When Sickness is Celebrated: Exploring the 'Pro-Ana' Trend

We all know eating disorders are dangerous. We would have had to have been living under a rock for the past twenty years to have missed all the cautionary tales, tabloid headlines, and made-for-TV movies that have dramatized the dangers and trappings of such psychological illnesses as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. But a disturbing new trend has come about in the eating disorder community in recent years — and ‘community’ is, in fact, the operative word.

With the advent of internet chat rooms in the late 1990’s came a new means for technologically-savvy sufferers to commiserate in their illnesses. And today, in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, gone are the days when eating disorders were synonymous with isolation; conversely, those with eating disorders — especially young sufferers — now have formed a sort of sob-society online, wherein they are finding encouragement to proceed in their illnesses, often to the point of no return.

When I was a teen suffering with anorexia in the 1990’s, I gradually withdrew from my friends and family, seeking solitude as a refuge from the prying questions and intrusive concern of outsiders. As is almost always the case with these illnesses, my disorder became the most important thing in my world, and I came to a point where I would have done anything at all to protect it — even if that meant my world growing strangely small. And while I found a dysfunctional sort of comfort in the bell jar of my anorexic world, I had an undercurrent of awareness that my life had fallen away from normal. I didn’t necessarily want things to be right — but at least I knew that something was wrong.

Many of today’s young anoretics are unified in their exclusive world, and they all seem to know the secret handshake. “Pro-ana” is a modern term describing a sect of eating disorder sufferers who seek to embrace anorexia and bulimia as lifestyle choices rather than life-threatening illnesses requiring treatment.

In pro-ana circles, the illnesses are no longer referred to in clinical terms, but rather by familiar, almost friendly-sounding nicknames: “ana” for anorexia and “mia” for bulimia. The lingo also includes such neo-slang terms as “thinspiration” or “thinspo”, which is any sort of material — photos, song lyrics, books, video — that inspires sufferers to lose weight; “food porn”, which are images intended to allow a sufferer to enjoy the food vicariously by poring over the images and imagining eating the foods portrayed; and “wannarexics”, which are usually young girls (and sometimes guys) who are deemed by the group to be illegitimate posers — those seeking to pop into the chat room for diet tips and tricks who do not intend to make the disease their lifestyle, or who are not already chronic sufferers.

I spent a week lurking in these pro-ana chat rooms and groups, and was disturbed by the cameraderie that was so evident among the girls in the group. They know one another by screen names such as TinyDancer, LovelyBones, and LilStickFigure17. Their posts to one another are almost sickeningly sweet as they encourage one another one their group fasts, cleansing programs, and in their attempts to thwart the efforts of their therapists and parents or boyfriends to “make them fat.” There seems to exist a terrible “us-versus-them” mentality in the groups, wherein mental health professionals are the enemy, bent on invading their utopia.

These girls believe they can live this way. They believe that their systems are sustainable. They convince themselves — and one another — that the decision to live on, say, 250 calories per day, is a hallmark of self-control and willpower, and that those who would seek to correct their self-destructive behavior are merely jealous.
So how then do we hope to reach a generation of psychologically-fragile young women who have found comfort and community in such deadly territory? What can we offer them that their counterfeit online relationships cannot? And how do we go about doing so before it is too late?

Anorexia nervosa holds the highest mortality rate of all psychological illnesses, and is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents. A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anoretics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anoretics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover. The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of all causes of death for females 15 – 24 years old.

The threat of death is real. The allure of sickness is enigmatic. The number of statistics is growing. What can we do? Have we any options? Is there an answer?
If there is any key piece to the puzzle, it is awareness. We must be aware of our teens’ online lives. They have done their homework, seeking out the forums and learning the protocol. We need to do the same. We cannot look the other way and hope the phase passes. These stakes are too high. Statistics show that early intervention affords an anoretic the greatest chance of recovery.

Got a teen or tween in your life? Sister, daughter, student, friend? Keep your eyes open. Watch for warning signs. Mentor her. Love her. Encourage her. Help her to discover her unique talents before she becomes fully convinced that starving is an art. Engage her. As much as is possible, keep her in the moment, in this three-dimensional world where people express affection without the use of emoticons. Form a support network around her (if the person is a minor, insist she see a counselor with expertise in eating disorders), so that she will not go in search of her own in a world where up is down and food is foe and illness is honor. Awareness may not equal prevention in all cases, but it is a step in the right direction, and we cannot afford to be ignorant.

Our world is changing, and if we want to make a difference, we’ve got to keep up. Mental illness, like everything else, has gone high-tech.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

Last weekend was amazing. My son and I flew (or rather, were flown) to Boston to be with a dear friend of mine, Nancy, as she made a public profession of her Christian faith through the act of baptism. It was a very special, emotionally-electric reunion for my friend and I, having not seen one another in 13 years. We met under unconventional circumstances, and both of our lives have done 180-degree turnarounds in the past decade or so, and so this reunion was interesting, finding us both in completely different modes than when we'd last been together.

And yet, there was no awkwardness. No pretense. No need to get used to one another again. We fell into one another's arms at the airport, got some giggles out of our system, and then seemed to pick up our friendship right where we'd left off, with a flippant "So, anyway . . . "

It was very cool. Our connection seemed to transcend the time that's passed. It was as though we'd been together even while we'd been apart. And it made me think about Jesus.

I have this idea of what my arrival in Heaven will be like. I don't believe I'll have to stand in line at the pearly gates with my "Admit One" pass, waiting for Peter to stamp my hand. My Bible tells me that "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" -- in other words, my last breath here will be my first breath there. And somehow I get the feeling that when I fall at Jesus' feet, it will be a bit like when I fell into Nancy's arms -- as if we'd been together all the time we'd been apart.

Now, I know I'm stretching things a bit; seeing an old friend surely cannot begin to compare to seeing the savior of my soul face-to-face for the very first time. Don't get me wrong; I am in no way trying to minimize or humanize the unfathomable magnitude of that moment. I'm only trying to wrap my mind around something in the here and now that might help me to glimpse just a wee bit of what I'll feel when the most blessed reunion of all takes place.

I'd held Nancy in my heart all those years, and so being in the same room with her didn't feel new or weird or forgotten. It felt only natural. And that's how I believe it will be when I am in the same room (as it were, since God is not or never has been confined by time or space) as my Lord. It will be amazing. Stunning. It will feel too good to be true. And yet, it will be only natural. As if it were the plan all along.

Our relationships on Earth are meant to be a model of our relationship to God. God Himself is relational -- before there was an "us" there was a Him, and even then He was not alone. God said, "Let Us make man in Our image" -- speaking to the other members of the Trinity. Relationship was at work, even before there were people with whom to relate. Is it any wonder God places such value on the importance of relationships?

I left Boston a very grateful girl. Grateful for friendship and common ground and heart connections. Grateful to know that I am loved by one who knows me on a heart level, and in whose presence I could be myself from the very moment I stepped off the plane.

It's only a teeny, one-dimensional thumbnail picture of what that other Great Reunion promises, but I am grateful for the foretaste of what I cannot otherwise begin to imagine.

Christmas: A Fresh Celebration

I've always loved the Christmas season a bit more than most folk. This is not news. Most of my friends know that I bust out the Carpenters "Christmas Portrait" album sometime in September and that I cry on December 26th, every single year. I've been known to celebrate Christmas in July, just to get through the year until the "real" Christmas season comes back around. I wear vanilla perfume all year long because, frankly, I enjoy smelling like a big ol' Christmas cookie.

I've always assumed my giddiness over the yuletide (and just what is a yuletide, anyway? Someone enlighten me?) had to do with my December 24th birthday. But this year -- this year, more than any other year -- I can attest to another reason entirely. It has to do with a birthday celebration, yes -- but certainly not my own.

I've been following Jesus since I was fifteen years old. In churchy speak, I've been "walking with the Lord" or "serving Christ" or "living the life." In truth, for about sixteen years or so, I was going through the motions to a certain extent. We all do it; it's easy to fall into a comfy little nest of complacency after many years of living the Christian life. There's a cooling off process that happens if we're not especially diligent about fanning the flames of our passion. For me, it happened gradually, for reasons that felt out of my control. A divorce. A financial crunch. A sales career that kept me spinning my wheels at the office every Sunday (oops; there went the Sabbath) for years. Oh, I still loved Jesus. Passionately, even, at times. I worshiped in my car, at the piano, on the rare instance when life rocked my boat enough to bring me to my knees in search of the holy intimacy I once enjoyed. But there was little forward motion, little momentum.

God's fault? Not quite. Ever taken a long, hot bath, and gotten absorbed by a book as you lay in the tub? By the time you're twenty pages into the plot, distracted by the drama of the story, you're sitting in lukewarm water. And you never even noticed the temp was dropping.

I got lazy. My passionate heart for Christ -- the same heart that burned to know Him more fully at the age of fifteen -- cooled off a bit. No one would have known it; I still looked the part. I still prayed for others and talked about my faith and I even read a challenging Christian Living book once in a while. I went to Bible study. I did my homework. I regurgitated spiritual-sounding answers that sometimes inspired other ladies in my group, so I must have been "walking the walk" -- right? Christmas remained my favorite season for all those lukewarm years, and I wrote dramas that moved people at Christmas time, so I must have been "living the life" -- right?

Not so much. I stopped pursuing God. I stopped chasing after Him with the urgency I once had. I prayed faithfully, but not expectantly. My convictions slipped a little. The world began to feel more and more like home, and Heaven began to feel more like a distant dream and less like the place where my citizenship rests. But I didn't much notice. Metaphorically speaking, I was sitting in a lukewarm bathtub, engrossed in the drama of the story going on around me, more so than in the story going on within me.

In the past year and a half or so, God has been draining my lukewarm tub. I sat shivering for a while, wondering why He was being so mean. Why He seemed to be so mad at me. Why I couldn't get comfortable anymore.

I had a little temper tantrum. I pulled out all my old coping mechanisms, and abused them blatantly in the sight of God, daring Him to do anything about it.

He responded with mercy. Unbelievable.

I have learned more about God in the past eighteen months than I had ever known about Him before. I've gotten to know more of His character. I've seen more of His heart. I've understood more of His word, and -- get this -- how it applies to me. To me! Me, who blames God when her life falls apart. Me, who stops pursuing God even as He so relentlessly pursues me. Me, who had lost sight of the real reason why Christmas makes her so giddy.

It's because of Jesus, kids. He's the reason for the joy in my heart at Christmas -- because He's the reason for the joy in my heart, period. And this year, knowing His heart a bit better than before (He is "slow to anger, and abounding in love" . . . He is "everlasting" . . . He is the One who "sticks closer than a brother" . . . He is the One whose "grace is sufficient for me" and whose "strength is made perfect in my weakness"), my celebration feels more joyful than ever.

Christmas carols have deeper meaning. "O come let us adore Him"? You'd better believe it. "Long lay the world in sin and error pining / Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth"? My thoughts exactly. "Radiant beams from Thy holy face / With the dawn of redeeming grace"? Redeeming grace, indeed. No wonder I'm giddy.

I'm celebrating afresh this year. Nothin' lukewarm about it. No "holiday tree" for this ol' girl -- bring on the CHRISTMAS. I'm celebrating the birth of my savior -- Emmanuel, "God with us." And it does my heart so much good, next year I just might start in August.

What I've Learned in 2009 . . .

Jeans are neither my enemy nor my friend. Jeans are not meant to change my body shape, minimize my butt, or make me taller. Their sole purpose on earth is to prevent nakedness from the waist down. Period.

Perhaps the reason so many of my friends are turned off by church is because church people have done a crummy job of representing a holy God to a hurting world. And perhaps my new year’s resolution should have more to do with remedying that than with eating less carbs.

Fact: Sometimes mediocre writers get published. Fact #2: Sometimes amazingly talented writers remain overlooked by the publishing world. Fact #3: both of these things kinda stink.

It is perfectly acceptable to be 33 years old and single. Heck, it’s even okay to be 33 years old and be happy with being single. It’s also acceptable to completely change one’s mind about that, and I will be sure to keep you posted.

Drama is conflict, and conflict is necessary to good storytelling. And, as much as I have lived my life to avoid conflict at all costs, being a writer will eventually force me to embrace it.

God is more than able to open doors that no man can open, and He delights in using the foolish things (and people) of the world to humble the wise.

No matter how much of a grammar and punctuation rock star you think you are, a good editor will show you the error of your ways.

Harboring unforgiveness is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.

Kids hear and absorb everything their parents do and say. Everything.

I talk too much. I need to do something about that. I’m sure there’s a reason why God gave us all two ears and only one mouth.

Noodles must be added to homemade chicken noodle soup last.

None of us have it all together. Especially not the people who look as though they do.

People who say they don’t care what people think about them are usually desperate to have other people think they don’t care what people think about them.

When you write a memoir, always change first names to protect the innocent. Because, chances are, by the time your book is released, you will have come back into contact with every single person whom you wrote about. (Thanks, Facebook!)

Some cats like veggie burgers, celery, soy milk, and coffee. (Or, at least one does. )

For as long as Liberty is alive and living in my home, I will never again be allowed to lay on my right side. She is a left-sided cat. Period.

Imitrex doesn’t work for my headaches. Zomig doesn’t work for my headaches. Advil Migraine no longer works for my headaches. Five Hour Energy works like magic for my headaches. Live and learn.

Even if your friend has been dead for five years, you will still have moments where you completely forget this and you’ll reach for your phone to call her when a certain song comes on over the speakers in Applebee’s.

Sometimes words are overrated. It’s impossible to say the wrong thing when you simply hug someone instead of saying anything at all.

There is no joy equal to the feeling of taking someone by the hand and walking them toward Jesus. Evangelism doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. It means doing life the way Jesus did it, with boldness, tenderness, and authenticity, and presenting the truth in love. The “ministry of reconciliation” is for every believer, even those of us who have been scared to death of it.

I do not like beer, dark chocolate, or bleu cheese – and I probably never will.

I will probably never again be a coloratura soprano or a size one. And I’ll just have to deal.

Sometimes kindness shocks the heck outta people. We’ve learned not to expect it. Kindness goes further (farther? Ack!) now than it ever did, because it so obviously sets us apart from a hostile society.

And probably the MOST important thing I have learned in 2009: I still have a lot to learn.


(To be continued . . . )

Words Are Overrated

As a writer, I love words. I like to play with them, using words as colors and textures upon the blank canvas of a page. I like the weight of words, the way they echo in the mind after they've registered. Words are powerful. Words are irretractable. "Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit -- you choose." (Proverbs 18:21, MSG) We need to handle words with care, mindful of their power both to wound and to heal.

And sometimes, we need to shut up and forego them completely.

We've all had them -- those electric moments shared with another human being, where words suddenly seem so glaringly inefficient. Sometimes it's a knowing glance across a crowded room, sometimes it's a tearful embrace inside the viewing room of a funeral home. There are those moments, whatever their setting or circumstance, that are simply better for their silence.

I shared a moment with a friend today, wherein I knew I was part of something bigger than words. It was one of those times where tears spoke volumes and a good tight hug, the kind that lasts a while, was the only appropriate way to truly respond in love.

It seems to me that brokenness begets brokenness. In the face of one who is brave enough to remove her mask and break down in a sincere expression of human fragility, we become aware of our inability to say the right thing. We admit to ourselves that we are not clever, eloquent or wise. Humility comes upon us as we recognize ourselves in that broken person, and we realize that perhaps the best way to love them in that moment is not to mentor them but to meet them, right where they are -- to come alongside them and sit with them in brokenness.

I guess I'm learning. As much as I love words, I admit that they are often overrated. Because today, as I sat with my friend in her brokenness, I found I had no need for them at all.

Bad Day / Good Lesson

I am, for the most part, an optimist. Call it innocence, call it a Pollyanna attitude, heck, call it naivete -- but I am, generally speaking, a glass-half-full type of gal. Usually.

Not today. I had a bad day. They can't all be winners; I'm human, after all. I get grumpy and mopey and tempted to set my Facebook status to: "Jena hath the blueth." Today was one of those days.

It was stupid, really. I saw some images of myself that I thought were awful, and I was too lazy to get a handle on my self-talk and the whole thing quickly spiraled into a lively little internal rendition of "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms." I think the whole process took about forty seconds or so, and THUD -- just like that, my spirits hit the floor. Fickle, these silly human-being emotions of ours. One minute, we're humming; the next minute, we have the blueth.

The thing that was frustrating about the whole deal was that this is so not new to me. I've been down this road before, and pulling myself out of these such potholes "should" be a snap by now. So, take the depression and self-pity and then pile a little guilt on top, and you have a recipe for a pretty bleak day.

UNLESS . . .

Unless you take isolation out of the mix. Which, because God is merciful, I was able (or forced?) to do. As God would have it today, I ended up in a discussion with a dear friend of mine, a friend whom I recently had the privilege of taking by the hand and walking toward Christ. And today this friend -- this friend who is now a sister (insert chills here) -- happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I confided in her, from the trenches. I was real. I told her what was up, what the struggle was, how silly I felt about the whole thing. And she responded in the most beautiful way I could have imagined.

She fed me the word of God.

She with whom I spent those hours several months ago, encouraging her with scripture, did me the ultimate favor of reminding me of those very transforming, life-giving truths. She searched her Bible and sought out wisdom for me, applicable to the battle I was fighting between my ears. And she did a darn good job of it.

And gradually, assuredly, my perspective was renewed. There is something very cool about the reciprocity of it all -- the counselee becoming the counselor during a time of need, the people-needing-people, the word picture of iron-sharpening-iron (Proverbs 17:17). This beautiful design of reciprocity and inter-dependance reminds me that we're all in this together, that ain't none of us got it all figured out.

If all's well that ends well, my bad day isn't turning out so bad after all. Because as I go to bed tonight, my heavy heart is lighter and I'm no longer singing myself glum lullabies about eating worms. Rather, I am singing about the amazing, gigantic God who sees into our hearts and knows just what we need, and about the very cool talent He has for placing just the right people in our path.

Nope. I don't have it all figured out. But I know the One who does.

Seeing Myself in the RAW

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words; we're visual learners, us human beings, and we like images. We like color and detail and brightness and contrast.

Sometimes.

Last week, I had a two-hour photo shoot for a book I've written. This was a completely new experience for me; never have I "played" for hours in front of an assembly of photographic equipment and smiled for over 400 photos. (That's a lot of "say cheese!") Once I got over my insecurity, it was pretty fun, really. I felt like a magazine model, and I may or may not have created a little fantasy in my head about having to hurry up and get this cover shoot done before hopping the next plane to Milan for Fashion Week.

My photographer, Peter, made it easy enough to smile for the camera, as he is also a Broadway actor who can do an uncanny impression of Christopher Walken, which made me laugh until I spit and snorted. (We didn't use those shots.)

We were several frames into the shoot before he turned his camera around to show me an image on the LCD screen. "I mean, look at that," he said, kissing the tips of his fingers. "Is that gorgeous, or what?" I took a step forward, leaned over, and looked at the little screen. And silently gasped.

For lack of a gentler term, I looked. . . old. I couldn't understand it; I had just had my photo taken the day before, with my friend's digital camera, and I hadn't looked old. What had happened to me in twenty-four hours?

Peter later explained to me that when a professional photographer takes a picture of his subject, the camera takes in every aspect of the person -- every bit of visual information -- and presents the image completely unprocessed, in "RAW" format. The image is then processed and retouched later; shadows are adjusted, color and skin tone are corrected, etc. Evidently, our modern-day digital cameras do this automatically, which is why the images we see of ourselves on them are kinder and gentler than the one I was seeing on Peter's camera screen.

I thought about this throughout the evening, each time Peter showed me a proof and kissed his fingertips and said "Stunning!" or "Lovely!" or "Gorge!" I wondered how he could say such things, with my undereye circles and crow's feet and laugh lines so naked and exposed on his LCD screen. I figured either he was being extremely kind or he was rather full-of-it.

And then it hit me: he was already "seeing" the finished product in his mind's eye. He wasn't seeing the flaws on the screen; after hundreds of photo sessions, he had learned to see the images not for what they were, but for what they would be when he was finished with them.

The allegory wasn't lost on me. I realized then that this is how God sees us. He looks at us and sees all -- the flaws, the imperfections, the problem areas -- and yet He is able to look beyond what is to what will be. He peers into our hearts, and nothing is hidden from Him. Almighty God is always able to see us in "RAW" format -- like it or not. But His vision isn't limited to that. Just as Peter saw beauty in my raw photos, envisioning what they would be once he was done working on them, God sees beauty in us, despite our weaknesses and blemishes. He sees what we will be when He is done working on us.

I imagine that Peter's work is endlessly easier than God's, since photos don't fight the process like people do. Peter's work on my raw photos probably took a couple of hours. God's work on my raw heart is taking considerably longer to complete. I am grateful that God doesn't charge by the hour.

All in all, it was a humbling experience, even after my little Milan fantasy. If you have an opportunity to see yourself in the "RAW", I encourage you to be a visionary and cut yourself some slack. . .

God isn't finished with you, either.