Why Aren't Curvy People with Eating Disorders Taken Seriously?

By Liv Osborne

In the summer of 2017, I was eighteen and about to go to university. I had a routine check-up so I could be prescribed my contraceptive pills again. As usual, my blood pressure was taken, and my height and weight were measured. I wasn't prepared for what my nurse was going to say.

I should tell you now that before this, I had never had a problem with my weight. I had never weighed myself, had never limited what I ate. In that office, the nurse took one look at what the scale said, looked up at eighteen-year-old me and told me I was overweight. That I could do with losing a few kilograms.

I was 70kg and stood at 5’9” (I've shrunk since then – apparently having a baby can do that to you, who knew). I wore a size 8. Yet here I was being that I was too big. I was so confused. As a cancer survivor, I had spent years being told I could never be overweight and that it would cause chaos in my heart.

At university, it only got worse. Everyone was so different from me; I had a hard time making friends and I was away from my family. I spent most of my time in my room alone as I didn't want to drink or go out to clubs. All I did was watch films and eat. I got up to 72kg. Now, today, I know there wasn't anything wrong with that. Back then, I didn't.

I ended up dropping out of that university and enrolling in another. In the time between I began working as a waitress. I lost 12kg in 6 months. I was getting compliments and praise from doctors. Their lack of concern had me thinking it was fine to lose weight that fast. Then I stopped. That's when body dysmorphia kicked in.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see the weight I was. I saw the weight of eighteen-year-old me when the nurse told me I had to lose weight. That’s when it got worse: that's when I started taking Dulcolax, a type of laxative. At first, it was just two pills every other night. It ended with me taking four pills nearly every night. I got down to 55kg.

It wasn't until 2019, when I was twenty-one, that I finally realised there was something wrong with me. I called the doctor and got an appointment. He told me I had body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. Five months later, during covid, I finally began therapy. And by therapy, I mean six hour-long phone calls. That was it.

If I had been skinnier, I would have been treated differently. I would have been hospitalised and I would have been given a lot more help than the help I received as a curvy woman.

When I got diagnosed, I started to notice things. Like how I believed someone I knew also suffered with an eating disorder, though she hadn't been diagnosed. She was constantly dieting and never happy with her weight. She always assumed she was bigger than she was. She got ill, with endometriosis, and needed an operation. They expected her to lose a lot more than I did in very little time.

She was barely eating; it was like watching her starve herself for months on end. The doctors were okay with this. They even praised her for this. I remember one night, telling her I thought she had an eating disorder and suffered from body dysmorphia. She didn't really believe me. After all, when a doctor says you're supposed to lose weight you're supposed to. I couldn't help but think about how, if she were thinner, losing weight how she was would have caused concern.

It got me thinking. No one believes curvier people can have eating disorders or body dysmorphia. Eating disorders are something only thin or anorexic people can have. Curvier people are expected to lose mass amounts of weight, expected to starve themselves to thinness. Our society and medical system are so fatphobic that they are okay with curvier people losing an unhealthy amount of weight in a short period of time.

Compliments are thrown at curvier people as they starve themselves more and more. After all, shouldn’t everyone want to be skinny? When they’re finished and they can no longer lose weight, when they have a severe eating disorder and body dysmorphia, will they be able to get help? Or will it be that they should be thankful for the weight loss?

Why are curvier people with eating disorders and body dysmorphia neglected? Why is it viewed as something they could never have?