I’m sick of this crap…
I am so sick of all this proana/mia and thinspo crap.
Yeah, I know they say if I don’t like it I can choose not to look at it, but really? I mean it’s everywhere I turn online. It’s on youtube, it’s on tumblr, it’s on facebook and on twitter. It’s like a cockroach infestation. I don’t CHOOSE to look at it; it imposes itself on me.
It’s on all kinds of tags and innocuous-sounding places. Sure, I can look away or go to another page or something, but by then I’ve already seen some of it and you can’t erase an image or a sentence from your brain once you’ve seen it. So don’t tell me it’s not hurting anyone. It’s hurting me, and I didn’t ask for that.
But aside from that.
It’s insulting. I did not wake up one day and make a lifestyle choice. Are you nuts? This is a mental illness and it has spoiled my health, my life, my family, my friendships, my dreams for the future. Don’t denigrate that with nonsense about lifestyle choices.
And portraying it as if it’s a choice does a LOT of damage. EDs are hard enough for non-sufferers to understand as it is. Claiming it’s a lifestyle choice rather than a mental illness makes the problem all the worse and that causes a lot of difficulties for sufferers when they seek help and are met with scorn and ignorance from people who think it’s all just rebellious stubborn behaviour that can be switched on or off at will.
And if it IS a lifestyle choice for you, then that makes what you’re doing even worse. This lifestyle choice of yours will kill you or at the very least ruin you health and relationships. Why would you support other people in making a choice like that?
I get so tired of seeing stuff like this GW: xxlb, LW: xxlb, UGW: xxlb. So what? Huh? Why do you need to tell me that? It looks like a scoreboard in some kind of sick, messed-up game. I really find it insulting that people are treating something that is absolute hell for me as if it’s a game.
Why do you need to broadcast this stuff all over twitter and tumblr and everywhere? Why are you so proud of it? Do you really have so few scruples that you don’t care about the effect this kind of stuff can have on other, vulnerable people who have as much right to be on that site as you do?
And then there are the pictures and videos of people posing in unnatural positions to show off their rack of ribs, or their thigh gap, or their collar bones. And the look-at-my-tube videos. And how about those subtler pictures where they are just showing you their new pencil case or pet alligator or what-the-fuck-ever, and oh, look, there’s my hip bone there in the corner, because I always walk around with my pants rolled down, honest. I didn’t even NOTICE that. Oh well.’
And tips? Really?? If someone with an ED wants abuse and motivation for their ED behaviours, they need look no further than the abusive voice of their ED in their own head. They don’t need tips and abuse from outside.
Sure, people have the right to do and think and say what they like to an extent, but there has to be some kind of limits. When it infringes upon the human rights of someone else, then it’s no longer freedom of speech they’re exercising; at that point, it counts as abuse.
They say it’s perfectly fine because all parties consent to be there on those sites, but does that really make it fine? If you have a drug addiction and so does your friend, is it really right to encourage them in their behaviour because they say they want you to and you’re being supportive? If your friend asks for tips on how to commit suicide, does that give you the right to oblige? Even if your answer is yes, do you really want that on your conscience? And if the answer to that is yes, then do you even have a conscience?
Proana/mia sites often purport to be recovery-minded which deceives some people into going there. They say they are being supportive and helping each other live with a condition that they can’t or don’t want to get rid of. But when you read further, you usually find that there are pages of tips and ‘encouragement’ which is among the most abusive stuff you can think up. It tells the reader s/he is inferior, weak, worthless, etc (insert any degrading adjective) if s/he doesn’t conform to this destructive set of rules and ideas.
No, you can’t CAUSE someone to have an eating disorder, but have you heard the expression ‘genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger?’ Well, these websites are creating environments with hairline triggers.
They don’t force people to go there or to stay once they realise where they are, but they are exploiting people’s weaknesses by creating such places. If you set up an alcoholism-friendly bar and then say ‘well, no one’s forcing anyone to come in and drink here’, then does that make you morally right?
Eating disorders ultimately kill people. Period. So being proana/mia is aiding and abetting a killer. Yeah, that’s a strong thing to say. Well, good. I stand by it.
And if you’re thinking of sending hate, save your breath. I’m not interested.
