Imagine you’re curled up in bed on a Sunday morning scouring the Internet for a list of the greatest inspirational speakers of the 20th century for a public speaking paper, when a tagged blog post catches your eye.
Thinspiration.
The word sounds kind of nice, you decide, because you know that freshman 15 which snuck up on you last year is still lingering, and you wouldn’t mind a few tips for losing that extra padding. Curious, you click the link and are directed to a young girl’s weight loss blog. It’s full of pictures of celebrities and other young woman who are incredibly thin and boney. Along with the pictures are little updates given by the girl about her weight loss progress, only you are dismayed to find that she gushes about not eating anything all day. And how she has lost five pounds in just two days.
Sounds scary, right? Sadly, thinspiration along with several other eating disorder trends are on the rise among young women. And the Internet is the quickest and most efficient way of spreading the message that skinny is the only type of pretty. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that our generation’s next battle with eating disorders and body issues would manifest itself online, where almost anyone can reach these “inspiring” messages.
Thinspiration comes in many different forms, but mainly surfaces as pictures and videos posted online of skeletal women with ribs and hipbones that stand out against skin. They are used as motivational tools to encourage young girls to continue on their weight loss journey, in the hopes of one day becoming as skinny and “perfect” as the models the images portray. Two of the newest “idols” for thinspiration seekers are the Middleton sisters, who rose to the international spotlight after the oldest sister, Kate, married Prince William in April 2011. The sisters have not only become loved for their relations with royalty, but also for their thin frames, making the women perfect for young girls seeking newer and more recently popular examples of what their bodies should look like, even if genetic make-up will often make their goal completely unattainable.
In the mid-1940s, America’s ideal of beauty could be found in one blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell named Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was curvaceous, self-assured and beautiful. Women strived to have her body, which was what we would now consider soft and maybe even chubby. Today, producers and talent scouts might tell Monroe that she’d need to lose a little weight before her next role.
The fact that society’s perception of what can be considered beautiful or even “sex symbol” worthy has completely reversed in the last sixty years scares a lot of young women, including Alisha Estabrook, who shudders at the thought of how far some girls are willing to go to find “perfection.”
“It’s disturbing to think that people strive to have the look of being so skinny that every bone sticks out,” Estabrook, a junior studying communications at Ohio University, said. “I can’t imagine what this will do to a girl who is uncomfortable with her body and stumbles across this someday.”
But thinspiration is not a stand-alone concept. More often than not, this motivational strategy can be found on sites that promote Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia, also known as pro anorexia and pro bulimia. These sites are created for people who accept eating disorders and the people who suffer from them, and sometimes even describe anorexia and bulimia as being “lifestyle choices” rather than health risk behaviors that require treatment. What some might consider to be even more worrisome stems from the fact that a quick Google search with the right search terms can bring up one of these sites without much trouble, making it possible for almost anyone with internet access to stumble across a thinspiration blog.
“If you’re surfing on a lot of websites or reading a lot of blogs that give you messages about ‘dieting is the way to go’ and ‘thin is what you want to be’ then you can really put yourself in a bad position,” notes Jonathan Mosko, a psychologist with Ohio University’s Counseling and Psychological Services. “The more things you expose yourself to, the more you’re going to view that as the reality and you can really run into trouble there.”
And these various health risks alone that go along with thinspiration and eating disorders are enough to make people cringe.
According to a 2005 health consequences and risk sheet provided by the National Eating Disorders Association, people who partake in the habits mentioned above can ultimately suffer from slow heart rate and low blood pressure along with a reduction in bone density. Other health risks include muscle loss and the potential for kidney failure, which can result from severe dehydration.
Online groups and forums that support these disorders do often place warning signs before web surfers are taken to the home page, advising against the types of discussions that can be found within the site. These warnings are often times specifically directed at individuals who are recovering from their own eating disorder, and might be tempted to revert back to their old habits.
But for Grace Stees, a junior studying graphic design, and other students like her, a warning sometimes just is not enough.
“It kills me to think that some of my friends who have suffered with disorders like this and have since recovered might someday find these websites,” Stees said.
There is no denying that a large part of the body issues young people suffer from are derived from the media. As a generation, young females are bombarded with images of what many consider the ideal human body hundreds of times throughout a single day. And these images are no longer limited to photoshopped pictures on magazine covers. They hit viewers through TV commercials, reality programming, blockbuster movies and even the occasional celebrity endorsement.
And who can deny the sometimes-magical pull of the fashion world? The catwalk models with their slender legs and thin, angular faces are also at the center of the thinspiration movement, becoming more than the simply living mannequins that society has stereotyped these women as being. To thinspiration bloggers, these models become the ideal. And often, these bloggers don’t look at the healthy ways in which the models maintain their figures, but rather focus in on how they themselves can get to that weight as quickly as possible.
Haley Loudin, a Kent State University senior studying fashion design, describes how the “fit models” in the school’s design program must fit into a size six or eight, because this allows the clothes to be easily transferred from the dress forms in which they are created, to the person.
“But once you become a fit model, you must maintain the same size for the whole year,” Loudin explains with a small sigh. “And no precautionary measures are taken to ensure that [the models] are taking care of themselves in a healthy way, unless they ask for help.”
But the media and fashion industries alone cannot be blamed as the singular cause for a generation’s need to be “thinspired.” Many thinspiration bloggers report feeling stress about school or work, and often feel that the best way to handle this stress is to control one of the only things that is singularly theirs; body weight.
Young women have also agreed that family and friends affect how they see themselves, especially when the opinions or comments are negative and encourage the bloggers to change their body weight.
“[Family members] influence how you look at yourself, how you see yourself, and how you see others,” Estabrook said. “If a person doesn’t have a strong family influence, then school and media become a huge part of how to view yourself.”
And when it comes to relationships with classmates and peers, the same basic idea of how people refer to and treat weight and body issues around a young person holds true.
“Peers can be a positive or negative influence,” Mosko is quick to point out. “If you’re around a lot of peers who are constantly dieting, constantly complaining about weight and calories and exercise, then you’re probably going to internalize a lot of those things as well.”
So the question is, who needs to take the first step in changing how our society defines the “perfect body” or the term beautiful? Should it be the media and the hundreds of daily messages that are pushed into society? Or should it begin at a more personal level, inside the homes and schools of the young people affected by these disorders? Chances are that there is no right or correct first step to take, and the world may never have the answers for this issue that it seeks. But maybe Marilyn Monroe was on the right track back in her days of glory when she said, “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”
For more information on eating disorders and their various associations, please visit the National Eating Disorders Association website at www.NationalEatingDisorders.org, call the helpline at 800-931-2237 or contact a local eating disorder specialist in your area.
Photo courtesy of Pintrest