Pro Anna Site example essay topic

Websites promoting anorexia, created by anorexics themselves, are of growing concern. The Eating Disorders Association estimates there are an estimated ten million women and one million men suffering from anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive eating in the US alone. Pro-Anna sites are helping to give incentive to sufferers to throw up their last meal and to reinforce their 500-calorie-a-day diet. These so-called clubs may not cause anorexia but they encourage members to lose weight and avoid recovery. The first website I visited was called "Ana Angel 112 (web)". I found this website through Yahoo by typing in "pro anna".

The opening page of this site declares that it is a pro-anna site and that anyone who was not anorexic must leave. A 19-year old girl named Kristen who is 5'7" and weighs 145 pounds created this site. She started this site for motivation to reach her ideal weight of 112 pounds and a size four figure. There have been 1914 visitors to this website. As I clicked my way through each page of this site, I was astonished to see all the strategies mentioned to lose weight. For instance, the 2-4-6-8 Plan consists of a five day plan where one would intake 200 calories on day one, 400 calories on day two, 600 calories on day three, 800 calories on day four, and between 900 and 100 calories on day five.

This was especially striking to me because the thought of someone eating only two hundred calories a day is sickening. There was also a page of tips that includes the advice to "start a pro-anna website this way, you have to stick to your convictions, or else be hypocritical". I found the tips to be very smart. The ways this girl gets around eating her food and the small things she does to lose weight seem very planned out. However, in the same effect, I find it sad that her life is consumed with how and what she eats, or doesn't for that matter. There were no pictures or chat rooms in this site.

Kristen did encourage that people submit their thoughts by e-mail. The second website I found through Yahoo was web When I first opened the page I found pictures of beautiful models, all of which were extremely thin. The text on the screen included "6 Minutes in the Life of an Ana". It was so heartbreaking to read that all of the six minutes were consumed on her weight and how others looked. I don't understand how people spend so much time on something so trivial.

On the left side of the page, there are thirteen pages that one can choose from. They range from tips / tricks to pictures to menus. On the statistics page, it explains how many calories you need to stay alive and how your body works. It also lets you calculate your BMI and tells you if you are emaciated, anorexic, underweight, normal, or overweight. There was a "help" page that listed messages from girls looking for people to help motivate them and to talk to whom shared similar characteristics.

The picture page was the most interesting to me. It wasn't of regular girls suffering from anorexia but of models and actresses. This included pictures of Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Audrey Hepburn, and Angie Harmon, all of whom are beautiful and thin. The workout page listed specific target areas and how to attack them. I didn't find this website to be as disturbing as the other one. The quotes were from celebrities but they didn't pertain to anorexia.

For instance there is one from Walt Disney that says, "If you can dream it, you can do it". The most surprising thing to me was the Menu page. It consisted of a diet for Monday with only 345 calorie intake and for the rest of the week the majority of calories was in the two hundreds. After viewing these pro-anna sites I have a better understand of the life of an anorexic and how they think.

It is a sad reality. Anorexics and bulimics rely on these sites to encourage and motivate them. They seek help and inspiration from these pages. They find understanding and people who can identify with them. The ages of these viewers range as do the weight, height, and location. However, they all share a common goal: to be thin.

From these websites I have learned that anorexics, bulimics, and anyone suffering from an eating disorder, spend so much of their time thinking about food and how they look. Their daily life has been so deeply affected. Instead of utilizing their time doing something productive, they spend their time thinking about themselves. I do believe that these people need help and that these websites are doing nothing but more damage. It is encouraging a disease. It is pro-disease and that should not be tolerated.

However, everyone is entitled to freedom of speech and the internet can not be patrolled. Therefore, the only way to undermine this cyberspace network is to educate people about the disease and how damaging it is to yourself and your body. Educating people would increase knowledge and lead to overall awareness. As for the people who visit these sites, the help for them is harder. Since they have a deaf ear to professional help, we could possibly get them involved in numerous activities that have nothing to do with food. Community service and volunteer work would allow them to get their mind off of themselves and how they look and let them focus on others.

These diseases are affecting millions and more importantly it can affect people we know and love. As peer educators it is our job to help prevent this disease from spreading.