Lucie Schwartz is a Bay Area reporter and documentary filmmaker. She was raised in Paris by a French mother and an American father. Schwartz has a Bachelor's in journalism from NYU, a Masters in journalism and documentary filmmaking from UC Berkeley and has worked on documentaries for NBC News. She is currently working as an Associate Producer for Lucasfilm.

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When I returned to my home country of France for a month in August 2008, I realized it was undergoing a major identity crisis. The French's ability to maintain fashionably small waists in spite of their famously epicurean tastes was looking more and more like an illusion.

A two-year epidemiological study called "Mona Lisa" had revealed that 67 percent of men and 57 percent of women in France were overweight. That didn't sit well with the French Ministry of Health.

The country went on a full-blown anti-obesity campaign. Vending machines were banned from public schools across France and public service announcements urging viewers to exercise and get their daily dose of fruits and vegetables aired around the clock.

Obesity had become a major public health concern that was costing the country between 10 and 15 billion euros in healthcare costs each year -- about 7 percent of what is spends annually.

In April 2008, France's lower house passed a law that would make it illegal for magazines, blogs and websites to promote eating disorders by presenting extreme thinness as a beauty trait.

Valerie Boyer, a right-wing member of the French lower house of Parliament, is a strong supporter of the anti-obesity campaign. But, lately, what has garnered her international attention is her concern over using extremely thin women to promote the idea that being skinny is the only path to a healthy lifestyle.

In April 2008, France's lower house passed a law that would make it illegal for magazines, blogs and websites to promote eating disorders by presenting extreme thinness as a beauty trait.

Boyer's bill, which still faces a vote in the French Senate, particularly targeted "pro-Ana" websites, or blogs on which young women share tips on how to become anorexic. (For users of these sites, "Ana" has become a mythological personification of anorexia.)

When I started researching Boyer's bill, I had never heard of "pro-Ana" sites. A quick Google search turned up hundreds of websites, in every country and in every language. They feature disturbing images of skeletal women and lists of commandments that dictate the path to thinness and starvation.

And although anorexia is far less prevalent than obesity in France, the number of "pro-Ana" websites has increased dramatically in the last few years.

Sarah was the only person old enough to speak about her "pro-Ana" blog on camera without her parents' approval.

Even though I have never suffered from an eating disorder, these "pro-Ana" sites began to haunt me. I couldn't stop thinking, "Who are the people behind these blogs and what does belonging to the "pro-Ana" movement mean to them? Were they ill or were they criminals who deserved the $30,000 fine and two-year prison sentence Boyer's bill was calling for?

I began leaving comments on some of the blogs and sending messages to their authors, identifying myself as a journalist keen to understand why they think anorexia is a lifestyle and, most of all, why they promote it.

I received dozens of emails from young girls -- some as young as 8 years old -- who described scenes of sexual abuse in their past, a consequent rejection of their bodies, and a need for an outlet to describe their pain.

Most of the other girls I communicated with had been hiding their eating disorders and blogs from their parents, taking advantage of the anonymity of the web to tell their story.

Sarah, the main character in this film, was the only girl old enough to speak about her "pro-Ana" blog on camera without her parents' approval.

When I met her, she was desperately trying to break her routine, which alternated between anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and huge fluctuations in weight, without help from her parents or doctors. For her, the online community she had entered provided a form of therapy.

But in my last conversation with Sarah this summer, she told me she had to shut down her blog because a few of her friends had grown suspicious of her and found the link to her website. In the same panicked breath, she told me that, despite the incident, she intended to start a new blog soon.

I wondered if she were the type of person the proposed law intended to punish.

-- Lucie Schwartz

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