Inside Pinterest's Frightening Pro-Anorexia 'Thinspo' Cult
Pinterest, social media's newest darling, has had a meteoric rise. But hidden inside its 52 percent growth between January and February to 17.8 million unique visitors—and their digital scrapbooks dedicated to recipes, fashion and beauty—is a community dedicated to spreading "thinspiration" or "thinspo."
"Thinspo" has been around since the dawn of the internet. While some of the imagery celebrates women who are fit, muscular or otherwise in great shape, many of the photos and mantras encourage people to be unhealthily thin. Exposed ribs, jutting collarbones and protruding hip bones are pinned as ideals. Thinspo pinners also enthusiastically describe their starvation diets so that others can copy them.
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in.Worse, the movement encourages young women to post revealing pictures of themselves at their "ideal" weight—which is often unnaturally underweight—exposing them to public ridicule.
No matter how thin the pinned images of models (or users) are, there's a general sense that perfection is just another five pounds away, regardless of the health consequences.
Pinterest is all about perfection. People post images of their ideal pets, pastries, home decor or vacation destinations. But some users have a more dangerous idealization ...
The "perfect" body.
Using "thinspo" or "thinspiration" tags, Pinterest users compile snapshots of skinny (both athletic and emaciated) women as a form of weightloss inspiration.
Obsessive self-examination and comparison is encouraged.
The scrapbook nature of the site naturally lends itself to users who want to isolate specific body parts to fixate on, such as jutting collar bones ...
... flat stomachs and fleshless arms ...
... and ominous gaps between models' legs.
Many users post pictures with Kate Moss' infamous mantra, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." (Moss has since disavowed the saying.)
Natalie Portman in "Black Swan" is a popular #thinspo pin, in spite of her character's bulimia, paranoia and delusional mental state.
Even ideal images are found to be lacking. The user that pinned this image noted, "would not change a thing except her hair color."
In an insightful article about Pinterest's emerging "thinspo" problem on Jezebel, the blog noted that "Pinterest is a format that's attractive to the pro-ana community because it's both visual and highly interactive." It is also anonymous.
Click here to read Jezebel's story.
Claire Mysko, of the National Eating Disorder Association, told ABCNews.com, “It provides community in all the wrong ways. It only seeks to keep people entrenched in self-destructive behavior.”
Pinterest's "thinspo" problem comes weeks after Tumblr, the photo-blogging website, came under fire for providing a pro-anorexic online community to teens.
Read HuffPost's article on Tumblr's thinspo problem.
Even though Tumblr announced plans to rid the site of thinspo on Feb. 23, a search this week yielded pages of pro-ana posts. Tumblr said that "when a user searches for tags like 'anorexia,' 'anorexic,' 'bulimia,' 'bulimic,' 'thinspiration,' 'thinspo,' 'proana,' 'purge,' 'purging,' etc., we would show 'PSA language." That is not yet the case.
Read Tumblr's announcement about ridding itself of "thinspo" here.
There is still ample thinspo content for both men and women on Tumblr.
The thinspo phenomenon predates Tumblr by at least a decade. In 2001, Yahoo shut down more than 100 pro-anorexia websites. AOL and MSN followed suit.
Here's Time's 2001 article on pro-anorexia sites on the internet.
Recently, online media such as The Stir and The Daily have blamed Tumblr for thinspo's re-emergence. It's not actually Tumblr's fault.
Click here to read The Stir's article on Tumblr's thinspo problem.
In 2008, internet security company Optenet found that the prevalence of pro-ana sites had increased by 470 percent between 2006 and 2007. Livejournal and Xanga provided a perfect outlet for thinspo boards, the company said.
Read Optenet's 2008 report here.
Thinspo also exists on Facebook.
And on YouTube, where girls subject their bodies to ridicule from the public. When "Horseriderhelp" asked YouTube trolls whether she was skinny or fat, one commenter responded, "chubby - you can loose 10 lbs & be fine." She did.
Watch "Horseriderhelp"'s video here.
It was a matter of time until thinspo arrived on Pinterest. The young website's policy on objectionable content is a single sentence: "We do not allow nudity or hateful content."
Some users are resisting. They post images ridiculing "thinspo" pinners, such as this one. But such resistance may be a violation of Pinterest's No. 1 rule: "Be nice."
Read Pinterest's "Be nice" rule here.
Now check out how real women look when replicating ridiculous fashion poses.
... not suitable for real life>
If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline (1-800-931-2237) on weekdays for support, resources, and information about treatment options. In crisis situations, NEDA offers 24/7 support — just text "NEDA" to 741741.
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