Thinspiration a dangerous pursuit

Staying healthy makes me inspired. Does staying thin, then, make me thinspired? To some degree, I guess it does. I eat right, exercise right, minimize stress, sleep enough, and do all I can to stay healthy, which also happens to help me stay thin. Not skinny. Not bony. Not skeletal. Just more thin than thick, more fit than fat.

Thinspiration is a buzz word used by youngish girls who strive to be skinny, anorexic even. It's a topic Blair at Gettysburg College addresses over at College Candy and what she finds is really quite disturbing. Scour the internet, she says, and you're bound to land at all sorts of anorexia blogs, pro-anorexia websites, and YouTube videos chalk full of crazy dieting tactics and images of girls whose bodies are wasting away. One 24-year-old even features on her website a thinspiration page, wallpapered with skinny-girl photos that mostly give me a sick feeling in my gut and make me realize I'm not all that thinspired after all. Nope. Inspired is what I am -- inspired to be healthy and happy in all of my 135-pound glory.

And you? Are you inspired -- or thinspired?