Tag Archives: International Journal of Epidemiology

If your daughter, sister, mother or friend “identified” as a fat person trapped in a perilously emaciated body – if she truly believed she was obese, but, in reality, suffered from anorexia – would you affirm her “fatness” and get her liposuction, or would you go to the ends of the earth to help her bring her subjective (and mistaken) identity into alignment with objective reality? When someone is engaged in demonstrably self-destructive behavior, it is not loving, but hateful, to encourage persistence.

It was, ironically, lesbian activist and writer Dorothy Allison who once wrote, “Things come apart so easily …