Figuring Out My Role in the Body Liberation Movement as a Straight-Sized Cisgender White Woman

Written By Tara Criscuolo

Eleven years ago this May, I entered residential treatment for an eating disorder. It was a ranch-style home in rural Oregon that housed and treated 12 patients at a time. During my five-week stay, all of the patients who came and went were cisgender women. In the entirety of my eating disorder treatment experience – including several months in lower levels of treatment that preceded and followed my residential stay – I remember just three men, a handful of patients with larger bodies, two or three non-binary people, and a few mixed-race folks. I remember no Black and no transgender patients.

Eating disorder treatment saved my life, but it was also designed for me. I’m a straight-sized, able-bodied, cisgender, white woman from an upper-middle-class family with heterosexual parents whose insurance covered the majority of treatment costs. I saw myself and my culture depicted in all therapy topics, reading materials, and food served. Almost all the other patients looked like me. I felt that I fit right in, though as I later learned, several of my identities are not held by the majority of eating disorder sufferers – less than 6% of people with eating disorders are medically underweight, and transgender and gender nonconforming individuals are at least four times as likely to struggle with an eating disorder than their cisgender counterparts.

After graduating from treatment, I returned to college for my senior year. I worked hard to recreate the safe environment of residential – I started regularly seeing an outpatient treatment team, taught my college housemates how to talk about food/bodies in a supportive way, and introduced my varsity tennis coach to my treatment team-approved modified exercise plan. I also covered my full-length bedroom mirror in a recovery collage featuring photos of the life I hoped recovery would bring, pictures of the treatment facility and Oregon scenery, and inspirational (and anti-fat) phrases like “full not fat,” and “you have fat just like you have fingernails, but that doesn’t mean you are fingernails.”

Within a few years, I’d started speaking openly about my healing journey on social media. I’d discovered basic (re: white) feminism, and contributed my eating disorder, in part, to patriarchal gender roles and beauty standards. In May 2018, I gave my first public eating disorder talk to a health and fitness community college class in central New Jersey. There were many helpful parts to my first talk, but there were also less helpful components like a slide that noted “everything’s ok in moderation,” and an overarching focus on self-love and body positivity. (Body positivity and self-love are great, but as I later learned from a fat activist on Instagram, you can’t self-love your way out of systemic oppression and a lot of people with bigger bodies develop eating disorders in response to perpetual anti-fat bias.)

Recovering loudly helped prevent others from dying quietly, but it also publicized my educational growing pains and mistakes.

Over the past eight years of loud recovery, I’ve messed up. A lot. I’ve used the words “ob*se” and “ov*rweight” to describe people. I’ve posted before-and-after pictures of my stomach on Instagram to “normalize bloating” – I stopped doing this after I saw a reel explaining that this was harmful to fat folks who will never look thin, regardless of when they’ve last eaten. I once reshared a post from a fat activist to my Instagram story that read “We should be calling weight loss surgery what it is – voluntary amputation” – something that was inappropriate of me, a straight-sized person, to share without explicitly acknowledging the relentless harassment, discrimination, and inability to access basic medical care that people with larger bodies face. I also did not make it clear that I will never judge anyone for doing whatever they need to do to survive in our anti-fat world. Instead, I judge the societal system (diet culture) that pushes extremely dangerous surgery on individuals who just want basic human respect and care. We all have bodily autonomy, and respecting that is of utmost importance to me.

Thankfully, a huge part of my long-term recovery has been focused on learning why I developed an eating disorder in the first place, and understanding how to help prevent them in others. This has led me to learn so much about the various systems of oppression that contribute to today’s anti-fat, racist, healthist, and classist body ideal.

I’ve been mentally marinating on this essay topic for over a year. I’ve felt so anxious about getting it right. How do I acknowledge and take responsibility for the harm I’ve caused, and also share tips for other straight-sized, cisgender white women without taking away space from marginalized folks in the process? As Project HEAL’s Volunteer Blog Manager, I’ve had the opportunity to support writers of all different races, ethnicities, body sizes, ages, abilities, religions, and genders in sharing their stories of healing. This experience has been such a powerful way for me to use my various privileges – education and time from not needing to work a second job to survive – to uplift marginalized voices with lived experience while still fulfilling my intrinsic need to participate in disordered eating activism. But, we at Project HEAL also know and acknowledge that the majority of the people who follow us on social media are straight-sized white women. So, since we do have an audience for a blog topic like this, I pushed past my discomfort to complete this piece.

I expect to forever be “figuring out my role” in activism surrounding bodies and disordered eating.

As I continue to learn from people with lived experience who are BIPOC, fat, LGBTQIA, disabled, and of other marginalized identities, I anticipate that my views will continue to evolve. But, today, my understanding is that I do not have a role to play inside the body liberation movement. This movement was created by the most marginalized people (fat, queer, disabled, BIPOC, etc.) for the most marginalized people, and inserting myself would mean taking away space from those the movement was originally created for. (This is what happened to the body positivity movement.) I do, however, have a responsibility to use my privilege, knowledge, and eating disorder lived experience to bring body liberation into the disordered eating space, with the caveat that I credit the respective activists and elders for their roles in my education. For now, that looks like seeking out and prioritizing diverse authors for Project HEAL blog posts (check out some of my favorites below!). It also includes talking about anti-fat bias, healthism, and body liberation in my disordered eating recovery talks through my local NAMI affiliate. With anti-fat bias rampant, many thin folks are more likely to take me seriously than someone with a larger body, so I can get into rooms and share the work that others are doing without facing the direct discrimination that my fat peers do. 

I’m not sure what my role will look like in the future. I love my current volunteer gigs with both Project HEAL and NAMI Multnomah, but I’d love to dedicate even more time to the disordered eating recovery space – whether that’s in a full-time role, additional speaking engagements, or more intensive volunteer positions. But, as I explore what my future may hold, I will, of course, make sure that I don’t take up space that marginalized communities who are struggling might desperately need to be filled by others who look like them instead. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

PASSING THE MIC

As mentioned above, my long-term healing journey has been powered by unending and diverse education. I’ve worked hard to seek out people with professional and/or lived experience with disordered eating who do not look like me. Their work has vastly accelerated my growth and intersectional understanding of today’s eating disorder landscape. It’s made me a better person, and I’ve got lots of recommendations to share with those who hold similar privileges. 

PROJECT HEAL BLOG POSTS

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Tara Criscuolo

Tara Criscuolo (she/her) is a brand marketer; mental health educator; and disordered eating speaker, writer, and resource provider based in Portland, OR. She’s recovered from an eating disorder, and her healing journey – paired with the loss of a close friend to suicide – spurred her passion for normalizing mental health, dismantling diet culture, and creating a world that's safe for everyone to show up as their authentic selves.

Tara kicked off her marketing career at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). After four years of working to save lives and bring hope to those affected by suicide, she moved from New Jersey to Oregon to spearhead marketing for Girls Inc. of the Pacific Northwest. Currently, she’s leading marketing efforts for a Portland-based creative company.

When she’s not working, Tara spends her time volunteering for Project HEAL as the National Blog Manager, AFSP Oregon as a Board Member, NAMI Multnomah as a Mental Health Educator, and formerly ANAD as a Peer Recovery Mentor; compiling resources for those struggling with disordered eating; reading; hiking; and snuggling her rescue pup Mazie. Visit her website taracriscuolo.com to learn more.

https://www.taracriscuolo.com/
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