![]() ![]() These blogs, while certainly fostering a sense of community for the users, exist mainly to glorify self-abuse. They already face pressure from so many sources it's irresponsible to provide a forum where sixteen-year-old girls can compare emaciated waists and compete for consuming fewer calories. There's probably no group as susceptible to influence as high school kids. As a culture we need to ask why these young women hate themselves so much and judge themselves so harshly. I don't have enough space or time here to go into why I think this is the case-why young women often feel fat, ugly, and unworthy in our society, and why this leads to self-harming behaviors from starvation to cutting-but I will say that it's obvious that excluding this content from Tumblr won't eliminate the behaviors. Although I'm sure there are self-harming men out there, young women were by and far the majority. Almost without exception, every pro-ana or self-mutilation Tumblr I read was a high school or college aged girl. Go to any pro-ana Tumblr and you'll get lost in a sea of thinness: models and ballerinas tend to be favorites, but there are also lots of user-generated pictures, “real girl thinspo.” Alongside the pictures are food diaries and motivational JPEGs, their mantra the hackneyed, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”īut what I found especially notable throughout all the self-harm Tumblrs was one thing: the age and gender of the self-harmers. Much thinspiration is presented as a lifestyle choice or a standard of beauty. Yet there's something a bit more sinister about the pro-ana sites, if only because they so rarely mention disease or recovery. And there's a lot that's sad about their sister self-harm blogs, the pro-eating disorder ones. There's a lot that's sad about these self-mutilator blogs. Sometimes they acknowledge that they suffer from a disease, and many of them talk about how they wish they could stop. They also post highly graphic pictures of their bloody arms, already crosshatched with hundreds of scars. They post about compulsion and about recovery and relapse. Their blogs doubtlessly glorify depression, loneliness and self-violence, but they do also sometimes function as a way to reach out for help. The self-mutilators, it seemed, generally know that something is wrong with their impulses and behaviors. Others feel that removing spaces for self-harm to be discussed will further alienate those who participate in these behaviors: sure, talking about starving yourself on your Tumblr is unhealthy, but without Tumblr that person may just continue starving themselves in isolation. ![]() Some commend the policy for removing triggering language and images from the site. Some say it hinders the free speech of Tumblr users it undoubtedly does this, but nowhere is it written that social networking users are entitled to free speech. They're also adding PSA's to the site, which will pop up when a user searches for flagged tags such as “pro-ana”, “thinspo”, or “purging.” The new policy has created both an outpouring of support and significant backlash from Tumblr community. Online dialogue about these acts and conditions is incredibly important this prohibition is intended to reach only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or mutilate themselves embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seek counseling or treatment for depression or other disorders. Don't post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm. Two days ago, Tumblr decided to address the plethora of blogs promoting self-harm through a revision of their content policy, to take effect next week:Īctive Promotion of Self-Harm.
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