Thinspiration Kills

Oh my gosh.

Thinspo is totally blowing my mind today.

Never had I ever heard about this type of thing until we watched a movie in my trends class today (thanks Dr. D!)... And if you have never heard about "thinspo"... here's the gist of it. "Thinspo" (short for thinspiration) is a pro-anorexia media movement that is all over youtube, and I suspect elsewhere... I really haven't done that much looking into it other than on youtube. Basically, there are people out there who compile pictures of thin girls (some with eating disorders) and put them with music and then post them on the internet to inspire others to continue their disorder... like "oh I know it's hard-but it's totally worth it... look at these super skinny girls and know that if you only eat a cube of cheese and a cup of grapes today, you can have collarbones that look like drawer pulls and a hollowed out face too!"

I found this "thinspiration. Real girls." on youtube today, and since September 3, 2007 it's had 26,823 hits. So it's been up there for the world to see for about 880 days. That's about 30 views a day. The user who put it up on youtube is called "DailyThinspo", and she had a goal to upload a video every day... but it looks like she only has four videos... one has had 223,231 views... that's about 254 views a day. It totally blows my mind. 254 girls/maybe guys are looking at her video to be "thinspired"... it's crazy. I just can't really wrap my mind around it. There is a whole community out there devoted to helping each others fall deeper into their eating disorders.

This video makes me so sad! Half of the pictures look like

they were found on teenage girls' myspaces. You know...

the pictures where girls are standing in the mirror with

their camera? It's so sad.

This one is the one we actually watched in class...

While showing pictures of girls measuring their waists and sitting

at the toilet, it actually asks "Is it worth it?" Followed by a very

chilling "YES." It's so sad.

This video, however made me feel like the world isn't going to find itself dug in the ground... it's a video trying

to sway people from the effects of "thinspiration"

Her Anti-Ana video has had 309,213 views since June 2007...

hopefully she is inspiring hope and educating some young girls

who are lost.

Looking at all of these videos today has made me totally sick. I had

to eat a brownie to make sure I wasn't affected.

It was pretty yummy.