This month the editor of Italian Vogue, Franca Sozzani, announced that the magazine would run a petition to try to rid the internet of pro- anorexia websites. Overlooking the fact that Vogue glamorises waif-like figures to the extent that many of its models are held up as "thinspiration" on the same sites, this can be seen as a positive step against the promotion of a life-threatening disorder.
"Pro-ana" websites encourage their readers to pursue dangerously low weights, claiming that starvation diets are a lifestyle choice. Many contain "thinspo" galleries featuring heavily edited photographs of emaciated girls above captions such as "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels", or "Fat is dirty and hangs off your bones like a parasite". More disturbing are the personal blogs of girls who subscribe to the pro-ana movement, which detail their restricted diets and militant exercise regimes and dismiss the concerns of family and friends: "This week I am eating 438 calories a day. There is no harder age to starve at. Everyone is constantly watching."
It is not necessary to reiterate the fact that eating disorders kill, or highlight the countless ways in which such websites have the potential to plant dangerous seeds in the minds of young women who may already be insecure or unhappy. Like the removal of critically underweight models from the catwalk, if Sozzani's campaign is successful it can only be a good thing.
Personally, I do not blame the internet for the six years I spent immersed in my own struggle with anorexia nervosa. In fact, it was in my recovery rather than my decline that the online world played a fundamental role.
Between the ages of 15 and 18, I spent nearly two years in a specialist unit for the treatment of adolescent eating disorders. I cannot fault the care I received there; I was a stubborn, unhappy teenager and spent most of my time trying to undermine and manipulate the doctors and nurses who worked so hard to help me.
Part of the problem was that I became far too comfortable in the hospital environment. The unit was less than three miles from home, so I saw my family frequently. I had no desire to return to school, having fallen behind in my studies and isolated myself from my friends and, though the patient group was constantly changing, I formed strong bonds with the majority of my fellow "inmates".
We were not encouraged to keep in touch with one another upon leaving the ward, as friendships forged on an eating disorders unit tend to rely on the disorder to keep them going after discharge. If one party relapsed, we were told, it was all too easy for the other to be dragged down, too.
Regardless of whether or not my relationships with the other patients were helpful, I missed them terribly when I left. In the real world of sixth form, A-levels, parties and pubs I felt at a loss. I could not relate to "normal" people my own age, and as my weight started to drop again I barely had enough energy to get through a day at school, let alone socialise afterwards. The close relationship I had always enjoyed with my family was also deteriorating; my brother was too embarrassed by his "mental" sister to have friends back to the house, and my parents and I rowed constantly over food as they desperately tried to prevent another relapse.
I was hungry, cold, sad and lonely, but the only thing more terrifying than the prospect of a life with anorexia was the concept of life without it. I desperately clung on to my eating disorder, keeping my weight just above a hospitalisation level for nearly two years.
At some point I must have decided enough was enough. I do not remember what triggered my sudden desire to "give recovery a go", but shortly after my 18th birthday I found myself searching the internet for "anorexia recovery meal plans". I had seen dieticians in the past, but hated the idea of recreating a hospital menu at home. I decided I would recover on my own terms, which meant choosing my own foods, picking my own (minimally healthy) target weight and monitoring the scales myself.
The internet provided me with resources for all of these things in the form of "recovery blogs", personal websites set up by other eating disorder sufferers, charting their progress as they battled to normalise their weight and their eating habits. Some were written from inside eating disorder units, while others, like mine, were by people attempting recovery at home.
The idea of starting my own recovery blog was appealing, primarily, because of the supportive comments authors would receive at the end of each post. I called my page "How I Mash Potato", a reference to a habit I had picked up in hospital of crushing potatoes on my plate until they resembled a revolting mush which could be spread around in the hope of leaving some when the nurses collected our trays (it never worked).
My introduction to the recovery community, which outlined the history of my illness and my plans for the future, received five replies almost instantly, congratulating me on my decision to "gain not just weight, but health and happiness too!" The low target I had prescribed myself, however, was criticised: "Why be minimally healthy and scrape by when you can be your best? Would you take that attitude with school work?" At first, the no-nonsense attitude of the other girls irritated me; I had started my blog in the hope of receiving support from people who understood what it was like to hate your body, to hate the feeling of weight on your thighs and relish the "special" status and exemptions granted to me by anorexia. But after a few weeks of posting daily, I began to appreciate my readers' tough-love stance; after all, they were going through the same thing.
I emailed the link to my blog to my parents, who would remind me of the replies I had received and the promises I made to my online friends when I stalled over a snack or meal, or cried after a difficult weigh-in. Occasionally, I would receive a comment on a post telling me "how proud I am of my beautiful daughter". Blogging allowed me to articulate my struggles and triumphs away from the fractious environment of the dinner table.
I posted every day for just over a year. My posts ranged from anorexic rants triggered by mum throwing away my "thin jeans", to rambling reflections on the nature of my illness. I was applauded for eating at a restaurant and commiserated with when rejected by Oxford University. I wondered at the time whether relying so much on a collection of strangers was healthy, if my blog was incredibly narcissistic. By the summer of 2009, I was receiving more than 1,500 visitors a day.
My decision to stop blogging was triggered by the start of university. I had always planned on keeping my past a secret once granted the chance to start afresh. I was still moderately underweight, but explained away my lack of interest in pizza and chocolate with "stomach issues". My flatmates were amazed when one vodka and Diet Coke left me a giggling wreck. For the second time, my desire to fit in outweighed my desire to be the thinnest, but this time the group that I aspired to comprised normal young adults who viewed food as pleasure and fuel rather than the enemy or a challenge.
Recently, I asked some of my ex-blogger friends how they felt the online community had helped or hindered their recoveries. They all agreed that having "contact with people who were just like myself, that would encourage and give positive feedback, was great", but that devoting so much time to the internet often came at the expense of practising recovery in the "real world".
Inevitably, some unhealthy trends emerged: bloggers often detailed or even photographed the meals they ate, fuelling the "food obsession", and the emphasis was often placed on gaining weight with a meticulously "clean" and "healthy" diets rather than mimicking the eating habits of normal teenagers. However, while it was university that persuaded me to embrace a more normal lifestyle, the online community was a bridge between the worlds of illness and recovery.
Friends made on the internet should not serve as a replacement for real-life relationships. As one ex-blogger stated, "to truly recover, you need to live a normal life like others your age... my non-disordered friends would never think of blogging about food; they eat when they're hungry and don't recount their daily intake to a bunch of strangers."
Yet it is important to acknowledge that not every anorexic who uses the internet is encouraging others to starve. As long as you remain vigilant and positive, there are genuinely kind, helpful and understanding individuals forming online communities. On a personal level, I owe them a lot.
