A disturbing aspect of body image in technology comes in the form of ‘thinspiration’ blogs. Thinspiration is exactly how it sounds- the inspiration to be thin. Across the Internet are blogs, videos, chats and photos created to encourage and compare disordered lifestyles. Blogging communities like Tumblr, Xanga, and WordPress all contain thousands of these pages that can be extremely damaging to body image. The content of these sites may vary, but they are based around the promotion of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. These web pages typically contain photos of alarmingly thin models and celebrities, before and after pictures of girls during weight loss, and detailed descriptions of what was eaten that day and the caloric intake.
A screenshot of a user’s daily food intake from their Xanga thinspiration blog:
The danger in these sites is the emphasis placed on body image. When a young girl stumbles across these thinspiration websites, it’s easy for her to become swept up in the opinion and the attitude of it all. She may start to think, “Should I be worried about the amount of calories I’ve consumed today?” or, “Am I supposed to want to look like these models?” When naive minds see ideas like this, its not hard for them to mistake it as a legitimate viewpoint, however harmful it may be.
Another danger is in the sense of community that comes with thinspiration groups. Owners of these blogs are constantly praising one another, sharing tips and congratulating each other on each pound lost. Becoming a part of this community and finding others with the same frame of mind can be an enticing, powerful feeling.
An eating disorder is a serious illness, but thinspiration websites turn this illness into a quest and a hobby. In this way, technology is helping to skew the way in which people deal with eating disorders, and it is not healthy.
Xanga includes hundreds of groups like these, all geared towards disordered eating. Note the thousands of members per group:
A WordPress thinspiration website containing a lot of unhealthy tags:
The top hits when searching ‘anorexia’ on Google
Technology and Body Image 