Thinspiration

The video piece in Laia Abril’s Thinspiration series shows a young woman speaking directly to the camera about why she self-identifies as “pro-ana.” She describes it in the terms used within Pro Ana communities: not as an illness, but as a way of life, personifying “Ana” and upholding shared rules and rituals, including sharing photographs of extreme thinness, called thinspiration.

Single-channel video
20 sec, colour, English

This piece is part of a broader body of work exploring the online phenomenon of thinspiration, which emerged in the early 2000s as images of extremely thin women — celebrities, models, or anonymous users — circulated across blogs, forums, and early social networking platforms to encourage further weight loss. Many of the young women sharing these images were living with eating disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia.

Abril began researching these communities in 2010 as part of her long-term project on eating disorders and their visual culture, informed by her own experience of living with bulimia. Her research focused on the emergence of social media as a new risk factor and on the central role of photography in constructing and sustaining these online communities. During this research, she rephotographed images found within Pro Ana networks, relocating them from their original online context to create a taxonomy of the visual culture through which eating disorders were performed, reinforced and circulated. As self-portraits increasingly replaced celebrity imagery, “Real Thinspiration” marked a shift towards validation and collective participation through images.

Thinspiration (2012) examines the visual language that emerged within Pro Ana communities at a time when photography and social media became central to the experience and performance of eating disorders. The work denounces the role of online image culture in normalising, aestheticising and perpetuating self-destructive behaviours.