Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

Material created, curated or used (almost exclusively in distributed digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss; a sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those who have chosen to anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo is a noun; the noun plural is thinspos.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, rinspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately highlighted against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion that the particular aesthetic construct of the thinspo community finds there the most attractive, unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic.  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” school of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that to some extent was opportunistic give that the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean mean” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Like much in the pro-ana community, the thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean battle, the content shifting as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function supply-demand curve; the supply of pro-ana content at least to some extent a product of demand and, like much that is on-line, some of the material is blatantly fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious before & after photos which appear with frequent duplication.  Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo sites attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (and demonstrating widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were not statistically significant, the divergences being striking but almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (cutters etc) appeared almost exclusively on thinspo.

Thinspo Rules

Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.

(4) Every calorie counts.  Review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where possible, choose the diet or low cal version and drink water (soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners (1) because they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) on thinspo goal is to completely cure the body’s natural sugar addiction. 

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought.

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage.   This curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew your food more, taking at least one 1 full breathe after every bite.  It can vary according to what’s being eater but as a guide, chew 30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which slows eating, can make you you’re eating more and it will makes other people think you ate more, something which can be important.

 (10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: cake as fat sitting in your thighs, chips as a permanent lining in the stomach etc..

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The idea model is to have no food in the house and each day but only what you’re that day allowed.  It can be difficult at first but it can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use diet minder journal or cronometers but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate in a variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable.

(14) Don’t eat 2 ½ hours before bed.

(15) You’ll sometimes eat with friends or family so you may need to develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always been unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.