Image: Anne Marie Sengillo in 2014 (via Imgur).
When Anne Marie Sengillo posted photos of her ongoing recovery from anorexia on a Reddit thread, she hoped to share her progress with the thousands of other people who use the website and offer hope to anyone else suffering from body image issues.
When website The Chive found the photos and reposted them a few times later, they were seen by thousands more — only this time, Sengillo’s important message was lost through a huge lack of judgement.
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The Chive staff writer Mac Faulkner included the images in an article titled, “These weight loss transformations are amazing (28 Photos)”. Unbelievably, despite the fact Sengillo had clearly captioned the photos to explain which stage of her recovery they depicted, a photo from the depths of her anorexia (below, right) was used as the aspirational ‘after’ shot.
When the photo was taken, Sengillo had lost a significant amount of body weight over the period of 12 months, and was exercising for several hours a day on a calorie restricted diet.
As you'd expect, Sengillo was appalled when she discovered her photos on The Chive.
"For them to put my disordered weight as 'ideal' was a punch to the stomach for me. I do not want to be seen as inspiration for a disorder that nearly killed me. Anorexia took the best years of my life," she told the Daily Mail.
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In the original photo gallery she posted, Sengillo explained how her eating disorder had developed in the wake of her father's death in 2007, and eventually led to her being $50,000 deep in medical debt.
