SLUniverse Forums

Stephanie Misfit · 05-28-2008, 05:04 AM

I was kind of disturbed to learn that there is a pro-ana group on Flickr for SL avatars - Thinspo in Second Life.

"Thinspiration! To be thin is to be Beautiful! This is a group only for SKINNY avies. Show us what is really beautiful! THIN IS IN!" Up until yesterday if you sent a request to be invited to join the group you had to agree to the following rules: "This is a pro-anorexia e bulimia in SL. Pro beautiful and thin avies. Pro model beauty. If you agree to these rules, you can join the group."

The reference to the pro-anorexia aspect of the group in the rules has since been removed and replaced with " If you are THIN you are IN! :-)" However, as "thinspo" is a term used exclusively by the pro-ana community to describe photos of frighteningly thin women that are used as inspiration for weight loss, the fact that this is a pro-anorexia group remains unchanged.

I've seen a lot of creepily thin avatars around of late, primarily in the so called "fashionista" community, many of whom either work as, or aspire to be, SL models. Yes, modeling, that holy grail of success in SL. Check out the Fashion World of SL feed and you'll be confronted with lots of them. I'd found the skeletal dimensions of these girls somewhat amusing until now, and assumed those shapes were made with some satirical intention, cos who would seriously want their avatar to look like a stick figure with a big alien head, right? But it turns out that some of these overly thin "fashion model" type avatars are in this Thinspo Flickr group, which really begs the question......... WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THEIR TYPISTS??

I'm certain that many of us have issues with our RL bodies, and the ability to chose our ideal form in SL is quite liberating as a result. No tits in RL? Sliders to 100 will fix it in SL. I don't have an issue with the way that anyone choses to represent their physical form in SL (unless they have a n00b cock hanging out of their pants), but do we really need to promote anorexia for our avatars? Look at pics of other "anorexic" avatars so that we can, what? Move the sliders down a little more to make our shapes even thinner? Share tips about virtual laxative use and how to prevent your virtual teeth from rotting due to excessive use of vomiting animations?

You really have to wonder about some people.

Charlemagne Allen · 05-28-2008, 05:06 AM

At least, this does means they didn't created their avatars without knowing how freakish it looked. They just wanted to look starved.

Ingrid N. · 05-28-2008, 05:35 AM

I think there are more people in SL, especially among fashionistas, with eating disorders than people think. It would seem only natural for those who suffer from an eating disorder to make their avatars conform to their ideal. I feel sorry for those people, having suffered from an eating disorder myself. You never even realize how fucked up your expectations regarding ideal proportions are until you look at them from the outside, more so in a world where everyone already has a BMI of, what, 19?

Some people however just think having an anorexic-looking avatar is cool and some sort of fashion statement. Those people are morons and need to be smacked over the head with a copy of the DSM-IV.

And let me just say "fuck pro-ana." in lieu of ranting about this shit for a few pages.

Chalice Yao · 05-28-2008, 06:23 AM

Those 'pro-ana' movements are pretty much the peak of what the media communicate as The Beauty Ideal to many females these days. 'Fat makes you ugly. The less fat on your body the better.' Add the supermodels to that. many of those are borderline anorexic, and in the case of fashion shows, a good amount acutally are. Yeah. Perfect role models there. Especially young girls are probably influenced by that, and once they go down the anorexia spiral, the pro-ana movements make things worse; They tell the girls that they are beautiful, that they need to continue, and completely disregard that they're slowly turning themselves into walking skeletons. It's utterly and completely dangerous, and quite frankly like advocating somebody to keep and enforce a mental illness they have.

Not only is a certain amount of body fat healthy, it's critical for the wellbeing. If you have no gram of fat on the outside, fat on the inside will start getting removed. That's the fat that lies around your organs and protects them from injuries. Guess what happens if that is gone.

All in all, it's just sad and retarded, and I can only add what's been stated already. 'Fuck pro-ana'.

Ewan Took · 05-28-2008, 06:37 AM

The pro-ana images are beyond thin. It's almost physically impossible to get to the stage the photoshopped images are and still be alive. I only studied the idea of body image and how a person's view of them self is incongruent with the way they actually look. This seems like something else, it's almost like a fetish.

Dakota Buck · 05-28-2008, 06:37 AM

When I was pointed to the Thinspo group by a friend who jokingly suggested I join it my reaction was "Are you fucking shitting me?" Reading through the comments on some of the pictures horrified me.
Including one from the creator of the group quoting Christina Aguilera lyrics and saying something along the lines of anyone can feel beautiful fat, thin or anorexic, just that she'd prefer to be thin or anorexic. Anorexia isn't generally something that should be aspired to, sure people aspire to be thin but there's nothing glamorous about the unhealthy options for achieving this. There's a minimum number of calories needed for normal brain function but I guess this explains Thinspo SL.
Sure Karl Lagerfeld hates "fat boned women" but he also has 70 iPods and won't see people before noon. He may be crazy talented but he's also crazy.
I've had both a plus-size and a slender avatar, just as I have gone in both directions in real life. But I suppose you could consider my avatar anorexic as I rarely feed her... in fact I have never fed her in almost 2 years. Not even once.

Stephanie Misfit · 05-28-2008, 07:29 AM

More gems from the founder of this group (who is also one of the FACES of a well known SL modeling agency):

"I didn't eat yesterday
And I'm not going to eat today
And I'm not going to eat tomorrow
'Cuz I'm going to be a supermodel!"

"Thin is in!
Thin is beautiful!
U don't need suggar. Suggar is poison."

"i like images of "sick" bodies....
It's my personal taste, like an artist ;-)
is the object of my affection...
my source of work."

"I LOVE anorexic girls ;-))) "

"Why in SL we not seen fat avies?
Because fat is ugly, even in SL...
So, if u not agree, make yr avies FAT!
and let me be thin and beautiful!"

Just as disturbing as this are some of the comments under the skeletal pictures which go along the lines of "So beautiful, so inspirational, thin IS in!"

Ned Easterwood · 05-28-2008, 07:35 AM

I am deliberately petite in SL.
But every once in a while I wonder about being too thin looking.
I do have a healthy bum though.

Brenda Connolly · 05-28-2008, 07:59 AM

I wonder how many in this group are of the younger age range. All I see running around seem to be emaciated emo girls it seems. I see them in thamall and my instinct is to grab them, buy them a Big Mac, some decent clothes and make them read some Naomi Wolf Books

Chalice Yao · 05-28-2008, 08:07 AM

Skip the decent clothes and use the money for another truckload of Big Macs. Actually, go Subway.

p.s.

I love the irony of that group owner calling sugar 'poison' while promoting the systematic crippling of the own body. Gotta love it. It's like a smoker complaining about traffic exhaust.

Penny Patton · 05-28-2008, 08:08 AM

You can get seriously harassed in SL for not having single digits on the belly slider. I've got my belly set to 32, and my hips at 63, and I've been called fat. I've met a couple people who had really great curvy body shapes who later switched to thinner shapes because they didn't want to deal with people getting on their case about it. It's really kind of a sad statement on our culture.

MissKillian Barbosa · 05-28-2008, 08:17 AM

I never realized how bony my Av was until my cousin who is also in Sl commented, "Girl..you look like a famine victim" I had to work on my sliders after that, I must admit, I like her a little rounder.

Persephone Milk · 05-28-2008, 08:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephanie Misfit

"I didn't eat yesterday
And I'm not going to eat today
And I'm not going to eat tomorrow
'Cuz I'm going to be a supermodel!"

"Thin is in!
Thin is beautiful!
U don't need suggar. Suggar is poison."

"i like images of "sick" bodies....
It's my personal taste, like an artist ;-)
is the object of my affection...
my source of work."

"I LOVE anorexic girls ;-))) "

"Why in SL we not seen fat avies?
Because fat is ugly, even in SL...
So, if u not agree, make yr avies FAT!
and let me be thin and beautiful!"

I can't help but wonder if this isn't some kind of an insensitive role play of models and/or persons with an eating disorder. I have known people with real eating disorders. They are almost always in a state of denial, or struggling deeply emotionally and physically. I don't know any that would sing a song like this. "i like images of "sick" bodies...." Come on. This doesn't represent the typical person with an eating disorder - or even the attitude of most models - thin or not.

Chalice Yao · 05-28-2008, 08:18 AM

A very sad statement indeed.

Speaking of cultures, fun fact: In many parts of Africa, the most attractive females are those that are fat. Very fat. It means that she is well fed and able to nourish man children.

I personally prefer the athletic side in both genders, interestingly. (not to be confused with the steroid-pumped unnatural look). Sadly enough our media seem to promtoe diets more than workouts. We don't get enough of those. Darn the office jobs.

Ingrid N. · 05-28-2008, 08:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brenda Connolly

I wonder how many in this group are of the younger age range. All I see running around seem to be emaciated emo girls it seems. I see them in thamall and my instinct is to grab them, buy them a Big Mac, some decent clothes and make them read some Naomi Wolf Books

I'd say about all of them are either teenagers or young adults.

Because anorexia, real anorexia and not this "tee hee I'm gonna be pro-ana this month cause it is so ~fashionable~" is all about control, both over your body and your desires. It's not about being the prettiest princess or having a lot of boyfriends who will, tee hee, buy you cool shit. If it was about looking cool and glamorous, certainly not about half of anorexics would also be cutters... unless Vogue has declared forearm scars to be hip this month.

If you think back to your own youth, I think for a lot of us it was a time of insecurity and uncertainty regarding our own identity. Cutting and starving yourself are both ways to try to regain the control over your scary new developing body and an attempt to protect your fragile new self-image.

This is why telling them to eat a burger won't help them, it's not the burger per se they reject but rather weakness inherent in eating the burger (gosh, doesn't that sound fancy?)

Pro-ana turns this thing around and makes anorexia a prerequisite to living a cool, fashionable life and also makes anorexia itself into a glamorous lifestyle. It's a little bit like romanticizing tuberculosis, just updated for our modern age. Instead of making you fragile and pale and and oh so pretty anorexia makes you... fragile and skinny and oh so pretty.

This is why pro-ana is so vexing to me, it present a serious and dangerous sickness, something that will permanently fuck you up even if you don't die from it eventually as a glamorous lifestyle the just takes discipline (oh yeah.) to achieve.

But SL pro-ana? Fucked if I know. If it's all RP I stand by my previous statement of wanting to beat them with a copy of the DSM-IV.

Chalice Yao · 05-28-2008, 08:34 AM

*nods*

I personally couldn't care less actually if somebody decided to support their own anorexia and see it as something beautiful. I'm not in the position to tell anybody not to do anything with their body, be it harmful or not. It just doesn't fit my mindset, and especially as a smoker I can't allow myself that kind of hypocrisy.

The thing about pro-ana that gets me angry is the fact that they -tell- other girls to do it as well, and that they're not beautiful if they don't. They promote it, along with hiding the consequences of all of it.

What I do wonder is how many of those SL pro-ana people are actually anorexic, and how many would like to be ( dot dot dot ), but can't get themselves to get to that state.

Brenda Connolly · 05-28-2008, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Penny Patton

You can get seriously harassed in SL for not having single digits on the belly slider. I've got my belly set to 32, and my hips at 63, and I've been called fat. I've met a couple people who had really great curvy body shapes who later switched to thinner shapes because they didn't want to deal with people getting on their case about it. It's really kind of a sad statement on our culture.

It's sad in RL for sure, but
it's made even sadder that people are criticizing, and getting worried about that criticism over how they look in a goddamn computer game. Perspective people

Chalice Yao · 05-28-2008, 08:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Persephone Milk

I can't help but wonder if this isn't some kind of an insensitive role play of models and/or persons with an eating disorder. I have known people with real eating disorders. They are almost always in a state of denial, or struggling deeply emotionally and physically. I don't know any that would sing a song like this. "i like images of "sick" bodies...." Come on. This doesn't represent the typical person with an eating disorder - or even the attitude of most models - thin or not.

Actually those profile quotes make their writer sound like a normal person who has a sexual fetish for anorexic girls, pretty much.

Combine that with said person owning that group, and..well. It starts to make sense in a twisted way.

Brenda Connolly · 05-28-2008, 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chalice Yao

A very sad statement indeed.

Speaking of cultures, fun fact: In many parts of Africa, the most attractive females are those that are fat. Very fat. It means that she is well fed and able to nourish man children.

I personally prefer the athletic side in both genders, interestingly. (not to be confused with the steroid-pumped unnatural look). Sadly enough our media seem to promtoe diets more than workouts. We don't get enough of those. Darn the office jobs.

That';s a big part of it. When I was a kid, We ate. All the junk that kids eat. At home, since we were an Irish German family it was simple. Meat, meat and more meat. Maybe a green plant thrown next to the potatoes once in a while. But after we ate, we did stuff. Rode our bikes, played ball, chased each other around in the park , whatever. . Parents: Get your kids off their asses and away from the computer every no and again and make them do something, of course after you set the example and do so your self.

05-28-2008, 05:04 AM	#1 (permalink)
Stephanie Misfit Senior Member Lurker Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Tasmania Posts: 115 SL Join Date: 05/25/06 Business: La Sylphide SLShopper Ads: 5 My Mood:	Does YOUR avatar have an eating disorder? I was kind of disturbed to learn that there is a pro-ana group on Flickr for SL avatars - Thinspo in Second Life. "Thinspiration! To be thin is to be Beautiful! This is a group only for SKINNY avies. Show us what is really beautiful! THIN IS IN!" Up until yesterday if you sent a request to be invited to join the group you had to agree to the following rules: "This is a pro-anorexia e bulimia in SL. Pro beautiful and thin avies. Pro model beauty. If you agree to these rules, you can join the group." The reference to the pro-anorexia aspect of the group in the rules has since been removed and replaced with " If you are THIN you are IN! :-)" However, as "thinspo" is a term used exclusively by the pro-ana community to describe photos of frighteningly thin women that are used as inspiration for weight loss, the fact that this is a pro-anorexia group remains unchanged. I've seen a lot of creepily thin avatars around of late, primarily in the so called "fashionista" community, many of whom either work as, or aspire to be, SL models. Yes, modeling, that holy grail of success in SL. Check out the Fashion World of SL feed and you'll be confronted with lots of them. I'd found the skeletal dimensions of these girls somewhat amusing until now, and assumed those shapes were made with some satirical intention, cos who would seriously want their avatar to look like a stick figure with a big alien head, right? But it turns out that some of these overly thin "fashion model" type avatars are in this Thinspo Flickr group, which really begs the question......... WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THEIR TYPISTS?? I'm certain that many of us have issues with our RL bodies, and the ability to chose our ideal form in SL is quite liberating as a result. No tits in RL? Sliders to 100 will fix it in SL. I don't have an issue with the way that anyone choses to represent their physical form in SL (unless they have a n00b cock hanging out of their pants), but do we really need to promote anorexia for our avatars? Look at pics of other "anorexic" avatars so that we can, what? Move the sliders down a little more to make our shapes even thinner? Share tips about virtual laxative use and how to prevent your virtual teeth from rotting due to excessive use of vomiting animations? You really have to wonder about some people.

05-28-2008, 05:06 AM	#2 (permalink)
Charlemagne Allen Countess of Darkmere will not let you escaped from this horror alive.... Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: USA Posts: 2,982 SL Join Date: February 2007 My Mood:	At least, this does means they didn't created their avatars without knowing how freakish it looked. They just wanted to look starved. __________________ Charlemagne Allen: YOU'RE A RACIST! Charlemagne Allen: I HAVE CHATLOGS! smokergirl Lowenhar: HOMOPHOBE smokergirl Lowenhar: CONTENT THIEF Charlemagne Allen: RELIGION SUCKS DONKEY BALLS! smokergirl Lowenhar: KISS MY ASS YOU CLOSE MINDED HYPOCRIT Charlemagne Allen: YOU WERE AN ESCORT FOR BARN ANIMALS! Charlemagne Allen: ZOMG BIG SIG! Pretty things: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlemagneallen/

05-28-2008, 05:35 AM	#3 (permalink)
Ingrid N. ist hungrig reluctantly romantic Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 1,394 Blog Entries: 1 My Mood:	I think there are more people in SL, especially among fashionistas, with eating disorders than people think. It would seem only natural for those who suffer from an eating disorder to make their avatars conform to their ideal. I feel sorry for those people, having suffered from an eating disorder myself. You never even realize how fucked up your expectations regarding ideal proportions are until you look at them from the outside, more so in a world where everyone already has a BMI of, what, 19? Some people however just think having an anorexic-looking avatar is cool and some sort of fashion statement. Those people are morons and need to be smacked over the head with a copy of the DSM-IV. And let me just say "fuck pro-ana." in lieu of ranting about this shit for a few pages. __________________ Oh No, Ingrid! - Fashion reviews, queer rants and horrible perversions. Written by a goat. Good times! Last edited by Ingrid N.; 05-28-2008 at 05:53 AM. Reason: spelling D:

05-28-2008, 06:37 AM	#5 (permalink)
Ewan Took Numpty Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Scottish Isles Posts: 1,900 My Mood:	The pro-ana images are beyond thin. It's almost physically impossible to get to the stage the photoshopped images are and still be alive. I only studied the idea of body image and how a person's view of them self is incongruent with the way they actually look. This seems like something else, it's almost like a fetish. __________________ "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

05-28-2008, 07:35 AM	#8 (permalink)
Ned Easterwood Mereille's Guy Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Detroit, Mi. Posts: 9,110 SL Join Date: 5/4/2007 My Mood:	I am deliberately petite in SL. But every once in a while I wonder about being too thin looking. I do have a healthy bum though. __________________ Ned Take 'er easy for all the sinners of the world, dude. Abide. And amen. http://www.dudeism.com/ My Unitarian Jihad Name is: The Claymore of Loving Kindness Unitarian Jihad

05-28-2008, 06:23 AM	#4 (permalink)
Chalice Yao The Purple Kinda at work. Somewhat. Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Somewhere purple, Germany Posts: 1,122 My Mood:	Those 'pro-ana' movements are pretty much the peak of what the media communicate as The Beauty Ideal to many females these days. 'Fat makes you ugly. The less fat on your body the better.' Add the supermodels to that. many of those are borderline anorexic, and in the case of fashion shows, a good amount acutally are. Yeah. Perfect role models there. Especially young girls are probably influenced by that, and once they go down the anorexia spiral, the pro-ana movements make things worse; They tell the girls that they are beautiful, that they need to continue, and completely disregard that they're slowly turning themselves into walking skeletons. It's utterly and completely dangerous, and quite frankly like advocating somebody to keep and enforce a mental illness they have. Not only is a certain amount of body fat healthy, it's critical for the wellbeing. If you have no gram of fat on the outside, fat on the inside will start getting removed. That's the fat that lies around your organs and protects them from injuries. Guess what happens if that is gone. All in all, it's just sad and retarded, and I can only add what's been stated already. 'Fuck pro-ana'.

05-28-2008, 06:37 AM	#6 (permalink)
Dakota Buck Effin' Classy Not for Consumption Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Queensland, Australia/Imogen, Second Life Posts: 16 SL Join Date: 6/8/2006 Business: Savvy? SLShopper Ads: 31 My Mood:	When I was pointed to the Thinspo group by a friend who jokingly suggested I join it my reaction was "Are you fucking shitting me?" Reading through the comments on some of the pictures horrified me. Including one from the creator of the group quoting Christina Aguilera lyrics and saying something along the lines of anyone can feel beautiful fat, thin or anorexic, just that she'd prefer to be thin or anorexic. Anorexia isn't generally something that should be aspired to, sure people aspire to be thin but there's nothing glamorous about the unhealthy options for achieving this. There's a minimum number of calories needed for normal brain function but I guess this explains Thinspo SL. Sure Karl Lagerfeld hates "fat boned women" but he also has 70 iPods and won't see people before noon. He may be crazy talented but he's also crazy. I've had both a plus-size and a slender avatar, just as I have gone in both directions in real life. But I suppose you could consider my avatar anorexic as I rarely feed her... in fact I have never fed her in almost 2 years. Not even once.

05-28-2008, 07:29 AM	#7 (permalink)
Stephanie Misfit Senior Member Lurker Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Tasmania Posts: 115 SL Join Date: 05/25/06 Business: La Sylphide SLShopper Ads: 5 My Mood:	More gems from the founder of this group (who is also one of the FACES of a well known SL modeling agency): "I didn't eat yesterday And I'm not going to eat today And I'm not going to eat tomorrow 'Cuz I'm going to be a supermodel!" "Thin is in! Thin is beautiful! U don't need suggar. Suggar is poison." "i like images of "sick" bodies.... It's my personal taste, like an artist ;-) is the object of my affection... my source of work." "I LOVE anorexic girls ;-))) " "Why in SL we not seen fat avies? Because fat is ugly, even in SL... So, if u not agree, make yr avies FAT! and let me be thin and beautiful!" Just as disturbing as this are some of the comments under the skeletal pictures which go along the lines of "So beautiful, so inspirational, thin IS in!"

05-28-2008, 07:59 AM	#9 (permalink)
Brenda Connolly Konichiwa, Bitches I'll Be Back Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Nu Jerzee, USSA Posts: 4,393 SL Join Date: January 2007	I wonder how many in this group are of the younger age range. All I see running around seem to be emaciated emo girls it seems. I see them in thamall and my instinct is to grab them, buy them a Big Mac, some decent clothes and make them read some Naomi Wolf Books

05-28-2008, 08:07 AM	#10 (permalink)
Chalice Yao The Purple Kinda at work. Somewhat. Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Somewhere purple, Germany Posts: 1,122 My Mood:	Skip the decent clothes and use the money for another truckload of Big Macs. Actually, go Subway. p.s. I love the irony of that group owner calling sugar 'poison' while promoting the systematic crippling of the own body. Gotta love it. It's like a smoker complaining about traffic exhaust.

05-28-2008, 08:08 AM	#11 (permalink)
Penny Patton Punk Girl in Space Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 304 SL Join Date: 11/30/2005 My Mood:	You can get seriously harassed in SL for not having single digits on the belly slider. I've got my belly set to 32, and my hips at 63, and I've been called fat. I've met a couple people who had really great curvy body shapes who later switched to thinner shapes because they didn't want to deal with people getting on their case about it. It's really kind of a sad statement on our culture.

05-28-2008, 08:17 AM	#12 (permalink)
MissKillian Barbosa Slackers unite!! Later.. In Giddy Anticipation Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: In a castle on a cloud. Posts: 1,258 SL Join Date: 2/2007 Blog Entries: 2 My Mood:	I never realized how bony my Av was until my cousin who is also in Sl commented, "Girl..you look like a famine victim" I had to work on my sliders after that, I must admit, I like her a little rounder. __________________ Silly Ol' Killy Dilly

05-28-2008, 08:18 AM	#14 (permalink)
Chalice Yao The Purple Kinda at work. Somewhat. Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Somewhere purple, Germany Posts: 1,122 My Mood:	A very sad statement indeed. Speaking of cultures, fun fact: In many parts of Africa, the most attractive females are those that are fat. Very fat. It means that she is well fed and able to nourish man children. I personally prefer the athletic side in both genders, interestingly. (not to be confused with the steroid-pumped unnatural look). Sadly enough our media seem to promtoe diets more than workouts. We don't get enough of those. Darn the office jobs.

05-28-2008, 08:34 AM	#16 (permalink)
Chalice Yao The Purple Kinda at work. Somewhat. Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Somewhere purple, Germany Posts: 1,122 My Mood:	nods I personally couldn't care less actually if somebody decided to support their own anorexia and see it as something beautiful. I'm not in the position to tell anybody not to do anything with their body, be it harmful or not. It just doesn't fit my mindset, and especially as a smoker I can't allow myself that kind of hypocrisy. The thing about pro-ana that gets me angry is the fact that they -tell- other girls to do it as well, and that they're not beautiful if they don't. They promote it, along with hiding the consequences of all of it. What I do wonder is how many of those SL pro-ana people are actually anorexic, and how many would like to be ( dot dot dot ), but can't get themselves to get to that state.

05-28-2008, 09:02 AM	#20 (permalink)
Beebo Brink Uppity Alt