A little late but here it is. I was having trouble uploading it in a PDF so I'm just pasting it here and sending a copy to your e-mail.
Title: An investigation of Pro-Anorexia sites. How are they affecting teenagers today and what can we do to end these sites for good?
Introduction:
When I first started this research project I had no idea what I was interested in studying. I knew I wanted to research something that was important to me and I wasn’t researching something just to get the paper done.
My sophomore year of college I took a public speaking class and I did a speech on pro-anorexia sites. My professor gave me the idea to do the speech because not a lot of people knew about these sites and I sure did not.
Body image has always been a big issue in our society. If you don’t fit the specific image someone is looking for, than you don’t fit into society. Body image has been determined by many factors, two of them being politics and one even bigger, media. The media has always had a huge effect on how we perceive our bodies and ourselves. With negative body image comes eating disorders, and with eating disorders comes pro-anorexia sites. The media is the biggest problem when it comes to eating disorders. We see models and famous athletes with these amazing bodies and think we have to be like them. We see diet commercials and form fitting clothes and have to have it. The media not only affects how we think about our bodies, but it sometimes can affect our lives, especially for people mainly girls, with an eating disorder.
Literature Review:
Wilson, Jenny & Peebles, Rebecka (2006, March). Surfing for Thinness: A Pilot Study of Pro-Eating Disorder Web Site Usage in Adolescents With Eating Disorders. Retrieved from SAGE journals online database.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/118/6/e1635
This article talks all about pro-ana sites from how they started to what they do for girls. The article states that “pro-eating disorder web sites are communites of individuals who engage in disordered eating and use the Internet to discuss their activities.” The journal article was about a survey that was conducted with 698 families of patients with eating disorders age 10-22. Questions were asked to the parents such as if they knew about the pro-ana sites and also if they knew whether or not their children used these sites. A lot of the parents had no idea about these sites, and they weren’t sure what their children did on the web. I really liked this article because it’s a great study that I can use to back up the rest of my research on pro-ana sites.
Method:
I haven’t completely decided how I’m going to go about doing the rest of my research for this paper. I think I’m going to do a study through my Facebook friends to see how many people know about pro-ana sites. I know if I asked my mom or my little sister they would probably have no idea what I’m talking about. I think I’m mainly going to study these pro-ana sites. I might try and join some of the sites to see if I can get a bit more information on these girls and how they think. I’m not sure if this will work or not but I think its worth a try. My biggest thing is that when these sites should be shut down, they’re not. I want to find a way to make these pro-ana sites stop.
