Anorexia awareness art exhibit: Helping or hurting?

10th January 2009

Anorexia awareness art exhibit: Helping or hurting?

posted in Arts and Music, Eating Disorders, Pop Culture |

Artist and photographer Ivonne Thein opened her exhibit “Thirty-Two Kilos” Thursday at the Goethe-Institut Washington. The title refers to the weight (about 70 pounds) of French actress Isabelle Caro, who recently posed naked for ads condemning anorexia. Thein, 29, used her friends as models and then digitally altered the images so that they appear emaciated, wrapped in medical bandages and contorted — all in an effort, she says, to make a critical statement about anorexia and pro-ana websites.

Of course, as you can deduce, those who frequent pro-ana sites are already gleefully embracing the highly-distorted and completely unrealistic images as “thinspiration,” but Thein insists that it wasn’t her intention to provide even more fuel to the pro-ana fire. “It’s important for me that if I show my pictures, there’s a statement that it’s a critical position and I don’t glamorize anorexia,” she said in this Washington Post story.

Oh, really? I’m not seeing it.

One one hand, I respect an artist’s right to pursue their passion and subject matter of choice and I appreciate Thein’s intention with this exhibit. And as an artist and photographer myself, I also must admire the flawlessness of the digital manipulation here. But I am also an eating disorders awareness activist and so I have to also question the extreme disconnect between Thein’s intention and the ways in which the exhibit will be interpreted by a mass audience. The edgy, couture nature of the photographs gives not the sense of aghast horror deserving of anorexia, but instead glamorizes the subjects and even thinness itself. While Thein covers the subjects’ eyes in an attempt, she says, to divert focus onto their bodies, each model sports luscious, flowing locks of hair the kind you’d never see on someone with a serious eating disorder (symptoms of malnutrition include brittle hair and hair loss), and perfectly-toned, flawless skin (other symptoms of anorexia are dry and yellowish skin, abdominal edema, lanugo and easy bruising from anemia). These women are also shown in poses that mimic running or difficult stretches — movements that would be difficult to impossible for someone whose bones, muscles and very body are atrophying from serious anorexia.

In short: Thein’s exhibit might get a brief tsk-tsking about the dangers of anorexia, but its lasting legacy will be more to serve as thinspirational images for girls and others hellbent on self-destruction.

View the images on Thein’s site (featured under the artwork link) and decide for yourself (they are, needless to say, very triggering). Is the exhibit helpful or hurtful for people susceptible to and/or who have an eating disorder?

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1 On January 10th, 2009, angrygrayrainbows said:

Wow… those pictures are quite disturbing. What strikes me is that those photos look all too similar to what we see in mainstream fasion as is. If I had seen the pictures without knowing it was supposed to show the horrors of anorexia, I would’ve thought it’s just another bizarrely grotesque fashion shoot that is simply using extremely thin bodies to catch attention.

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am

2 On January 10th, 2009, Erin said:

I just checked out the photos and then to ‘refresh’ my memory checked out the ad that Caro did. I think part of the reason Caro’s image was successful in making that statement about pro-ana stuff is that the ad was kind of gruesome. Her hair was thin, she had a terrified look on her face, and there was something sad and powerless about her that I could see really jolting someone. Thein’s photos did no such thing, and covering the faces (with the impossible thick hair no less) and parts of the body that get scary looking when too thin (hips, ribs, shoulders, etc.) just made her women look impossibly long-limbed and glamorous. Agreed that these are more in the realm of ‘thinspiration’ rather than a smack in the face of ‘what am I doing to myself?’

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 11:57 am

3 On January 10th, 2009, Orora said:

These look more like “thinspiration” than horrifying to me. In fact, I looked at a few of the photos and thought, “Didn’t I see that in Vogue?” If horror and concern were what Thein was aiming for, I think she didn’t quite get there.

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

4 On January 10th, 2009, Aurora Erratic said:

Those images are gross and distorted, but they certainly do not carry a sugestion of horror or even pathology. If that is what Thein is meaning to get at, she has missed the mark. I suspect she chose the subject matter more for her own aesthetic than for social reasons, and is just sticking the anti-ana statement on there as justification.

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

5 On January 10th, 2009, Kara said:

I agree with you 100%!

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

6 On January 10th, 2009, Valerie said:

The exhibit and the Caro billboard give people the idea that this is about wanting to look like fashion models and that it can be cured by eating a sandwich. The truth of the matter is that a lot of people will look at that and say ‘women shouldn’t be THAT skinny.’ Check out the take that Nancy Haysen did on the Caro billboard. Discussions about that are best boiled down to ‘oh the media has such ridiculous standards for feminine beauty’ and ‘well women shouldn’t be THAT fat either..its unhealthy’.

The bottom line is that this is a mental illness and focusing on the physicality of the illness in an attempt to scare those effected into going straight are futile. It’s like focusing entire campaigns and exposes on people with voices in their heads who think they’re Jesus and never actually talking about schizophrenia.

My favorite moment of potential anti-anorexia activism was, oddly enough, in a Behind the Music episode about the Carpenters. When asked why Karen was anorexic her parents and brother immediately denied that it had anything to do with her family or childhood. I think they actually said something along the lines of ‘she had a perfectly normal childhood’ but she just wouldn’t eat. To be honest, I’ve known and lived with several anorexics and they all had one thing in common: families who were non-communicative and in denial about their family dynamics.

posted on January 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

7 On January 11th, 2009, Lenore said:

I honestly don’t think the problem here is that these images glamorize anorexia, per se. It doesn’t matter how “pretty” or “gruesome” you make the images. Just having images at all is thinspiration enough. Yes, even the Caro ad. It’s like the studies they’ve done about suicide in high schools. Any mention of suicide at all, even when it’s suicide prevention programs brought in by professional psychologists, leads to a spike in the suicide rate. Context doesn’t really matter, just reminding people that it exists is enough to do the damage.

I agree with Valerie that the focus on image is missing the point. The focus on image, however well intentioned it might be, is actually part of the problem, not a path to a solution. Saying “Don’t look like this!” is as damaging as saying “Look like this!” because it encourages an obsessive preoccupation with external appearance and doesn’t engage internal problems at all.

posted on January 11th, 2009 at 3:27 am

8 On January 11th, 2009, Itza said:

Hey gals!!! My name is Itzayana, Itza for short, I am 15 years old and I am asking for your help. I have been working on a project to help all those girls who suffer everyday because of low self-esteem caused by body image in my high school. I have had problems with my body image since I can remember. Life for me has been hard, I’m always putting up with insults, teasing, and other horrible things and I want to put a stop to that not only for me but for all those girls who are tired of this situations. And there’s were yall come in. I need stories of real life situations or stories coming from teen girls and even adult woman. These stories will be placed in a presentation for our school’s self-esteem workshops. So please be free to send as much stories as you please to my e-mail,igirlpower09@aol.com please put your name age and the state where you live. I am trying to collect as much stories as I can. Please help us. You don’t have too put the state where you live if you don’t feel comfortable with it, though it would help. Please I need your help. Also if you want to suggest or comment me about any aspect, go ahead,
Thanks

posted on January 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

9 On January 11th, 2009, Bree said:

On Karen Carpenter, I read somewhere that after she got popular, her father told her she was fat and apparently that comment lead to her anorexia. Of course, since her family will not discuss her death, we may never know what actually led to her ED. As for the artwork, it’s disturbing to look at and I do agree that it could lead to yet another debate on how women’s bodies, instead of what causes them to develop anorexia.

I also can’t help remark that if Thein decided to go the other way and use very fat models for her project, everyone who saw them would be probably be in 100% agreement that there would be nothing positive about a very fat female body. (And when I mean very fat, I mean women who are a size 3X and up, those considered “morbidly obese,” a group that I belong to).

posted on January 11th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

10 On January 12th, 2009, Yorke said:

The first thing I noticed was the athletic positions and how I had no energy for that sort of thing at anywhere near that point. That’s what made it seem like a glamorization to me.

posted on January 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am

11 On January 12th, 2009, Shanti said:

The claim by the artist that these photos don’t glamorize anorexia is nothing but absurd.

posted on January 12th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

12 On January 13th, 2009, Katy said:

I agree with you 100%. Two years ago I wanted to ~*~prove to myself how very secure I am with my “recovered” ED body, etc. by posing for Matt Blum’s Nu Project in Minneapolis. There were some really beautiful images of imperfect, aged, scarred, dimpled bodies…one in particular of a woman who had undergone a double masectomy and chemo that was hauntingly beautiful. My boyfriend thought this was a terrible idea, as he didn’t believe I was really recovered, and would misconstrue my exploitation and disease as art.

…he was totally right.

I didn’t listen, did the shoot, then did more and more shoots as I got skinnier and skinnier, and inevitably ended up in treatment.

Bottom line: for most people, these images would illicit appropriately adversarial reactions…for those with a natural proclivity toward disordered thinking, it’s just really fucking triggering. Thanks for sharing, bb.

::off to write a strongly worded letter to the “artist”::

posted on January 13th, 2009 at 2:26 am