More on Fat Acceptance...

Great article on eating disorders in the Fat Acceptance movement from my absolute favorite magazine, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.
An article which begs the question, what exactly makes an eating disorder? Obviously it's a subjective diagnosis, whether you're talking about anorexia or binge eating disorder (yes, there are 'physical,' objective indicators of eating disorder status...a BMI below 17.5, or amenorrhea for more than 3 months for anorexia, for example) but then again, even the DSM-IV includes "overvaluation" of weight as a symptom of EDs. Think about that. In 2009, in the United States, one could reasonably argue that most women 'overvalue' their weight. Not because we're stupid or shallow or have a diagnosable eating disorder, but rather because that's what we're trained to do from elementary school on. Despite the positive spate of articles in teen-oriented magazines like Seventeen, there are still 'Summer Tone-Up Specials' published every May, showing 13 year olds that the best (and perhaps only) way to be a real woman is to watch those calories and do 100 crunches a day.
We have a slew of television shows like 'Bulging Brides' (I almost fell off the treadmill at the gym when I saw that title a few days ago) and 'The Biggest Loser' that focus exclusively on weight loss. Magazines at the check-out stand offer ways to drop 20 pounds in a month--assuming that every woman wants or needs to lose the equivalent of a small child--then, in another article a few pages later, exhort women to love themselves whatever their shape. Then, in the 'Health' column, another admonition that a body fat percentage over 20 means you're headed for an early, deep-fried grave. The whole mess is--well, a mess.
The primary point is that eating disorders occur in people of all shapes and sizes--something that most people would benefit from knowing. Officially, anorexia requires a certain percentage of weight be lost--yet I've known 'normal' and overweight people who followed profoundly restrictive diets. For a period during college, I was running ten miles a day and eating 600 calories--but it wasn't until my weight plummeted past 100 lbs that I was 'officially' anorexic. Bulimics can be any weight. Someone can binge-eat and weight 80 pounds, or 380. The fat acceptance movement is right on in encouraging people to care for their bodies--but an eating disorder, whether manifest in starving or bingeing, is profoundly unloving. For a woman attempting to heal that damage to be rejected by the very movement that purports to champion body-love is both counterproductive and disappointing. Exclusion and derision hurt, no matter what the 'political' motivations.