ABSTRACT
Blogging is a self-reflexive act where one uses writing to reflect on one’s day, meditate on the self, interact with an online community, and attempt to better the self. The medium is an adaptation of Antiquity’s use of the hupomnemata. The hupomnemata was a style of writing where one recounted the day’s activities, recorded thoughts or readings, and self-reflected to create an ethos to care for the self and overcome weaknesses and problems.
Pro-Ana blogs, blogs promoting anorexia, are unconscious modifications of the hupomnemata and self-care in Antiquity. The bloggers struggle with the effects of depression, rape, and molestation, and use anorexia and the hupomnemata writing style of blogs to understand themselves and to gain control of their bodies after control was lost due to physical or mental traumas. Blogging is also a social activity and the self-reflective nature of blogging helps the Pro-Ana community to meditate on the self by writing on the blogs to work through their own problems. Although disordered eating is not an ideal remedy for trauma, anorexia and writing about the practice of anorexia is the chosen method of the writers and censoring that experience by removing the blogs only functions to further silence their voices after physical and emotional traumas. Pro-Ana blogs and the act of writing about food and not eating offer a communal experience of self-examination and a means to move past trauma through collective online identities.
