I love Tumblr. It’s great. Just by scrolling through my dashboard I can see things on my favorite fandoms, get study advice, find life hacks, check in on friends, and see just about anything else. One day, someone I follow on Tumblr made a post seeking to follow more thinspo/pro ana blogs. Now, I’m a curious person, and so I decided to scroll through these tags. Big mistake.
You see, I once had anorexia. It’s a battle I won nearly a decade ago. I’m all for supporting people who are currently engaged in that battle. I was hoping that thinspo was a tag for people looking to get in shape. I was hoping that the pro ana/pro mia tags were tags that support people with those eating disorders. What I found was the complete opposite.
There are whole blogs out there that are dedicated to glorifying eating disorders. Seeing the posts these people were making hurt me so much. It hurt me to see that there are people who encourage others to do this to themselves. It hurt me to see people hating themselves because they “ate too many calories” or “didn’t exercise enough.” It especially pains me to see the pictures that people post of themselves, because they remind me of when I saw a skeleton draped with skin staring back at me in the mirror.
I hate these blogs because they promote something terrible that I would never wish on anyone. I hate them because it is solely a place where people who have no one to care about them go to slowly waste away. I hate these blogs because they’re giving people the tools to kill themselves.
Now do I hate these bloggers? No. I can’t hate these bloggers, because I understand that eating disorders are a psychological disorder. When I had anorexia, I didn’t recognize that I was sick. I didn’t recognize that I was killing my body. Looking back, I fully realize this, and it terrifies me. I find it easier to love these bloggers. Loving them of course, means reaching out to them. Loving them means giving them resources to get better. I don’t want anyone to waste away because they think nobody cares about them.
If you know someone who suffers from an eating disorder, even if that person is you, here is a good resource to help.
