Ana and Mia : Secret Society
 

Now this make me very mad :mad:


Secret Society

I don't think it's sick. I think it's about people with disorders looking for support without condemnation. People who have never had an eating disorder don't realize how lonely it is to try and hide it all of the time. This gives them some relief.

I am surprised that most people have no clue what Ana and Mia means, really.

I agree, if you look at the site, it's not a demonic cult of girls planning vomit circles around the country. These are people (men and women) with a serious problem and need people in their circle to give them support. It's just like any other disorder and while it's probably not a good thing to see these bracelets on a child, at least you know they are trying to deal with the problem.

This is nothing new. Maybe more extreme. Girls (and guys) have an entire system of bracelets and so forth that is a code for what they have done sexually and otherwise.

It wasn't around when I was in middle school, but it is now. Hell if I know the colors or anything, but it find it kind of funny and very sad.

I do not like what it promotes. I do not think it is just a support system. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way.


Blue Dragonfly

But they aren't really trying to deal with the problem. In their eyes they don't see that they have a problem. It's everyone else who has a problem with them. I agree with Smiley, what they are promoting and supporting is extremely unhealthy and can be fatal. It's not like they are trying to promote being thin and healthy, they are promiting thin at all costs...and the thinner you are the better. They really don't have any idea that what they are do can kill them.
They are not trying stop the eating disorder, they are trying to keep it going. I'm not sure you fully understand the serious health problems that come along with eating disorders.

How can encouraging someone to purge quietly be a means of support?

I'm not sure you fully understand eating disorders.

I've read a number of different eating disorder-related boards, and have run into a number of girls who are pro-anorexia. Almost all of them realize that they have a problem. (Why else would they be at a website about eating disorders?) They may not recognize the severity of their problems (although some do) -- but what it comes down to 99 percent of the time is that they realize they're screwed up but consider the positives of their disease (weight loss) to outweigh all the negatives. There are very few girls in today's society who don't understand that anorexia can bring long-term health concerns, shortened lifespans or even death. In many cases, girls are actively seeking out death (eating disorders and depression/self-mutilation go hand in hand).

While I believe that the bracelets have both a negative side (reinforcement of the disorder) and a positive side (support for the isolation that the disorder often creates) to them, the negative is kind of inconsequential. If the girl's already sucked into her disorder to the point where she's visiting pro-ana websites or buying bracelets, she's probably already pretty far in. Stuff like the bracelets and websites and whatever else -- it's all trappings. It's all tangential to the actual disease. You take away the bracelet, you take away her computer -- she's still going to have an eating disorder.

I understand all that, and I think the problem is they do too and don't care. They realize it is a disorder and it can kill them, read their posts. As far as keeping the disorder going, they are trying to support each other by connecting with the stories and feelings they share. While it's hard to understand, this is a good thing for them. I would rather a person be able to reach a group of people with the same disorder rather than shun them or keep them from talking to each other. These disorders are not easy to cure and you really can't force them to seek help.

for real. We were talking about it on here 4 years ago. So anyone who's against this, it's officially jumped the shark by being featured as a Yahoo story and will probably be over soon. I'm not trying to be flip, I seriously think that the more this is publicized in mainstream news sources, the less people will be drawn to it.

And I hope this is the final nail in the coffin of the whole bracelet-for-a-cause trend, while we're at it. I wouldn't be surprised if there are girls getting these bracelets who aren't the least bit eating disordered, because they saw some girl they look up to in school wearing one.

On a tangent, can someone please explain what Parents Local 4 is? It sounds like something out of George Orwell.

bad phrasing of sentence. let me rephrase for you: Parents whom Local 4 interviewed


On my own tangent: How the hell do these kids order it off the internet?
"Mom, can I order an anorexic bracelet off the internet?"
"OK hun, here's my credit card"

I get it now, LOL. Why don't they just say "WDIV" or "Channel 4"?

She has an address to mail cash/check/money order to directly. This sounds like one girl in her home. I doubt if she's dealing w/ credit cards.

that's what I thought when I read it it too... like, is this a union or something?

I checked out the site, but didn't stick around long enough.

Did the webmaster say where the proceeds of the bracelets were going to? Was she keeping the $$$ for herself and making money of off this?

All I can think of is how desperate their parents must be.

I know 2 sorority women who are anorexic--they had started to become anorexic before they went Greek but it wasn't noticeable when they were first-semester freshmen.

They're both members of the same GLO at different universities and they knew each other in high school. I'm pretty sure that neither knows the other is anorexic, or in the same sorority. On the one hand, I want to tell them so they could support each other; on the other hand, I'm afraid they might support each other in the wrong way. Like the Ana and Mia way.:(

If their parents even know. :(

There have been some recovering anorexics and bulimics here on GC who have mentioned that they successfully managed to hide their problem from their parents. Especially in college, when you can blame weight loss on how bad the cafeteria food is, your busy schedule, or taking on a new activity...it's easy to explain it away.

These parents know but feel powerless to help, short of hospitalizing their daughters. One mom has been blaming the high school cheer coach for her daughter's illness; it's certainly true that the cheer coach weighed them in front of each other every couple of weeks and announced their weights to shame them into losing weight. I think there's a special place in hell for that coach.

The other family lives down the street and their daughter looks like a skeleton with skin pasted on it. She used to be on the high school volleyball team with BlazerCheer and Ballerina and she was a great player. She goes to Valdosta and last year her sorority played against theirs in intramural volleyball. She's been far too weak to play this year and it used to be her favorite activity.

Baby Berry and I saw her right before recruitment and neither of us recognized her.:(

There are two types of people on those kind of sites. The first kind are the ones who really do have a problem (some more severe than others), the second kind are those who think anorexia & bulemia are the 'cool' things too do. Of the ones who are actually sick there are those who know they have a problem and wish they could get help and there are those who don't see anorexia as a problem.
Most people with anorexia do it as a form of control and are perfectionist. Ana & Mia are not easy diseases. I struggled with them (ana mostly) for several months. My mom had serious cancer, my life was spiraling out of control and it seemed like my eating (or lack there of) was the only thing I could control. It wasn't too hard to hide the disease either, even living with 3 roommates. I knew I wanted help and needed help, I dropped almost every clue possible without actually telling people that I had an eating disorder. When I moved home for the summer, things got back under control and I was able to get the help I need.

Anyway, It is a disease and many people who have it cannot help it.

hijack: It's their brand thing. Everything is "Local 4", they claim to cover local news first. I'm watching Local 4 Weather as I type. Every reporter finishes every report with "This is blah blah, local first" (because they are not only Local 4, but they beat all the other news stations at everything .. or claim to) It does get annoying.
/hijack

Dee

If they are over 18, it is very hard to force hospitalization. If the girls are under 18, the parents can have them committed to a hospital. If they are over 18, either the girl must decide to have herself hospitalized or the parents must prove that the girl is a serious danger to herself (which seems like a no-brainer, but this can be very difficult within the legal system). That said, if there is any way these parents can get these girls in the hospital, they need to do it. I've never heard of a case where a girl recovered from a serious eating disorder on her own. These girls will either struggle with eating disorders for the rest of their (shortened) life, or die due to complications from the e.d. It's definitely not something that they should be ignoring.

That said -- it's so unfortunate, and frustrating, that only the girls who are visibly disordered are getting attention for their anorexia. For every girl who looks like a walking skeleton, there are 20 more who are doing things just as harmful to their bodies but aren't nearly as thin. This was a frequent topic of conversation at one of the eating disorder boards I visited -- the attention given to the visibly ill girls just reinforces the disorders of those who aren't as sick, and they feel that they are never going to feel noticed/validated until they are as sick-looking as those girls. Parents rarely notice until their children are VERY ill. I struggled with eating disorders on and off for six years, and the only time my parents noticed that something was wrong was for a few months when I was at my very worst. (And we were a family who ate dinner together most nights, etc., so it's not as if they were the type of parents who saw me so little they didn't even know what I looked like, let alone what I was doing on the weekends or how I was spending my time.) I never got sickly thin, although at the height of my disorder I was pretty tiny, and people did comment. I knew a number of other anorexics in my high school, including one who ultimately died of complications relating to the disease, and none of them looked like skeletons either. And of course bulimics tend to be normal to overweight, so size is not an accurate predictor there, either.

Parents really need to pay attention to their daughters' (and increasingly, their sons') relationships with food these days. Weight isn't really an accurate measure of the harm they're doing to their bodies, and it's very hard for girls today to go through adolescence without acquiring some screwed-up body image to varying degrees.