Body Image Activist, Eating Disorders mamaVISION

Trust me, I have many embarrassing images from my modeling days (the worst being when a cokehead “artist” shot an image of me in a black cape, soaking wet, with eyes pitched wide open and evil like some sort a witch kid).

BUT, it wasn’t quite as bad as this, um, fashion statement?

Send your fashion freak images to mamavision@gmail.com

Source: Jezebel

Video commentary on the Faces of Pro Ana saga that occured over the weekend. Videos are a bit choppy, but I am busy as heck and I wanted to get these posted.

 

Part 2 (camera died on me!)

 Looking forward to your response,

-mamaV

I thought I’d help Josie drive some traffic to her cute, little post on My Pro Ana Hero!

This is my ~ThInSpIrAtIoN~

That’s me by the way, 21, skinny and miserable, sent to Miami by my NY agent to shoot with some pervert photographer. I ate nothing for 3 days until my self discipline broke and I mowed down a box of Total cereal, then hit the pool for a marathon swim. Good times.

Hey, I feel that spark coming back!

Look out Josie!

-mamaV

Tipster Izzy directed to me to Faces of Pro Ana  (fixed the link it works now). I guess I am not the only one swiping images of Pro Ana girls on public web sites and displaying them to make a point.

I personally think this one holding the skull is particularly creative.

Sunday 3/30 1:30pm picture removed per request of individual shown. 

Can this get anymore psycho? Or is today’s youth so bored that they cling on to some grim reality for the shock factor?

Honestly, this is getting so tired. I didn’t think I would ever say this, but after nearly two years of blogging on this topic I have no idea why I am doing this. 

-mamaV

What is the most ridiculous thing you have every tried to lose weight?

Jezebel recently posted on a Glamour Rag article dedicated to this topic, “Scary Diet Tricks No Woman Should Try!”

Before you all freak and tell me that I am providing tips and tricks for pro anas or individuals with ED’s please just stop. The web is crawling with this crap so don’t delude yourself into believing I am revealing some mystery here. Plus not one item on the Glamour list was new to me, so my guess you all won’t be surprised either.

My lamest attempt at weight loss?

Baby food. Who the hell knows how I even came up with this idea, but we all know the mind does strange things when deliberately starved. Didn’t taste bad really, but the vision of a teenage girl walking down the street chomping down strained peas from a mini glass Gerber jar is rather psycho.

Your turn,

-mamaV 

Tipster Tina led me to a great article in Forbes about the path to SuperModel Fame. This entire story reminded me of something I have been wanting to do for a while.

First, let’s set the record straight on a few things regarding my oh-so-glamorous past;

Yes, I was recruited to be a model in Paris, France at age 16. Let me tell you what this means – nada. It doesn’t mean squat. To the outside world it’s like “wow, you modeled in Paris! Holy crap, you were big time!”

I wasn’t big time, I wasn’t even small time. I wasn’t even one kernel on the cob (my husband came up with that analogy, we are cracking up as I write this).

It’s best to compare my status in the modeling world to the structure of Corporate America. 

You’ve got your big wig Chairman of the Board, phone ringing incessantly, crackberry glued to his palm, as he watches the company stock….tick, tock, tick, tock.  The A-Hole is filthy rich, and doesn’t give two shits about other human beings. His day is about money, fame, and prestige.

Cut to the dude in the company mail-room. In the basement, sorting through stacks of random envelopes. Mr. Mail sets out for his big day, delivering packages to coworkers backs, as they cower in their tiny cubicles, just too busy to turn around and greet this fellow coworker.

Mailroom dude doesn’t mean squat to Mr. Bigwig - not even on the damn radar, and never will be. He doesn’t exist.

As a model, I was mail-room guy.

This must be understood, so you all stop dreaming about being “America’s Next Top Model.

I was just one little girl, plucked out of my rinky-dink hometown, being used by one dirty old Modeling Agent to sell stuff. Sell sex, sell beauty, sell anything he could get away with. That was me and about 4o other “chosen ones” during the summer of 87′,  all random beauties trying to make a go of it in the big city.

Me, as a kid.

Sure, I posed for some catalogs, and magazines, a couple runway shows here and there – but who cares? The mags land in the garbage within a month and getting to that point was hell on wheels.

Pretty damn glamorous huh? It was a pile of crap I tell you, a total and complete pile of crap. Ahhh…I feel better getting that out, thanks for listening. 

On to the Forbes Top Ten Ways YOU! Can Be A Supermodel!:

1. Stop eating. Grow.
2. Be photogenic
3. Get signed.
4. Be quiet.
5. Don’t party. Don’t be a diva.
6. Befriend powerful people.
7. Date celebrities.
8. Expand your brand.
9. Now you can talk.
10. Don’t gain weight, ever.

mamaV’s add ons:

11. Take your clothes off.

12. Sleep with your modeling agent and/or booker.

13. Be serious arm candy.

14. Wear teeny tiny skirts to castings.

15. Get a boob job.

16. Sell your soul.

Ok that last one was dramatic, but I’m in a mood.

Still want to be a model?

God help ya.

-mamaV

P.S. song for the day

Lauren Greenfield’s latest film “kids + money”strikes at the cord of the last post HollyHell and an earlier one focused on an $18K pair of jeans.

The question for today is are we completely nuts?

Image Source: Lauren Greenfield, kids + money

An original short film by award-winning filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield, kids + moneyis a conversation with young people from diverse Los Angeles communities about the role of money in their lives.  From rich to poor, Pacific Palisades to East L.A., kids address how they are shaped by a culture of consumerism.  

“In L.A., the money is on the surface level. When you meet someone, it’s like, “Hi.  I’m this person. I’m rich,” or “Hi, I’m this person. I wish I was rich.”  It shows up everywhere.  How tan you are, what jewelry you’re wearing. Girls have $3000 book  bags just for school.  It doesn’t stop in high school—what car you drive, where you work, what kind of suit you are wearing. It’s a whole image thing that Hollywood  forces you to fit into.”

A family member once said to me “the more you make, the more you spend.” I don’t live by that motto. It’s pure guttony as far as I am concerned.

I prefer the simple life.

Simplicity is driving a 1997 Camry, knowing that you are squirreling away funds for your children’s education.

Simplicity is giving your children $50.00 each for a shopping spree after a job promotion, and watching them go completely wild in Toys R Us.

Simplicity is buying a Bose I-Pod dock for your husband, and watching his face as he hears the music streaming from it for the first time, and then wondering what took you so long to make the purchase.

Simplicity is bargain hunting. Hitting up Goodwill with your eight year old daughter while in LA on vacation, and walking out with a bag full of stuff for $48 bucks.

Simplicity is having a home you can afford. One that you have time to clean yourself, with a lawn that you take pride in trimming with your own bare hands.

Simplicity is living on one income, committing yourself to cutting all corners, in order to live the life you truly believe in.

Simplicity is looking out your bedroom window, and feeling like you live in a palace, as you remember the 900 sq. ft. home your mom and five siblings grew up in.

Simplicity is what you make it, it’s up to you to define it. I believe all of these temptations in front of us for a reason. It’s all very complicated for a reason.

How are you passing the test?

-mamaV

“Simplicity, simplicity” - Walden, Thoreau 

(I am no literary genius, I learned this one from my husband. Walden is about a dude who lives out in the woods for a long time, and learns to understand the basic, simplicity of life through nature. Crack it open at the library, you may find it interesting. We visited Walden pond on a vacation about 5 years back, it was cool to see the actual location and replica cabin where Thoreau wrote his book).

**Excerpt from The Hip Bone Handbook, how to be anorexic.

I started blogging back in 2006. What started as a total whim, has grown to be a part of me. The girls of my blog community created the nickname “mamaV” and quickly took hold of my heart. The vast majority of these young women find my blog while they secretly search for pro-anorexia online.

Pro-Anorexia?

The thought of Anorexia, as a lifestyle, is so totally preposterous, I have a hard time saying it myself. Most adults are dumbfounded by the topic, as I was when I first caught wind of it.

This is not some random, underground culture. A simple search for the term on Google returns over a million pages of starvation driven content. We are talking deliberate, active, starvation here.

Pro-anorexia, a.k.a. ”pro-ana or wannarexia,”  preys on the weak, the young, the insecure. The more the pro-ana lifestyle takes hold of a young mind, followers actually start to refer to “Ana,” their fictionary god who serves to justify their actions.

This topic is ugly and disturbing.

Do not turn away and leave this one for someone else to deal with, it ain’t going away.

These are OUR girls.

You can address this issue head on, in your everyday life, through the interactions of every young person you are in contact with. You need to be aware of what is going on in the minds of young people today, in order to recognize the deadly habits of a pro-anorexic individual, perhaps even save a precious life before it is sucked into the pro-ana culture.

THIN equals beauty in this society.

We are raising a generation of of young women who would rather die, than be one of the ugly ones.

Life goals are not to be smart, or happy, or strong.

Thin is it. And it’s pathetic.

I can’t sit here, silent, when we have healthy, young, capable lives being pissed away while they are busy collaborating online on how to starve themselves to death.

Can you?

-mamaV