Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Welcome to Faces of Pro-Ana

This blog was inspired by the Faces of Meth website. Just as that website shows pictures meant to shock and scare and educate the public about the very real side of meth, this site is to show the scary and very real threat of another public health risk- Pro-Ana sites and communities.

Wikipedia says, "Pro-ana refers to the promotion or support of anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder. It is often referred to simply as 'ana' and is sometimes affectionately personified by anorexics as a girl named Ana."

It goes further to say, "Members of these support groups often:

* Compete with each other at losing weight, or fast together in displays of solidarity

* Commiserate with one another after breaking fast or binging

* Advise on how to best induce vomiting and use laxatives

* Give tips on hiding weight loss from parents and doctors

As an encouragement to further lose weight, members often exchange 'thinspiration' (or 'thinspo'): image or video montages of slim women, often celebrities, who may be anything from naturally slim to emaciated with visibly-protruding bones."

NEDA (The National Eating Disorders Association) "actively speaks out against pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites. These sites provide no useful information on treatment but instead encourage and falsely support those who, sadly, are ill but do not seek help."

We agree with this outlook, and thus, we present this site. We hope it does shock and scare, as Pro-Ana should be a grave concern, but also informs.

Welcome to Faces of Pro-Ana. Each post, we will take pictures posted on pro-ana websites by the members themselves. Some are posted as "progress shots," intended to show weight loss. Some are posted as motivation. All are posted by them members, of the members. (We do not re-post pictures of other people the members post as "thinspiration" or "reverse thinspiration." We only post the pictures the members choose to post of themselves.) If they disturb you, that is their intended purpose. These are the faces of the Pro-Ana movement.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the hell, ok first of all im in this wonderful little archive of faces of pro-anorexia. . . and i know for a fact that some if not the majority of your pictures on this site do not represent people with anorexia. All you guys did was copy and paste some pictures of people appearing to be sad and called them anorexic. second of all im in this galery and i don't ever emeber you asking to take a copyrighted pucture of mine and pasting it on here, and another thing, you losers have no idea what you are even doing so stop!

P.S. i am also a member of pro-anorexia and im very proud of that too!

Anonymous said...

You've collected 100+ pictures of some people that don't even have an eating disorder.. Way to completely annihilate your way of "educating the public" away from eating disorders. You're a moron =)

Anonymous said...

Kudos to you for this... that board has be majorly destructive for years. Only recently did they change their guise that anoreixa is a choice and not a diease. Thank you for showing their faces, their hyporcary for what it really is... since you are all so upset little butterflies go on another fast together...

Anonymous said...

Hmmm....you just stole random pictures of girls from online and then made a completely false claim that they were pro-ana didn't you? these are pictures of normal girls....it seems strange that this is your idea of educating people and 'shocking' people about pro-ana....what was the point may I ask? Its doubtful that most of these girls even have an eating disorder. This seems like a somewhat pointless excercise...

Anonymous said...

These are pictures of ordinary, healthy young women Do they know you have used their pictures on this site. I would understand if you were trying to help people who are ill due to a serious mental health problem (which is what eating disorders are) but I dont see how you will achieve this by posting pictures of girls that do not have an eating disorder. I think you may need to rethink this page a little rather than just using pictures of girls that have nothing to do with the pro-ana movement

Anonymous said...

You know I wonder if all those pissed off little girls whose pictures ou have posted realize that their "real girl thinspiration" are stolen pictures that don't belong to them? Yet they seem to have no qualms posting those everywhere. At least I'm not staring at these proana girls so I don't eat; I just can't keep anything down after seeing so many ugly faces all at once.

Anonymous said...

Not a single girl on there looks even slightly anorexic.

Next time you are trying to make 'Welcome to Faces of Pro-ana' site, you should probably get some realistic photos, as opposed to a bunch of fatties.

Good luck next time!

lol

gabby said...

Hey there,
Wow, so many people are getting the concept of this so wrong. Where do you find most of your pictures? Which websites/forums?

Anonymous said...

These girls look perfectly healthy. I would like to know where exactly you got these pictures from, I'm sure half of them don't even know their photos are on here. I think you need to do something better with your life instead of accusing innocent girls of a label such as "pro-anorexia."

Anonymous said...

lot of these pro ana's/pro recovery whatEVER the hell they're calling themselves LOOK FAT FAT FAT to me, so should get the hell off these sites, as they're prob supporting the dangerously thin girls (of which there are strangely only a few fotos). dont tell me pro ana's a myth created by all those lazy fat wannabeskinnies out there. disappointing :-(

Anonymous said...

I think your efforts are noble. I think these pro-anas do a lot of harm. I often find that within these communities there are girls really afflicted with anorexia and those that think the idea is like cool or something. The girls who are really anorexic end up getting egged on to be thinner by these girls trying to play the part. I myself had posted pictures of myself as an attempt to try a scare people. I guess it scared some but these pictures thankfully without my face have been all over the place on account of them thinking it's thinspiration. It's really alarming considering my bmi was below 12 in most of them which almost killed me and would likely kill anyone who attempted to model that. Yes I know I should have not even released them but at the time I was seeing all these model portraits of anorexia and photoshopped images that glamourized the disease. I wanted to say this is what anorexia really looks like and it's not pretty or glamourous. Some of these girls are likely mad that you are using their pictures but I think they are getting a taste of their own medicine. They use others pictures with no afterthough and sometimes don't even remove them when asked.