This is the week the Internet discovered the “bikini bridge” – with a lot of help from the anonymous users of 4chan.
A group of users of the online message board circulated a series of images and tweets promoting the bikini bridge – the gap created between a woman’s bikini bottoms and concave stomach when she’s lying down in a two-piece.
The images, bearing sayings like “I love it when … guys notice my bikini bridge” and “if your girlfriend doesn’t have a bikini bridge why are you with her” are done up in the style of “thinspiration” posts that circulate on social media – not to mention on pro-eating disorder websites.
The hoax resulted in thousands of tweets Monday and Tuesday, as well as community posts generated by the hoaxters on Buzzfeed and CNN (both of which have since been removed). It was quickly attributed to the 4chan message board /b/ by reporters at The Daily Dot.
“Wow. Apparently the #bikinibridge is the new inner thigh gap of 2014,” tweeted fitness blogger Cassey Ho, referring to another thinspiration meme.
But what started as an Internet prank could prove to do lasting damage by giving people with eating disorders a dangerous new goal to obsess over, health experts say.
Even if it was dreamed up by a bunch of anonymous Internet users, the bikini bridge is “a thinspiration members’ dream come true,” said Lynn Grefe, president and CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association. Spreading the images is as easy as “just passing it along” via a blog or social network post, she said.
“When someone HAS an eating disorder, they will view this as a challenge – do I have that bridge?” Grefe told the Daily News via email. “It just promotes the sad competition in a person’s brain, as they never feel thin enough.”
The term “bikini bridge” has been around since 2009, mostly on pro-anorexia forums, said Katie Lowe, who blogs about health and body image at FatGirlPhD.com. Now that it’s gone mainstream, “I think (it will) be very difficult to shake,” Lowe said.
“While it’s apparently a joke to those ‘in on it,’ I have no doubt that a large number of the tweets and comments that followed it are from people who don’t realize that – and will hold it up as yet another thing they should aspire to achieve,” Lowe told the Daily News.
“It’s damaging on two fronts – firstly, by encouraging people not naturally built that way to develop disordered eating patterns in order to achieve it; and secondly, by creating a new tool for men and women to shame each other – either because they’re ‘too fat’ to achieve it, or ‘too thin’ for possessing it,” she said.
There’s no easy fix for disordered eating behavior. Treatment varies by individual but usually involves a combination of psychotherapy and nutritional counseling, and possibly stays in a hospital or an inpatient facility that specializes in eating disorders. Even with treatment, men or women with eating disorders may struggle to overcome their condition for years or a lifetime.
With that in mind, the bikini bridge images are “a bridge to nowhere healthy,” Grefe said.
“Eating disorders start with a diet, and they can end with death, having the highest death rate of any psychiatric illness,” she said. “I am not sure why we want to push people in the direction of dangerous dieting and unhealthy behaviors with food.”
It’s “irresponsible to believe” online jokes like this won’t have damaging repercussions, Lowe said.
“The reason behind the hoax, apparently, was to fight feminism and cause shaming – so for that reason, I think the only way to face it is to combat shaming, rather than the image itself,” Lowe said.
“I think we have to respond by encouraging women – and, let’s not forget, men – to appreciate their own bodies, and learn to accept themselves against a media standard that suggests there’s only one type of perfection.”
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tmiller@nydailynews.com