The link between shame and body image cannot be ignored as a primary factor that promotes eating disorders. If the modern day worship of thinness didn't have power, stigma attached to body fat and larger sizes wouldn't exist:
The pressure to starve and restrict would go away, and
A sense of failure and shame wouldn’t be experienced as a person eats.
"Life begins when you choose to inhabit your body and the vulnerable realness of it. Like telling a hard truth, there is an unavoidable exposure of your humanity, revealing the flesh of a mammal, its needs to survive, and its eventual death. By inhabiting the body you accept that cycle of life, and you accept the body can do the job, relieving you from the burden of managing it like you are GOD. Accepting the body gives you the freedom to be a soul, to be an expression of life. To start over.
"Give the body unconditional grace for its existence on this planet. By nature of its life, you have permission to honor the soul- worthy of real, true, magical experience."
– Robin Phipps Woodall
REGARDLESS OF THEIR MISERY AND LIFELESS EXISTENCE, MOST PEOPLE WHO SUFFER WITH AN EATING DISORDER ARE AFRAID THEY WILL DIE IF THEY LET IT GO.
This is partly why only 10% of people with eating disorders actually seek out treatment. And most people aren't aware their suffering isn't healthy. They assume its required to be "healthy", worth anything, accepted, and for life to be rewarding.
People don't recognize the pressure to lose weight as thin-supremacy, especially when it is disguised as health-righteousness. The media acts as the persecutor, setting standards of perfection for all to worship as symbols of self-control, education, ethic, and pure morality. This creates stigma with body fat and obesity, where food restriction is seen as honorable for the health-righteous cause.
Businesses capitalize on the symbolism of thin-supremacy, making the health and diet industry TRILLIONS of dollars. As the rescuer, they sell their diet to help support the desire to be thin as a way to "feel better about yourself" and to remove shame and stigma from your life. But even if fat is lost, dieting is directly linked to problems with cravings and impulses to excessively eat, ultimately recreating the fat gain, feelings of failure, and the stigma again. The consequence is that 95% of people who diet to feel better about their body, gain even more fat when its its done.
The 95% failure rate indicates that dieting is a direct CAUSE. This is a vicious cycle between shame, hope, and shame again.
Even though dieting creates an environment where almost all people get fatter, it is still encouraged and continues to make the rich even richer, and the desperate more desperate.