Content & Form: Instagram Digital Storytelling
As of December 6th, 2013 there are 2,371,946 photos that result by searching the hashtag #ana. Since Instagram attempted to get rid of the hashtag last year, prior to having access to the photos you are greeted with this message:
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If you choose “Learn More” you are taken to NEDA , a website dedicated to supporting individuals with eating disorders and their families. Once you choose “Show Post”, overall, a majority of the photos are of fragmented bodies, meaning that much of the photos expose stomachs, collarbones, backs, and legs and not whole bodies such as:
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The "bio" & Secret Accounts
After sifting through a few hundred photos you will find Instagram accounts that are secret accounts. To begin, you can see that the username is "No1CANKNOW" or no one can know. Within these secret accounts, another theme to note is the list of weight goals that appears. For example, in this particular account below, she is 5’6 and her start weight or “sw” was 170 lbs as signaled by the whale emojicon. This start weight is followed by the descending goal weight 1 (gw1) and so on, that will end with an ultimate goal weight (ugw) at 95 lbs, which is the “typical” weight that most of the girls state that they want to achieve. |
Comments, Captions & the Hashtag #ana
Followers of the teenage girls on Instagram commented on photos in a way that almost seemed as if they were complimenting the teenage girls so as to encourage them with continuing the eating disorder. Below, the username "pal3_anor3xic" or pale anorexic's caption is "They're big on me <3". From the few hundred photos that I viewed, most captions like the photos above from "okay_ana" and "fading_fast_xxx" referenced their discontent with their own body. Below, “shescreamsinsanity” replies with “Congrats :D”. While most comments I came across applauded the "improvement", there were a few users who offered help by talking. The hash tag #ana is what connects all these digital stories individually and together as a community on Instagram. The user on Instagram has the choice of having a "public" or "private" profile. In other words, the fact that these profiles are "public" implies a community connected by this hash tag. During the perusing of photos and hash tags, it became obvious that more than likely when a teen age girl used #ana, she also used (like above) other hash tags connected to mental illnesses, such as #depressed and #cutting. In fact, many photos that surfaced were graphic in nature because of the #cutting photos. Possibly, the larger question I am hinting at is, are all these mental illnesses related? And if so, why have those hash tags not been considered "controversial" or "dangerous"? |
Thinspiration & Photos (the Selfie)
A kind of account exists on Instagram is one that promotes “thinspiration”. "Thinspiration" is also a trendy hash tag in the #ana community. However, when an account is dedicated for #thinspiration purposes, the user is utilizing the account to post photos of other thin "ideals" for her own inspiration and to inspire others. As seen below and to the right, by "anaarmy_" and "cutslikeknives”, these are ideals. |
Specifically, "cutslikeknives"'s caption states, "This is perfect...Can't wait to be this small", attached to a photo where to most people the person in the photo looks unhealthy. Another point to note is how the prevalence of the selfie on Instagram and equally on the videos looked at under the YouTube section of this project is integral to the #ana symptom of "a distortion of body image".
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