasional body picture, but we choose pictures which cannot be used as thinspiration. We do not want to further this phenomenon, as it is disturbing in and of itself but for other reasons as well. Many of the girls participating in pro-ana sites and groups are minors, often under 16, and many post pictures of themselves in swimsuits or underwear to show weight loss. These are often some of the pictures which are taken and used for thinspiration, and it should be obviously why this is so worrisome.
While Faces of Pro-Ana wishes to show the people behind the pro-ana movement, we do not wish to contribute to it. That is why you will only see the occasional body shot- and even then, the people are fully clothed and not pictures which would be used for thinspiration.

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