For those whose bodies do not fit neatly into the stereotypes, help-seeking can be met with confusion and assumptions. Taking the example of the women involved in our studies, significant struggles went unrecognized as providers read their bodies as “normal”. This suggests that behaviours considered extreme—for example, multiple workouts a day or extreme restricted eating—may only be read or seen as disordered once one’s body crosses the line into extreme emaciated thinness. Those whose bodies were classified as overweight or obese too were sometimes advised to restrict their diets and to increase their exercise, even though these recommendations triggered or exacerbated their disordered eating.
These practices are prescribed in doctors' offices and prescribed in gyms across the country as we fight against an apparent obesity epidemic. Yet fat-shaming tactics offer few solutions and may even perpetuate behaviours detrimental to women's health.
In my own research, for example, every single woman I interviewed who experienced themselves as fat in childhood developed an eating disorder in childhood or in adolescence that was due to people's attempts to regulate their weight.