Alarming engagements? Exploring pro-anorexia websites in/and the media

This chapter draws on a selection of social and news media from early reports in 2001 to more recent ones in 2013, alongside data from anthropological observations and interviews on pro-anorexia websites and in an English eating disorders inpatient clinic. It attempts an active listening that challenges the listeners preconceptions and positions while at the same time it engages critically with the content of what is being said and heard by individuals who maintain their anorexia on the Internet. The chapter begins by tracing the alarm present in media coverage of pro-anorexia websites, which views them as populated either by victims or predators, before turning to explore the contrasting complexities in participants own descriptions of why they visit the sites. It shows how media representations of anorexia-as-thinness become lines of flight inscribed with a desire that problematizes participants own conceptualizations of pro-anorexia and even undermines their lived experiences of the illness itself.