A 21-year-old male rests over the toilet, where he made himself vomit. Photo by: Ashlee Lacasse
Thinspiration: Thin + Inspiration.
Adolescents have access to endless “thinspiration,” a term used to describe glorified images of thinness in the media.
Tumblr, a free online blog-hosting platform, is home to many personal thinspiration websites filled with endless images of Photoshopped celebrities, photos of people with eating disorders and other forms of encouragement to be too thin.
Monitoring the web, however, isn’t easy. According to Jennifer, the problems with modern-day communication include having no control and that having too much control could mean more problems.
“There is always the issue with freedom of speech,” she said. “It isn’t a healthy thing and thinspiration does not encourage healthy behaviour…I would never encourage someone to strive to be anorexic or bulimic.”
“Images of men in magazines are photoshopped just like images of females are,” Morgante says. This statement reigns true even for thinspiration blogs on Tumblr. Though there are several sites designated for females, there are an increasing number of all-male blogs, as well.
Morgante said there was once a male model whose photo had been retouched in a magazine. The model complained to the editor, only to hear, “Too bad! We Photoshop everyone,” as a response.
“Many of us in our culture let the sense of our self be undermined with Photoshopped images, which are blatant lies with many messages that come to us from not only the media, but even family members who say the wrong thing,” Morgante said.
The Executive Director of EDOYR later shared a story about hearing a parent say to their child at the dinner table that they were fat, leaving the child broken hearted. “It doesn’t take much time to push someone over the edge and that does affect both genders of all ages,” Morgante said.
Sometimes, restricting oneself from food can be hard to stop. A man was once asked to fast a few days prior to a medical procedure and admitted to Morgante that he could go so far as not being able to stop fasting.
“I’ve had students who come to me before going on a strip saying they want to look good, but then they can’t stop restricting,” Morgante said. “And they still can’t stop.”
This is where an individual’s sense of self comes into play. “When you’re off balance [and have a strong sense of self], you’re aware of it and can bring it back into balance,” Morgante said.
Gregory Gorgeous, a Toronto homosexual who made his claim to fame via makeup tutorials on YouTube, is considered thinspiration for many young males.
Gorgeous has become one of Canada’s most popular YouTube gurus, with over 180,000 subscribers and over 23-million video views.
The star’s Facebook page says, “Teaching people to be themselves and no one else, [Gorgeous] has become a role model for hundreds of thousands of people young, and old.”
Gorgeous may be sending his audience the be-yourself message, but what could happen when a male with little to no sense of self gets a glimpse of his fit physique, angelic features and made-up face?
Sometimes, people experience a very high degree of fear to the point where their own inner voice becomes critical and demeaning. “If someone feels that due to a misunderstanding in society about eating disorders, though it is diminishing, that they can’t ask for help or afford it,” Morgante said, “not only is this threatening mental message being played non-stop, there is also hiding and isolating from friends and family [that takes place].”
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