No abstract

No abstract

This paper consists of a discourse analysis of data collected from websites that have been created by and for people who wish to share experiences of eating disorders in a positive and supportive environment. These sites have earned the broad description 'pro-ana' (where 'ana' is short for 'anorexia'). Site users have come to see themselves as a broad on-line community of like-minded individuals, but within this community there are many subgroups, and the boundaries between these subgroups are fiercely contested. In addition, frequent attacks on such websites in the media (charged with 'promoting eating disorders'), and by occasional hostile site visitors, have often forced the community into a defensive mode. The result is a rich tapestry of identity work. The analysis examines several 'pro-ana' sites and explores the way in which the identity is used to police the boundaries of the community, and ultimately, what it means 'to be ana' rather than 'mia' (bulimic), 'a normal', 'a faker', or even 'a hater'.

A covert participant observation was conducted into the meanings of interaction in the "pro-ana" online community. Specifically, the researchers were interested in the kind of psychological support offered by such websites and by the beliefs of community members towards eating disorders and the processes of treatment and recovery. One of the authors joined a number of pro-ana sites in the guise of a plausible persona and experienced a variety of responses from community members, some extremely hostile, others very supportive, yet without ever being exposed as an interloper. These starkly different responses challenge the notion of a broad "pro-ana" philosophy, suggesting that the sites are best understood as local cliques offering temporary relief from offline hostility, but it is doubtful whether they can be said to possess any therapeutic value beyond the immediate online context.

Findings suggest that in female adolescents, there is an interaction between Intense-personal celebrity worship and body image between the ages of 14 and 16 years, and some tentative evidence has been found to suggest that this relationship disappears at the onset of adulthood, 17 to 20 years. Results are consistent with those authors who stress the importance of the formation of para-social relationships with media figures, and suggest that para-social relationships with celebrities perceived as having a good body shape may lead to a poor body image in female adolescents.