Although the Pro Ana Mia website features a disclaimer on its homepage saying this is not a site for those who would like to become anorexic/bulimic, it pretty much teaches you how to appease your eating disorders without completely dying. The webmistress uses the "I" to speak elusively on the reason for being of the site and then offers recipes, tips and even poems:
"My whole body in pain ...
Should probably eat something ...
But I feel to (sic) ashamed ...
Starting to shiver now ...
Beginning to shake ...
God how I love this ...
How my body just aches ..."
There is also a forum with news and a space for interaction among users. Also chilling is the presence of a few different digital weight calculators, scales and a "jokes" section involving calories and the illusion that they won't make one's body expand.
The website seems a little defunct since 2006, as if it had been left alone in cyberspace unfed, waiting to wither and die. But it is just one of several digital spaces reserved for those with eating disorders to both get a sense of community and, perhaps, a chance to normalize their pathology.
i think this is an interesting supplement to white's work, one harder to parse in her rhetoric of optimism. the control issues here are certainly key to parsing identity in digital and embodied realms.
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