Cats in sweaters & Freshly washed bed sheets

17/03/15

After a weekend of trawling through Tumblr and taking a look at where these hashtags take me, frankly I have wept a couple of times. Part of the reason I’m doing this project, something extremely important but something I haven’t yet reflected on, was because I have a 13 year old sister active in this online space. There is quite an age gap between us and I constantly wonder if she goes through the same horrendous but inevitable parts of growing up which I did. It scares me to death the barrage of fresh exposure to messages of skinny perfection she’ll encounter being 13 in 2015. I was 13 in 2007 and it was hard enough without parasitic communities forming online, egging on each other to “purge”. A quick look at the content which comes up for “thinspirational” was enough to make me physically ill. I sort of felt as though this was their strange purpose as many purport to inspire young girls toward bulimic behaviours. I felt like throwing up my lunch at the sophisticated nature of this shared anorexic identity developed through only a few hashtags. There appeared to be this character, “Ana” which the users represented their illness as. An actual mid west high school popular girl who coerced them into being skinny as a condition of belonging to her twisted pack. The personalisation of the illness is also shown in another character, “Mia” , shorthand for bulimia, an equally destructive sidekick to the queen bee. It seemed as though “Ana” and “Mia” offer not only ‘motivation’ to the users but a sense of weird friendship, being the hashtag that unites ED sufferers who turn to the virtual for reinforcement of their behaviours- a fucked up kind of support of their irrational behaviour.

What also strikes me is the sophistication of the users knowledge of getting around content warnings and bans. “Ana” and “Mia” are shorthand for terms that do not receive any results. A search for each girl reveals a page asking you if everything is ok and referring you to NEDA, a body for those suffering with eating disorders. I can’t describe the relief that came over me when I saw this page, I was really struck by how subtle and powerful the content warning was and less terrified of my sister turning on a computer. This is the first time I wept.

But, you can still click through to “ana” content. Oh you know, just if you’re a 50 shades fan and you love the protagonist. A wall of distressing imagery (alongside 50 shades gifs) greets you. One post says “one like=one hours fasting”- urging on pro-ana supporters to partake in her emaciation. I reflect to myself that part of me is kind of glad Tumblr let me look at this stuff for my thesis, but throughout the day I’m haunted by these images. They don’t make me reflect on my size 14 frame in hatred- I’m too old to to let insecurity define my entire approach to life- but I imagine myself at 13 looking at this stuff and know I wouldn’t be able to handle it. When I was in Year 7/8 I abjectly hated myself. It is so strange how normal it felt for me back then, considering the almost decade of life experience this precedes. I would have looked online- had Tumblr existed- and saw my hatred validated by these profoundly mentally ill girls.

And then through all the black and white pictures of emaciated, 14 year old models, sharp collarbones and twig legs, I see this:

Again I felt this wave of relief wash over me and thought again how I had been briefly been transported into a world of utter despair which I was supposed to be viewing as a detached grad researcher. The terms this post uses are extremely interesting. Instead of speaking to the users like a social worker or mental health professional- which may be better but less well received- this post speaks to the audience in their own terms, citing pleasures such as “Red Pandas” and “P I Z Z A”. I broke down when I saw this one due to its sweetness and the very fact that a Tumblr user had very seriously compiled a list of whimsical things to save another from taking their life. Even though the items are cute, the intention of the post is very serious- using Tumblr terms to persuade another user out of hopelessness.