@mikesmariani
IN 2010, Alex Chernik told his younger sister Natalya, “You got fat.” In most situations, that sort of thing would have ended there, a little teasing between siblings. Natalya and Alex were close; though not biologically related, they were both adopted from Russia by the same family living in bucolic Cheshire, Connecticut, and they teased each other all the time. But that particular jab was to be the last thing Alex said to his little sister. Soon after, when Natalya was 15, Alex killed himself. He was 18.
And so the words quickly took on a disproportionate significance for Natalya. “My mentality was, I want to make him happy,” she says. “I’m gonna lose weight.” Natalya began restricting her calories, poring over nutrition facts on labels, and eventually what had been a healthy, disciplined diet turned into something that looked like starvation. She started visiting and then following Tumblr pages fostering a pro-ana lifestyle—a portmanteau that refers to anything that promotes or encourages anorexia. If she started to feel sick or hungry, she would visit blogs that flaunted lines like Kate Moss’s infamous mantra “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” They motivated her, reminding her that she didn’t have to eat.