what’s the fascination with pictures of anorexic women? last december, i wondered aloud about that and put together a little survey. it was inspired by detecting that vastly more internet surfers google words like “anorexic nudes” than words that would indicate that anorexia is something that needs to be treated.
not surprisingly, that post in december, entitled anorexia and sex, drew quite a bit of readers – 2,884 by july 14. 106 readers took the survey. today i want to give you a quick preliminary report on the results.
in the survey, i asked people to comment on their thoughts on viewing pictures of thin or anorexic women, either in the nude or scantily clad. around two-thirds (66 people) were kind enough to give their time to say something about that.
many readers – around a third of the comments – didn’t like the pictures, ranging from judgmental (“they look really unappealing and repulsive”) to concerned (“i almost can’t stand to look at even anorexics in bathing suits because it upsets me quite a bit”).
the next most frequent type of comment (although only one sixth of them) went in the other direction and talked about how sexually attractive these pictures were. this was even more pronounced in the statistical part of the survey, where 49% said that thin was “sexy” or “very sexy”.
when you disregard those who were either disinterested or ambiguous about the connection between being thin and being sexually attractive, then the percentage of those who said that thin was sexy or very sexy goes up to 84%.
however, when asked about their ideal sexual partner, being thin is not nearly as interesting. 29% want him or her to be “thin” or “i want to see bones” (37% if you disregard those for whom body size is not important).
these two observations are interesting – there is quite a bit of a difference between what people think is sexy and who they actually want to be with.
here are a few quotes of what people said about this topic:
anorexia is sexy … delicate and fragile. also i find it attractive when someone is willing to go to a lot of work and maintenance to maintain they way they look. being anorexic is hard, being a tubby lump shows that you don’t care at all about how you look, at least not enough to do anything about it.
i’m a gay woman, and i admit, i’m obsessed with being thin. the slim models in the first set of pictures are very sexy to me, extremely attractive body type. i can’t help that, it’s what i feel.
the attraction of anorexic nudes is a combination of sexual lust and vulnerability of the girl. it may be that a very thin girl or women attracts the paedophilic instinct, without the guilt associated with that of abusing a child.
i believe that nude bodies of both males and females are beautiful. they can also be sexy and even erotic. sometimes looking at normal people gets boring, i think this is why i and other people like looking at slender, and even anorexic nudes. we are always looking for the unusual.
this last comment captures a lot of the feelings expressed in the comments. quite a few people talked about a general interest in looking at the human body, in whatever shape or form. “we are always looking for the unusual” was the type of comment that was quite frequent, too, and i’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
(btw, i want to make it quite clear that this was not a scientifically accurate research project. it’s just a little questionnaire i threw together.)
This is so interesting. I don’t like looking at naked men, and my friends aren’t into it either. It seems more like a guy thing. I do know that people get really freaked when they see anorexics who have really dropped. It’s sickly, and I don’t think many people want to look at disease. I wonder about the “we are always looking for the unusual” idea. I’m sure novelty is there, but maybe a good question would be “how often would you like to look at” (then show some pictures of women in all different shapes and sizes).
i think anorexic chicks are super hot super sexy…im a 5ft2 asian chick, had four kids 96 pounds, and i look fantastic, although my bf is not very pleased with this look, but, the truth comes out when i wear ultra low rise jeans and a sexy belly top, u can see my trim waistline, flat abs, curves and sexy sall of back… and believe me, guys and gals commenton how hot i look and not to be ashamed of it!!its hard work to be thin, and i agree that fat chicks dont need to work so hard to be fat, how hard is it anyways to sit down and stuff 55 pounds of burgers and cake mix down ur gullet? i have to constantly watch my diet and activities so i can stat super thin and thus, sexy. … [isabella: i deleted the rest because it got a bit pornographic here ... i've got nothing against pornography per se but this is not a porn blog]
I belong to a family with a history of anorexia and bulimia. What I can assure you is that these issues are never “cured”, they are only “dealt with and treated”.
It has a dramatic impact in all the family, just like alcoholism
yes, tia, that’s my experience, too. aimee liu has written a great book about that, “gaining”. have you read it?
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Thanks for the good work on this article, emi. Very timely and thoughtful.
fredi
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I think it’s important to distinguish betweem a sexy slim woman who controls what she eats to look good, and a woman who has a disease which may kill her. Death is definitely not sexy.
I think it is ok for girls to want to be thin. It is when the put their personal health at risk that there is a problem.
I am disgusted about anorexia. For me is unreal how a human can do that to their body. I googles “anorexia fetish” to see if there are actually people who are into that stuff, and for my surprise there are men who like it. I was shocked. So maybe many people google it just for curiosity.
This is a very interesting study. I have my own thoughts about why some people might find different body sizes attractive.
I’ve heard that back in history “fat” people were usually royalty and so “fat” became a symbol of “having enough” (being rich) and greed along with many other things like laziness, etc.
On the other hand being “thin” meant that a person was not “greedy” or “lazy” They live a modest lifestyle etc.
This is why I think that some people to this day are so put off by anyone who is “fat” (according to their definition), but might be turned on to someone who is very “thin” .
What do you think? This is just my opinion on the whole thing why some people might have an “anorexic” fetish.
keyo, that’s an interesting take. of course i know the fat=rich idea, but always equated it with rich=good provider=will keep my genes going, which is the way of evolutionary biology/psychology.
i’m also familiar with fat=lazy, but have never made the jump from fat=rich=greedy. interesting!
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