ABOUT WBB
The story of Ms. Orange
It was the beginning of May in 2006. Ms. Orange had been a moderator on a rather "moderate" yet still decidedly proana forum for a year prior, and there was an active, thriving membership to keep the community going.
Over the year she'd been getting to know people on her forums, the older members became more of real friends
than "ana buddies". They were starting to grow weary with the whole
proana schtick, even though they formed a community that was outwardly
labelled as such. Ms. Orange didn't have much impetus to change how her
community was perceived, and the community didn't have the extra umph
they needed to actively focus on recovery.
Then, something happened.
The free service provider that hosted the proana board was planning to
shut down the forum community. Ms. Orange and her friends were going to
lose their support base.
She couldn't let so many
people lose their community, especially when they were all at a sort of
turning point - at least CONSIDERING recovery for the first or one
millionth time. Their new attitudes that was not properly represented
on a proana forum. (Underground to the underground, perhaps?)
Ms. Orange and her friends did not accurately fit the "proana" label anymore. They were... post-proana.
There had to be a community that existed for people who wanted to actively recover. Has to be.
[The forum Ms. Orange and her friends were on was deleted but then
restored three days later, possibly because so many of the forum
members were making noise about not being proana. The free forum site
provider never gave details on why they deleted it or why they restored
it. Ms. Orange herself said she had never heard of a proana forum being
restored by a free provider after deletion, aside from this case.]
Ms. Orange - the former proana site moderator - knew there had
to be a place that her friends - former proanas - could go to keep
friends and stay positive and not be alone in their recovery struggles.
Otherwise, they would all end up going back to proana communities and
becoming progressively worse.
On May 10th, 2006, Ms. Orange set up We Bite Back...
even though she couldn't even afford to pay for the site registration
because she was so flat broke at the time. One of her friends - a nice
lady in the southern USA - paypalled the registration costs.
Ms. Orange wanted so much to see her friends become healthy, happy
people. There are so many incredibly intelligent people afflicted with
eating disorders. If they were to allow their brains the proper sugar
to think properly, they would display this intelligence more readily.
The Orange knew from personal experience how much prolonged heavy
caloric restriction and electrolyte imbalances could keep her from
thinking straight. All emotions become dulled... It's not really living
- it's mere survival.
After she built the site, Ms. Orange watched people recover and start
doing amazing things with their lives that they previously said could
not be done. They were starting to believe in themselves. She watched herself do amazing things as well, because she finally made it a personal priority to recover. She made it her "job" to recover!
Ms. Orange felt it was very important that we have a community that
would not disappear - one that would not embody a spirit of destruction
and low self esteem. It was important that this community would be made
to emmulate the close, supportive ties found in pro-anorexic boards,
but to remove all the permissive attitudes to self-harm and
self-depreciating comments. It was time to stop focusing all our
energies on "helping" others just so we could avoid helping ourselves.
It was time to work ourselves out of our "comfort" zone of destructive
pro-anorexia - not just because we might lose our forums if we didn't
start using more ethics in our community-building and
community-moderation/administration, but because otherwise we would
remain in anorexic limbo.
You are who your friends are. If all your friends are miserable and you
are feeling vulnerable at the time, they will drag you down. If you are
down and you surround yourself with people who are all actively
pursuing recovery, health and happiness, they will help you stay strong.
Instead of swapping tips to lose more weight, people on We Bite Back encourage one another to be stronger, happier, healthier people.
It's time for people to actively pursue their own recovery, and bite their eating disorders back.
It's time for ethics above aesthetics. It's time to bite back!
