My best friend and I used to be very similar body types. We were both fat. We both aknowledge ourselves and each other as beautiful. However, while I am lucky enough to be blessed with a family who supports me and my weight, her mother often pressured her to lose weight, and her doctor often implied that she had binge eating disorder, even though she ate perfectly fine.

Two years ago, without making any changes, she began losing a lot of weight. Our relationship remained the same, but the differences in the way people treated us was amazing. Her mother was thrilled, and encouraged her to spend time apart from me so that she wouldn’t “fall back into old habits”.All of a sudden she was surrounded by people who wanted to be friends with her, asking her things like “Why are you friends with her (about me)? It doesn’t seem like you two have anything in common."

She went to the doctor for her abrupt weight loss, since she didnt make any lifestyle changes and she was worried, but her doctor simply commended her on the weight loss.

The thing is though, she kept losing weight. Her periods stopped and she became sickly. Her hair was falling out and those who were once so keen on being her friend began whispering behind her back about her "anorexia”. Eventually her doctor diagnosed her with anorexia nervosa and she was hospitalized against her will. From the very beginning she tried to emphasize that her weight loss was not voluntary.

She spent so long in that hospital, she went from weighing ~200 lb to 85 lb. And people , her doctor included, simply blamed it on her “overcompensating for her obesity” (Literally, his exact words). She tried to hang herself while she was in the hospital.

I spent almost a year worried sick about my friend, and by the end I was terrified she was going to die. When I tried to talk to her doctors they looked at me with these sympathetic eyes and told me that if i really put my mind to it i could lose weight too.

eventually, an intern med student looked at her file and listened to what she had been saying ALL ALONG. He did blood tests that no one else seemed to think was necessary and found out her thyroid had completely stopped functioning. She’s slowly gaining weight again but she’s so fragile and insecure about her appearance now. Something has broken inside of her and she doesnt have that confidence she once had, and it upsets me terribly.

I saw her go through an entire range of weights, and society shamed her for being fat, loved her for being skinny and shamed her once again when she was “too skinny”. When she was fat it was her fault, when she was extremely underweight it was her fault.

The whole time, what drove me nuts was this window of what is acceptable in society. How girls with eating disorders, who don’t fit within the conventional standards of “healthy” on either side of the spectrum. The worst part? Now she’s finally almost back to what she used to be, but the fat shaming for her is worse than it ever was before. People ask her what happened, “You were doing so well there for awhile, why did you let yourself go again? Such a shame.” She is beautiful, and it is NOT okay, ESPECIALLY knowing her medical history and knowing what she went through.