If you’re suffering from any kind of medical condition, from headaches or mild depression, infertility problems to cancer, you don’t just have to deal with physical pain and discomfort, but you can spend a lot of your time feeling unbelievably scared and alone. Although medical professionals are there to help, you can’t call them whenever you please and their approach is often far too clinical. In the same vein, although friends and family offer love and support, how can they really empathise with what you’re going through?
This is why the Internet has always been (and is increasingly becoming) an amazing place for those living with the same problems to connect regardless of where they are or even who they are in their ‘real’ offline lives. From answering questions, sharing experiences or just offering support there are huge amounts of people who rely on online communities to help deal with their illnesses, problems or conditions in some way or another.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that there are many communities for people living with eating disorders, whether they’re run by medical professionals, charities or just a group of individuals or who aren’t connected to a wider organisation in any way at all.
In recent years the communities for those with eating disorders that have attracted the most mainstream attention are those deemed to be pro-anorexia (pro-ana) or pro-bulimia (pro-mia). These terms may have been coined by the media, but they’ve since been adopted by many members of the so-called pro-ana community. By its very definition, a community is a group of people and although they may hold the same views in many respects, it’d be impossible to say exactly how the global pro-ana community defines itself because it many ways it’s very guarded and secretive. However, it’s generally believed by some members past and present as well as online sources that pro-ana is about supporting others with anorexia, talking about the illness and sometimes (but importantly not always) seeing it as a positive lifestyle choice as opposed to something that needs to be addressed and dealt with.
It’s not hard to see why so many people have been up in arms about these kinds of communities for years now, following various reports that certain websites have been found to be worryingly reinforcing the idea that having an eating disorder shouldn’t be seen as a problem, with tips about how to not eat, so-called ‘thinspiration’ photographs and forms of bullying.
But the question is, should these communities be banned?
Various charities, organisations and even individuals have campaigned to have pro-ana and pro-mia communities banned or at least more closely moderated over the past few years. They understandably see some the behaviour on these sites as not only damaging to those with eating disorders but also to those that don’t already.
Recently there’s been increased call for these sites to be banned from Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani (pictured left), who launched a campaign back in March to put an end to the most active and damaging online communities.
I understand why the communities could well be both emotionally and physically harmful and I know many of those looking to change things have everyone’s best interests at heart, but I can’t help but think that an outright ban might not be the best solution to what is a rather deep-set, complicated and personal illness.
Many of these communities have been established for years, which has led countless users to make strong connections with others, ingraining this online community into their offline lives. In this way, engaging in these communities is not just about mutual support or a bad habit that needs to be broken, it’s become an integral part of their daily lives.
Those looking to put an end to pro-ana communities think this dependency is one of the main problems, assuming that many of those suffering with eating disorders will turn to help online as opposed to confiding in friends, family and medical professionals. However, simply erasing these communities will leave a lot of people very scared and alone and it could certainly be argued that instead of pushing individuals to get help, banning their access could push them even further away.
Unfortunately there’s no sure-fire answer to any these problems and although the communities are in many ways very damaging both physically and emotional, you can’t escape the fact that for many they’re highly important support networks that will take time to step away from.
Image via S’s Flickr and Kekkoz’s Flickr.
