A conundrum

This summer I've been reading blogs by people who, like me, have issues with food. Too little of it, too much of it, and some who are just damn tired of being told what their bodies "should" be. It's interesting as hell from an anthropology standpoint, but on a personal level the FA/Size Acceptance/Health At Every Size blogosphere (aka the Fatosphere) has been incredibly helpful. Writers offer a critical perspective on media, health communication, and social pressures to adhere to an arbitrary ideal. They focus on what their bodies do, not how they appear. It's refreshing.

When I was at my thinnest, I realized that once your body is a few ticks to either side of the bell curve, it becomes public property. I got stares, frowns, rude questions, comments. But my life was peaches compared to what people at the other end have to face. Read this post and comments at Shapely Prose if you don't believe me.

Sometimes a FA/SA/HAES writer will describe a situation with which I can identify. For example, one writer posted about the blood-pressure cuff not fitting during a recent ER trip. Once my own BP was so low that the nurse thought I was septic - until she realized the cuff was too big and retrieved the children's cuff. I felt REAL cool, lemme tell you.

My cuff didn't "fly off" as did the other blogger's, which is way more difficult to deal with. I was going to comment about the indignity that sometimes accompanies one-size-fits-all medical equipment - but I didn't. I was afraid the writer would be insulted. How could I, skinny in a society that worships thin, possibly understand how she felt? From a social standpoint, our experiences were different.

So here's my question - is the Size Acceptance community going to accept me? People make comments about my body; they assume I'm a "skinny bitch." Am I just fooling myself that a recovering anorexic could ever empathize with a fat person?