PrettyThin

THere are always going to be people in this world who feel the only way they can belong is to hurt others. The only way they feel "strong" or find value in themselves is to cause harm to others. Sometimes it's not difficult to understand these people. Hitler, for example, is such a figure. Sometimes it's not so simple to understand them, but they are still there. Rapsist, for example.

We have people like this in our community. Though the overwhelming majority of members of PrettyThin are here to help and support one another, or to find help and support, there are and always will be a few individuals who have alternative motives. They are here as wolves in sheeps clothing - disguised to make you their friend so that they can more easily stab you in the back and take advantage of you.

There is drama on PT. I want to tell you that there will always be some degree of drama on PT. There will always exist drama in this world, because there are some people who feed off of pain and suffering the way any predator feeds off of their victims. The best we can do as the majority of members is to take all sources of power away from these horrible and harmful people. The way is actually very simple: ignore them.

I get emails all the time from people who are more than hateful and hurtful. I get messages from people who are threatening. Some threats have been minor: people claiming they will do this or that to shut down the site. Others are along the lines of the kind of harm they want to do to me. There is nothing I can say to them to change the way they are. You can try to teach a frog how to fly for months and it will still not learn how to fly, let alone understand a word you are saying. So what do you do?

Ignore them. Let them yell; let them scream; let them threaten and cry foul. Ignore every word they say as if it was never uttered. Take away every ounce of strenght they have by making them exactly what they are - non-existant. Do not reply to them; do not address them; do not even mention them. They will do everything they can to make you talk. They will use every tactic. Still....ignore them.

If they are a problem, just report them. Let me of one of the mods know. We will remove them so they can't pollute the threads or the community. I hate to use this analogy, but these people are like a horribly smelling fart. In time, they fade away. Tell me who they are, and I'll try not to allow them in any more.

Stay Beautiful.
Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

September 9, 2010

Thank you all for your support in this past week. With the donations from this recent "donation drive" I feel very comfortable about the future of PrettyThin, and think that you should too. There are always going to be a few trolls with hidden or malicious intentions - I am sure in their hearts they feel they are doing what is best - but the community is very supportive and strong, and I am thankful for that.

For those who write and ask questions or make suggestions on Facebook, feel free to keep them coming as I catch up a little. And you don't need to apologize for writing :-p

Stay Beautiful.
Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

September 7, Update

I want to think all of those who have donated in the past three days. I will thank each of you personally, but hope you understand I am taking the next day or two to answer the questions about the entire donation fiasco first. Sorry for the delay, but I thank you greatly and intend to thank you personally.

The donation page has been removed for two reasons. One, the donations sent are plenty for the next few months. As someone just suggested, I should look for another hosting company, so I am open to suggestions. Make sure any recommendations you send have all the things we have at PT - any of the features we use anyway. Second, I figured it made sense to take it down until the community was in agreement as to what to do when it came to site costs.

There was a fairly large forum thread that was discussing this issue, and last night I "stickied" and posted that I would come back this morning and address every concern posted by the members. This morning, I log on and see that the topic was deleted, and have been told by a couple people who it is. I have not confirmed or denied it, but needless to say, this makes it very hard to address your issues. So I have created another thread, and ask that you ask away.

I'm surprised that anyone would think that I would try to hide anything or deceive anyone, but that seems to be the case, so lets bring whatever needs to be out in the open out into the open. The reason this all surprised me is that I could have easily made up a story as o who I am, pretended I was a single mother of three and struggling to make ends meet...who knows - but I very openly post not only who I am but links to my identity on Facebook. There should be no question as to what I am doing on a fairly regular basis, or who I am. When someone exposes themselves like that - how many other people in the community can say they are willing to do that - they usually don't deceive and lie. But the questions are out there, and I think the only way to come to a resolution is to answer them. So please ask away.

Not really sure what else to say here. The donation fiasco - let's talk it out until everyone is satisfied.

Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

I wanted to apologize up front for the length of this post. For those who have questions, I think this will at least help you ask any questions and voice any concerns you may have about the topic.

I have received very mixed responses about the current "entry" page into PrettyThin, and wanted to address the community about it with a little more details. For those who do not know, the previous page which is asking for donations was put up after PrettyThin was suspended by the host for exceeding it's bandwidth usage for the month. Bandwidth, generally speaking, is website usage, and is measured by the amount of people who view the site multiplied by the space used for the content viewed. So, if you have a page that has 1Mb of content, and it is viewed 1,000 times, you just used 1,000Mb of bandwidth.

I think I should also share two additional pieces of information that I think everyone should know, which help paint the entire picture, and my struggle with all of this.

First is that I used to have a job that paid me very well. I have since left that job and my very comfortable life in America, and am currently unemployed and traveling the world. I do not consider myself on a vacation - I have chosen, for the time being, to live this way. I am not sure how I will be making money, but I am VERY uncomfortable with the idea of making any money for personal gain from PrettyThin. Watching my bank account dwindle, however, has made me a lot more conscious about the expense of PrettyThin and running it may affect my life outside of it.

The second piece of information is that I had stated, not too long ago, that PrettyThin is in a safe position and that it had been paid for ahead of time for the next several years. As a result of this, I had stated that I planned on removing the donation button from the sidebar. My statements on the current homepage not only seem to, but obviously do contradict that statement.

Now, to get to why the page is there…

PrettyThin.com, the domain, has been paid up for five years past it's renewal day, which is July 2011. That means it is paid up until July 2016. Arrangements had also been made so that both bandwidth and webspace (server disk space for content on the site) are paid for the site for some time to come (not as cut and dry as the domain name purchase). This was assuming one very important thing: the amount of traffic the site was getting.

PrettyThin currently has over 75,000 member (not all active). The site also receives very close to 10,000 unique visits a day, many of them spending quite a lot of time on the site. The site continues to grow, more people visiting it regularly, and more content being added all the time. Imagine going over your cell phone minutes and being overcharged. With the site, it's more like you pay to get a certain limit of usage, and once you pass it you get a certain degree of leeway, but then, the site gets suspended for the rest of the month until your reset date.

The cost for the most expensive package at my host is per month, or per year. This offers you of bandwidth per month. PrettyThin uses about bandwidth per month, so it does not fall within the categories of even the most expensive package. I have setup an agreement that lets us use more, which costs more. As we continue to increase usage, the host becomes more concerned about the cost, meaning the cost goes up for us too.

I have had a donation button on the site for about a year, though I think it's a bit more. In this time a total of $215 has been donated to the site. The rest comes out of pocket.

I will admit selfishness here, but since I have no income right now, I do think twice every time I use my money to pay for the growing site. On the other hand, I feel guilty asking for money. When the site was suspended for exceeding its bandwidth, I decided a cushion needed to be created to that we can continue paying for the site no matter how much it grows. So, I'm asking.

Don't worry about me running away. If I wanted to do that, I'd close the site and be off. That's not going to happen. If there are still doubts, I'm happy to make screenshots of the PayPal balance and donation history, as well as screenshots of the costs of things and post them. You know where to find me.

I hope this is helpful. Again, I apologize for asking for donations.

Stay Beautiful.

Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

August 18, 2010

The donation button is going down in a few days. The site is in a place that has (I'm hoping this time I don't have to take it back) enough money saved up to pay for the next five years of hosting.

 I was in a bus going from the capitol of Cambodia to a Southern coastal city in hopes of getting some more "fun in the sun" time. Most of the four hour journey was a stretch of countryside. I have never seen such green as we zoomed past fields of rice paddies, stretching out into the green mountains in the distance, misty white clouds drifting along their edge and into the dark gray clouds. A house in these parts is a hut on stilts, which prevents flooding during the rainy season. We went through one town along the way - a town to me is something with cement buildings, though I know this isn't really a good definition. There was a billboard of a women, the picture taken from behind as she stood with a purple sheet hanging somewhat seductively off of her hip to expose her back. She had "perfect" skin and a wonderful figure above the purple sheet. Her legs, which the sheet did not cover either, were overweight. Not a little overweight. The amount to which it was disproportionate was done for effect. The legs were supposed to be gross. Undesirable.

The ad was for a clinic. I couldn't tell from the writing (Cambodian writing is really magical looking, you should Google some of it), but the ad was for liposuction or a weight loss clinic. The billboard was screaming "this is beautiful, and this is not. And you should not only care about it, but you should do something about it. Because no one should be ugly." Thanks billboard for telling me how I should look. Thanks for telling me what's acceptable in your eyes. I guess society allows it - it buys into it even. Smoking ads and drinking ads are illegal in many places, because they promote something that's bad for your health. But they can tell you how you should look. That's not bad, is it?

I'm still loving Southeast Asia, even though from time to time, I cringe at Western notions start creeping in.

Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

Picture uploading is back. For those who have been here for some time, you may notice that nothing has changed. Some things have, but they are going to be transparent for some time. I have been in discussions with my host and I'm hoping the upgrades the plan will solve most of our technical issues. The cleanup has been EXTREMELY slow and nearly impossible without those upgrades, but I'll chug away at them daily anyway.

As many of you know, I have been traveling and just left Thailand. There is a phrase I wish to export from this country which I think is a wonderful way to be. In many of our countries, when someone asks us how we're doing, we may say "fine" or "good" but the words are fairly week. They are almost an obligatory response and not one of our actual states. There is a term used in Thailand which is most often translated as "happy." This word, Sabai, is used in many ways, among the most common being Sabai Sabai. The word "Thai" itself means "freedom." Think of the word Sabai in that context.  Sabai Sabai can be translated into "everything's chill." It's a form of contentment - to be comfortable - it's about being alive and being happy that you are. It's about being happy in the moment; it's not about winning the lottery.

Just as any word, it holds no meaning or intensity unless you feel it in your heart. There is something about the word Sabai that makes you stop for a moment and smile, or makes you pause and think "what's there not to be happy about?"

A lot of things...that's been my response so many times. But if you stop for a moment and smile just for the sake of smiling, you will understand Sabai.

So for those who are asking me on Facebook, that's what it means :-)

I'm off to update the Thin Society section. If I'm missing something or something needs attention that I don't seem to be aware of, you know where to find me.

Stay Beautiful.
Sabai Sabai,
James
www.facebook.com/xorrox

I've been going through a lot of the pages and trying to clean up old content, and take away some of the content that is just not relevant to the site anymore. One of the things I have struggled with are pages like Ana Beauty. I will post in the forum to see what your thoughts are on the topic, but here is mine. This site is about beauty, but ultimately a place for people with an ED and a place about anorexia in the context of beauty (or the other way around, I'm not sure). So it makes sense that there is content in the context of beauty from an Ana point of view. I'm not the best person to write this content, and don't believe any one person should be writing it. So, I was going to start collecting your thoughts and essays on beauty, through the eyes of Ana. This could be very similar to the Stories section, so I might draw from that, or it might have better guidelines. What do you think? Check out Jam'es updates at the bottom of the forum section and let me know what you think.

I have also frozen the Member's Photos section for the time being. Part of the problem is that we have something like 10,000 pictures in there, and I don't think there are even that many seconds in a year...actually, I just check and there are 31 million (plus) seconds in a year...either way, there are too many images. I know everyone wants to be able to upload their own images, so I want to keep that in mind and not be too selective about uploading either. One option is to only post images that are "the best of the best" on PT, and allow each of you to create your own sites and add your own images to them (linking to your sites from your profile). Another option is to just delete images that are older than a year or something. I know we all agree that we only want the best pictures on PT, but how do you define "best?" And who has the right to? Anyway, working on a solution.

Right now, I'm beefing up the sections about beauty. This means the Ana sections, the Society section, and any other sections that I find lurking in the shadows of PT that have been forgotten for so long.

A couple people have asked about Facebook again - if you add me on Facebook, please use a real profile and not an Ana one. FB is about friends and real people in my mind. I wouldn't post anything related on one another's walls and keep it separate - a lot of people have asked about that as well.

Got rants about PT and how I'm running things? I'll add section at the bottom of the forums so you can express frustrations.

Stay Beautiful,
James - www.facebook.com/xorrox

It's definitely not a landslide decision that's sparking this, but I think a decision has been made. I'm taking on PT full-time. This doesn't mean I'll be on for 40 hours a week starting tomorrow, but it does mean that I will be on every day, slowly working my way into whatever time it takes to maintain this growing community, and the sister sites.

I read the comments that were in the poll - you can check them out here - and wanted to let those who did not already know this, that my identity was revealed long ago. Just check out the PrettyThin link and you can find out everything you need or want to know, from the beginning of PT to the cover-up of who I am (the Zander story) to my coming out of the closet as it were. It even has the link to my Facebook. Wanna bash? Come on over. I've always believed in the freedom of the individual, which includes those who are not particularly fans of PrettyThin. Both friends and concerned people should be able to voice an opinion, or know more.

So, what will I be doing with my time?
The first is what most people have been asking for: a little clean up. A lot of people have stated that they can't upload photos, and many can't even see them. Some have complained that there are just far too many. So, I will most likely be making pages and new galleries of photos, deleted a lot of duplicates or picking the best ones of anyone who may have uploaded 10 or 20 or 50. I hope no one gets offended; it's not any remark on the photo itself, but the need to bring the number down. I'll also be going through every page of the website and either getting rid of relic content, or updating it. One of the pages I will be hitting is the Beauty page: I think it's just poorly done right now, and needs two sides to the story.

I will also be cracking down on creepers....and making it easy for people to report them.

I will spend more time getting back to those who contact me directly by email or Facebook. I am no health professional nor expert, and should never be a replacement for any such individual, but many do contact me and I want to find a way to reply in an acceptable period of time. If the number of emails increases too much (I'm not worried for the time being), I might just start doing a column of sorts to reply to messages while offering the information to the community. Only time will tell. For those who are finding me on Facebook and writing, please continue to do so. Just forgive my lapses in writing back - though this should improve as I am putting more time into PT. There is something about FB that's comforting, especially when I see someone from the community upload a photo or make a status update that's uplifting.

PT is also not the only project. PrettyAlone now has about 2000 members (I think) and I want to start making more of that. I personally am not a fan of cutting images - for those who feel they need to do it or desire to do it for whatever reason, I am not going to judge - but the site is about being alone, and not about cutting. So, there is some clean up to do there as well. Who knows...we might have to put it up for a vote :-)

I have also had a project on the back burner for some time which I want to get kicked off - it's a site that is similar to the Happiness Project: a collection of stories, by members, of moments of happiness, or methods or desires or dreams which bring them to a place of joy. It's almost the sister to PrettyAlone. It's just something that I identify with.

All that is in time - right now, there just is a ton of cleaning up to do, including the albums, blogs, forums, and pages.

And don't worry about my identity being revealed. Those who feel that what this site represents is wrong should have the ability to contact me and say what they feel. Those who want to know who runs this site should be able to as well. Let's make it easy:  http://www.facebook.com/xorrox

Stay Beautiful,
Sabai Sabai,
James

Where has Chat gone? Maybe better to answer "why" the chat is gone....

Drama. This site is not intended for bickering, fighting, hostility, or drama. There are people who seem to want to drive certain areas of this site in that direction, possibly because they want to destroy this community, and there are people who seem to fall into their trap. We have tried to tell people to ignore the negativity, mostly by not responding to it and ignoring it, but it doesn't seem to work. Se, we're taking away the area which is infected with it most.

Those who cause any of the hostility within the forums will be removed from the community and banned. Please be respectful of others. We are all people....we are all people with feelings...we are all people with lives and intellect. Show respect to others if you wish to be shown respect. Show respect to others if you wish to remain PrettyThin.

It appears to have been a cry for attention. We all do it from time to time, in our own ways, and although there are things that could be said about the negative nature of an attempt for attention at the price of other hurt, I think it better to not pass judgment, allow the memory and the experience come into our minds, witness it for what it was, and move on.

I think there is an important lesson in all of this. How often do tremendous things happen in our lives? How often does something disturbing crop up, at our doorstep, or within this community. When we first heard the news that a member was shot and may possibly die, we react, as is the nature of people to do to anything. This morning I arrived in a little town in Malaysia at a little after 4 in the morning, and while negotiating with a cab driver, my friend screamed in terror. I immediately jumped, not knowing if we were about to get mugged or if something terrible had just happened....only to find that the scream had turned into laughter when she realized the enormous rat that had run past her was no more than a cat.

How silly we feel when we realize our reactions to things that turn out to be something else...unless our reactions are not overreactions.

I am making a simple comment, about life, about our community, which trickles into so many parts of this site and ourselves. We are always confronted with something. We can act; we can react; but we should never overreact. When someone is in the forums being negative or aggressive, we can act in many ways. When we find out that the person was simply looking for attention or trying to get a rise out of us, how do we feel? We should act with this in mind before the later realization; let things come and let things go, because we all have our reasons, we all have our tomorrows, and we all have our happiness and our sorrows.

More to come. I have some site cleaning up to do.

For those who have donated, I am thinking of a way to create a support line for those who want or need individual guidance or discussion, and using the donations to fund that.

More to come.
Stay Beautiful,
James

Building a website? Use this link to give PT credit.

Updated:
I have received a lot of notices from people about someone attempting to ruin the community that we have here. 

 It's not difficult to ruin someone's day; it's not difficult to ruin a community. What IS difficult is keeping a community together. Understanding that you as an individual are an important part of a collective, but in the end, just part and not the whole.

Are you seeing disturbing comments? Seeing things that just hurt or bother you? Please do the following:

1 - Do not respond back. Don't feel the fuel of hurt and hate or the words that disturb. Don't add words to which a response can be given in hopes of causing more problems.

2 - Flag the post so that I can remove them.

Do these two, and the problem will go away...

Stay Beautiful,
Zander

This site is taking on a new direction. For over a year now, this site has been about thinspiration, and a location for those choosing to take the Ana lifestyle upon themselves.

Pretty Thin is going to be about beauty. We will ask the question of "what is beauty" and allow everyone to contribute and find inspiration and meaning in the ways in which everyone defines beauty. We will not point fingers; we will not define beauty based on weight of height or color; we will allow you to see what people find beautiful, and allow you to gaze upon whatever you find to be beautiful.

Want to help contribute? Sign up for a free membership. This will allow you to create a profile (if you like), add images, contribute to the forum, and help build this site that now strives to share the many ways in which people define beauty.

This is not about you; this is not about me; this is about a world at peace with what they find beautiful.

My name is Jess and im 16. Ive been ana for about 2 years,im 5"3/5"4 and weight has fluctuated between 89lb and 115lb, thats just while ive had ana, before that i was heavier. Unlike alot of people one day i woke up and decided i needed to lose weight and to do that i decided that i had to NOT eat, and so i didnt, i fasted for 7 weeks, and was very ill, i told my parents that it was because i was ill, i told them that i had no appetite, which was kind of true, i was so determined not to eat that i had convinced myself that i had no appetite, eventually i was hospitalized, again convincing my parents that it was because of my illness, although the doctors were less easy to persuade, i was put on an IV and fed through a tube until i was coached back into eating, i remember trying to eat a yoghurt and throwing up, i was pissed off that i was in hospital being made FAT but i was pleased that my body wasnt accepting food, eventually my body started to absorb the food, and allowed me to eat, i wasnt happy one bit though! after that i kept my food to a minimum for a while - mainly because that was all my body allowd me to eat, but after a while, i started eating more and feeling gulty and purging, i liked that, eating and so family werent stressed and then purging all the crap back up. Id go on fasts though, keeping my weight down although it was hard as i had to go an see a phsychiatris all the time and a pediatrition regularly too, but never once would i let them weigh me, theyd mention scales and i would just burst into tears, and that got round that! i gradually put on weight for a while and then fasted for a few weeks and lost it all and kept it off for a while and then put it back on as i got into my binging, purging routine again and then id go on a fats and lose it and again keep it off for a while, maybe even longer but then suddenly put it back on, i hate gaining, makes you feel so depressed, im a cutter and have been for a short while, i did stop for a few months, and tried to be happy and content with my self, but i realised that it wasnt possible, i love cutting, it takes my pain away, i would never advice any one to cut though, its not something you do for fun its something your head makes you do, you dont really no what your doing when your doing it.

Deep down, i know that anorexia nervosa is a disease, a mental illness, i dont like believing that, but i know its true, it isnt something that you can decide to have, its like saying, hey i think ill have cancer tomorrow, like i said, its just not possible, there are however many contributing factors, but nothing solid that doctors can say:if this happened to you as a child then youll be anorexic at the age of 14 - it just doesnt work like that!

Making my website is in no way or means trying to make people ana, and ana is not to be thought of as a diet, it is a mental illness, as much as i hate the truth, thats what it is, i wouldnt wish cancer on you and i wouldnt wish ana on you either.

For those of you with ana, i hope my website helps, i know other Pro ana websites help me, i hope youll be able to leave messages for me or contact me about anything. Im happy to support you and help you in any way i can!