"El Mundo de Princesas": comparative content analysis of online pro-ana blogs

Abstract

The pro-ana community has been examined from a range of perspectives—from the medical perspective of understanding eating disorders to the feminist and criminological resistance perspectives of understanding eating disorders. This study compared English-language American blogs to Spanish-language Latin American blogs to explore how American and Latina pro-ana bloggers define their experiences with eating disorders, as well as how these narratives reflect several perspectives on eating disorders. Results reveal that pro-ana bloggers employ a combination of a medical and an edgework narrative to describe their experiences with eating disorders. These findings bear sociological significance because they complicate and extend Stephen Lyng's concept of edgework, as well as highlighting the differences found across cultures with different degrees of emphases on individualistic characteristics.