My Quirky Life

Thinspiration aka “Thinspo”

There has been a frightening influx of websites promoting eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and/or both. And on the other hand, a flood gate of websites of women promoting “thinspiration” to other women who want to be stick thin. I have even seen some of them divulging tips on how to fast, how to hide your disorder to friends and family, and literally a how to on how to make yourself throw up.

Yes, our country has freedom of speech in which I am utterly grateful, but there comes a time when people have to take personal accountability on the effects they’re causing. There may be all the protest in the world, but in the end, these sites have a right to be up just as any other site that doesn’t have concrete evidence proving that it causes harm to others.

An article in Live Science states:

The idea that a person, image, or Web site can “encourage” anorexia is not supported by science or research.

Although I somewhat agree with that, that anorexia can’t be “encouraged” since it is a disease, but I do believe that other extreme measures of weight loss can be encouraged such as bulimia or dramatically cutting calories to a dangerous level. So in that sense, I highly disagree with his statement, and nearly that article as a whole because I do believe the media has a huge effect on body image for thousands of women. Maybe not to the extent of anorexia but definitely to the extent of hating how they look and taking drastic measures to match magazine covers and celebrities.

Instead of “thinspo” why don’t we shoot for “fitspo”? Let’s get the image of a healthy and toned woman as our inspiration rather than a rail thin woman as our ideal.

Photo source: Star