so here's an article about increasing eating disorders among teens during the pandemic that does not mention how public health weight stigma might be contributing: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/well/family/teens-eating-disorders.html?smid=tw-share

so many fat and in-betweenie folks i know with eating disorders - myself included - can point to specific medical & public health interventions that contributed to our illnesses. i've seen nothing in the literature on this.

centering thin people in eating disorders discourse promotes eating disorders, mostly among not-thin people who think our disorders "don't count."

it would be really nice if, in 2021, the media sucked less about this than in 2001, but so far i don't really see it.

there is a mention of "diet culture" at the end of the article. this is why i am tired of the phrase "diet culture." parents cannot protect their children from "diet culture" if the directive to diet is coming from a goddamn pediatrician. it's weight stigma. always has been.

"diet culture" encourages us to imagine the problem is the vanity of thin people who do not 'need' to diet and get sucked into self-destructiveness, when in reality the problem is that fat people cannot go a single day without being urged to slowly kill ourselves for our "health"

tired: eating disorders are driven by an irrational fear of being fat

wired: eating disorders are driven by observations & experiences of how terribly fat people are treated, and how much better thin folks are treated by comparison

*not all eating disorders! eating disorders also happen for a lot of other reasons! I think the above holds true WHEN body image is a major concern in eating disorders which it isn't always!