myname's Umber
04-03-2006, 12:37 PM
Before Spring Break, the Anorexic Challenge
By ALEX WILLIAMS
I REALLY gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I'm proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I'll do before sleep ... Yey for me."
A Californian, 18, wrote: "I'm at 108 right now. Spring break is in about 3 weeks and I want to be down to at least 99-100. That can easily be done."
From a writer identifying herself as Workhardgetskinny: "I only did 100 crunches but I'm trying to do 200 more before bed. ... 2 full days till spring break!"
The discussion took place in one of Xanga's blog rings, a string of Web logs connected by a common theme, in this case a spring break challenge, in which young women pledged to shed a lot of weight before their trips to the beaches of Florida and Mexico.
Their home pages were decorated with images of gaunt supermodels and pipe-cleaner-thin celebrities like Nicole Richie. Declarations like "Food Is Poison" and "Diet Coke Is Love" blared like banner advertisements across screens. Participants also shared their daily indulgences. One writer confessed to eating "one cracker, one strawberry and a little bit of soup" in a 24-hour period. Another recounted a lunch that consisted of a slice of mango and a stick of gum.
For most students spring break represents the promise of a beer-soaked respite from Northern cold and midterm stress, a time to let go and revive. But for a subculture of students with eating disorders, this annual weeklong bacchanalia, unfolding across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean during March and April, represents the summit of deprivation and self-denial.
--
For Ashley Filipp, a recent college graduate and recovering anorexic and bulimic, the warmup to spring break when she was a student in Colorado represented, she said, "the big time of the year." She added, "You start realizing that you have been packing on the winter pounds, the insulation, and now it's time to lose them."
Starting in her senior year of high school, Ms. Filipp, 24, recalled preparing for her annual spring break trip to Mexico at least 100 days beforehand. "As soon as we would make our plans, my best friend and I would start counting 'How many days to Cancun?' " recalled Ms. Filipp, who now works as a crisis help-line counselor for the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders in Highland Park, Ill.
By the time Ms. Filipp entered college, she said, there was no shortage of students eager to join her in what became a pre-spring-break ritual. In January and February, she said, the scene inside her sorority house at times resembled an Olympics of extreme weight loss. Some students would subsist on little more than lettuce flavored with calorie-free spray butter flavoring. Others would purge by vomiting or swallowing laxatives. Obsessive exercise was common.
--
There are hundreds of pro-ana Web sites promoting and supporting the "anorexic lifestyle," despite aggressive efforts to shut them down by eating-disorder activists. In addition the pro-anas are also present on social network sites like MySpace.com, Xanga and Livejournal.com, where blog rings topics range as widely as emo music and parasailing.
On Xanga groups of pro-ana members who link their blogs by a common interest in extreme weight loss sometimes participate in a perverse distortion of Weight Watchers. Instead of accumulating points for food eaten, points are granted for restraint: a point for every day survived under 500 calories; 6 points for every day under 100 calories; 2 points for each diet pill taken; a point for every photo of a skinny celebrity on a home page, known as "thinspiration" or "thinspo." The points are gained during group challenges aimed at losing weight before spring break. Other challenges have focused on prom season, the holidays and summer.
Not all those discussing weight loss on the site fit the criteria of anorexics or identify themselves with the ana underground. Xanga is one of many meeting places on the Web for weight-related discussion rings. John Hiler, its chief executive, said in an e-mail message: "We have zero desire to host any 'pro-ana' groups. If users report them to us, we delete them from our system."
Still, some therapists suggest that pro-ana Web pages can have some value, serving as support groups for young anorexics, who feel they have no place else to turn. Experts who treat eating disorders worry that healthy girls and young women who use spring break as an excuse to dabble in dangerous dieting techniques can tip over into self-destructive behavior.
--
The online pro-ana networks can be especially dangerous, experts say, because participants can offer irresponsible advice behind a mask of anonymity.
--
"There's been no good research to date on how these sites actually impact teenagers," said Dr. Rebecka Peebles, a pediatrician who specializes in the treatment of adolescent eating disorders at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and who is conducting a study of pro-ana and "pro-mia" (bulimia) Web sites. "But I can tell you anecdotally that some of my patients felt very triggered by these point challenges. That level of competition is just very hard to resist."
On Xanga, a 20-year-old sophomore at an undisclosed college who included photographs of herself looking attractive, shapely and healthy, wrote, "Spring break is comin' up mid march and I wanna look super hot." She explained that she wanted to plummet from 133 pounds to 110 by the time she and her friends took off for Mexico, in part by reducing her daily food intake to 500 calories, about a third of what is recommended for a young woman, as well as exercising. But, she added, "I always get sick when I run and don't eat enough. Does that happen to you guys?"
"Yes," one respondent wrote, "if I eat under 300 calories and work out for several days, I start to feel sick. I hate that, but I end up eating a little bit because I don't want to faint. Luv & support."
Though it is not possible to estimate the number of young women participating in extreme spring break weight-loss contests, or to assess how the popularity of such contests has grown, eating disorder experts say that the rise of spring break as a cultural phenomenon might play a role.
"Every year spring break seems to get bigger and bigger," Dr. Maine said, adding that body-image pressure also rises. She said the expectation that you have to "party like a rock star and be over the top" also "includes looking like a rock star," that is, fashionably, even dangerously, skinny.
It's also an opportunity to show a little skin, and parade in front of the opposite sex.
"It's showoff time," said Eileen Adams, a psychologist and treatment specialist at Remuda Ranch, a Bible-based eating disorder center in Wickenburg, Ariz. "That puts a lot of pressure on young people."
And most young women are already feeling pressure, at least when it comes to body-image anxieties. Eating disorder associations say that about 86 percent of the approximately 10 million American girls and women — and one million boys and men — who suffer from an eating disorder reported the onset of their condition by 20.
The pressure has only become worse over the years, therapists said, as spring break has become more sexualized at beaches like South Padre Island, Tex., or Cancun or on MTV. String bikini and wet T-shirt contests make a simple weeklong break from teachers and exams look more like a Mardi Gras for the 18-to-21 set.
Some therapists said the letting go ethic of spring break in general can also serve as a dangerous excuse for students to push the frontiers of good sense and self-preservation. Bulimics in particular are at risk, Dr. Bunnell of the Renfrew Center said, since they tend to be drawn to extremes, as exemplified by their binge and purge cycles. Anorexics, by contrast, are generally motivated by issues of control; they are often reserved, socially anxious perfectionists, who attempt to master their food intake because they feel they cannot control other aspects of their lives. For them, he said, "anything that intensifies body image anxiety will encourage them to be symptomatic."
On a Xanga blog ring called the Bikini Coming Soon Challenge, one 19-year-old related the anxieties she was experiencing only days after returning from a week on the beach with friends: "Tonight I was looking on Facebook at people's albums from spring break. I saw the guy's album that I kind of was starting to like before spring break. In his album were pictures of all these pretty girls — tan, skinny, looked perfect in their bikinis — and all these guys were commenting on the pics: 'She is so hot!' or 'wooowww!!' Stuff like that. Seriously, that's what I want.
"This just makes me want to lose so much weight and then have those guys see me."
She concluded: "I hate boys, I hate my body. Goodnight."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/fashion/sundaystyles/02BREAK.html?ei=5070&en=947ae2d901fa8e7e&ex=1144123200&pagewanted=print
By ALEX WILLIAMS
I REALLY gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I'm proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I'll do before sleep ... Yey for me."
A Californian, 18, wrote: "I'm at 108 right now. Spring break is in about 3 weeks and I want to be down to at least 99-100. That can easily be done."
From a writer identifying herself as Workhardgetskinny: "I only did 100 crunches but I'm trying to do 200 more before bed. ... 2 full days till spring break!"
The discussion took place in one of Xanga's blog rings, a string of Web logs connected by a common theme, in this case a spring break challenge, in which young women pledged to shed a lot of weight before their trips to the beaches of Florida and Mexico.
Their home pages were decorated with images of gaunt supermodels and pipe-cleaner-thin celebrities like Nicole Richie. Declarations like "Food Is Poison" and "Diet Coke Is Love" blared like banner advertisements across screens. Participants also shared their daily indulgences. One writer confessed to eating "one cracker, one strawberry and a little bit of soup" in a 24-hour period. Another recounted a lunch that consisted of a slice of mango and a stick of gum.
For most students spring break represents the promise of a beer-soaked respite from Northern cold and midterm stress, a time to let go and revive. But for a subculture of students with eating disorders, this annual weeklong bacchanalia, unfolding across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean during March and April, represents the summit of deprivation and self-denial.
--
For Ashley Filipp, a recent college graduate and recovering anorexic and bulimic, the warmup to spring break when she was a student in Colorado represented, she said, "the big time of the year." She added, "You start realizing that you have been packing on the winter pounds, the insulation, and now it's time to lose them."
Starting in her senior year of high school, Ms. Filipp, 24, recalled preparing for her annual spring break trip to Mexico at least 100 days beforehand. "As soon as we would make our plans, my best friend and I would start counting 'How many days to Cancun?' " recalled Ms. Filipp, who now works as a crisis help-line counselor for the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders in Highland Park, Ill.
By the time Ms. Filipp entered college, she said, there was no shortage of students eager to join her in what became a pre-spring-break ritual. In January and February, she said, the scene inside her sorority house at times resembled an Olympics of extreme weight loss. Some students would subsist on little more than lettuce flavored with calorie-free spray butter flavoring. Others would purge by vomiting or swallowing laxatives. Obsessive exercise was common.
--
There are hundreds of pro-ana Web sites promoting and supporting the "anorexic lifestyle," despite aggressive efforts to shut them down by eating-disorder activists. In addition the pro-anas are also present on social network sites like MySpace.com, Xanga and Livejournal.com, where blog rings topics range as widely as emo music and parasailing.
On Xanga groups of pro-ana members who link their blogs by a common interest in extreme weight loss sometimes participate in a perverse distortion of Weight Watchers. Instead of accumulating points for food eaten, points are granted for restraint: a point for every day survived under 500 calories; 6 points for every day under 100 calories; 2 points for each diet pill taken; a point for every photo of a skinny celebrity on a home page, known as "thinspiration" or "thinspo." The points are gained during group challenges aimed at losing weight before spring break. Other challenges have focused on prom season, the holidays and summer.
Not all those discussing weight loss on the site fit the criteria of anorexics or identify themselves with the ana underground. Xanga is one of many meeting places on the Web for weight-related discussion rings. John Hiler, its chief executive, said in an e-mail message: "We have zero desire to host any 'pro-ana' groups. If users report them to us, we delete them from our system."
Still, some therapists suggest that pro-ana Web pages can have some value, serving as support groups for young anorexics, who feel they have no place else to turn. Experts who treat eating disorders worry that healthy girls and young women who use spring break as an excuse to dabble in dangerous dieting techniques can tip over into self-destructive behavior.
--
The online pro-ana networks can be especially dangerous, experts say, because participants can offer irresponsible advice behind a mask of anonymity.
--
"There's been no good research to date on how these sites actually impact teenagers," said Dr. Rebecka Peebles, a pediatrician who specializes in the treatment of adolescent eating disorders at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and who is conducting a study of pro-ana and "pro-mia" (bulimia) Web sites. "But I can tell you anecdotally that some of my patients felt very triggered by these point challenges. That level of competition is just very hard to resist."
On Xanga, a 20-year-old sophomore at an undisclosed college who included photographs of herself looking attractive, shapely and healthy, wrote, "Spring break is comin' up mid march and I wanna look super hot." She explained that she wanted to plummet from 133 pounds to 110 by the time she and her friends took off for Mexico, in part by reducing her daily food intake to 500 calories, about a third of what is recommended for a young woman, as well as exercising. But, she added, "I always get sick when I run and don't eat enough. Does that happen to you guys?"
"Yes," one respondent wrote, "if I eat under 300 calories and work out for several days, I start to feel sick. I hate that, but I end up eating a little bit because I don't want to faint. Luv & support."
Though it is not possible to estimate the number of young women participating in extreme spring break weight-loss contests, or to assess how the popularity of such contests has grown, eating disorder experts say that the rise of spring break as a cultural phenomenon might play a role.
"Every year spring break seems to get bigger and bigger," Dr. Maine said, adding that body-image pressure also rises. She said the expectation that you have to "party like a rock star and be over the top" also "includes looking like a rock star," that is, fashionably, even dangerously, skinny.
It's also an opportunity to show a little skin, and parade in front of the opposite sex.
"It's showoff time," said Eileen Adams, a psychologist and treatment specialist at Remuda Ranch, a Bible-based eating disorder center in Wickenburg, Ariz. "That puts a lot of pressure on young people."
And most young women are already feeling pressure, at least when it comes to body-image anxieties. Eating disorder associations say that about 86 percent of the approximately 10 million American girls and women — and one million boys and men — who suffer from an eating disorder reported the onset of their condition by 20.
The pressure has only become worse over the years, therapists said, as spring break has become more sexualized at beaches like South Padre Island, Tex., or Cancun or on MTV. String bikini and wet T-shirt contests make a simple weeklong break from teachers and exams look more like a Mardi Gras for the 18-to-21 set.
Some therapists said the letting go ethic of spring break in general can also serve as a dangerous excuse for students to push the frontiers of good sense and self-preservation. Bulimics in particular are at risk, Dr. Bunnell of the Renfrew Center said, since they tend to be drawn to extremes, as exemplified by their binge and purge cycles. Anorexics, by contrast, are generally motivated by issues of control; they are often reserved, socially anxious perfectionists, who attempt to master their food intake because they feel they cannot control other aspects of their lives. For them, he said, "anything that intensifies body image anxiety will encourage them to be symptomatic."
On a Xanga blog ring called the Bikini Coming Soon Challenge, one 19-year-old related the anxieties she was experiencing only days after returning from a week on the beach with friends: "Tonight I was looking on Facebook at people's albums from spring break. I saw the guy's album that I kind of was starting to like before spring break. In his album were pictures of all these pretty girls — tan, skinny, looked perfect in their bikinis — and all these guys were commenting on the pics: 'She is so hot!' or 'wooowww!!' Stuff like that. Seriously, that's what I want.
"This just makes me want to lose so much weight and then have those guys see me."
She concluded: "I hate boys, I hate my body. Goodnight."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/fashion/sundaystyles/02BREAK.html?ei=5070&en=947ae2d901fa8e7e&ex=1144123200&pagewanted=print