To be a stereotypical white female in her mid 20s, "^^^ this". If I could upvoat your comment twice, I would! There are legitimate food addicts and those who suffer from Compulsive Overeating, people with forms of OCD that actually drive them to eat to the point that they are violently sick, fall asleep, scream and seize up from the pain in their stomachs, alongside those who have developed seriously unhealthy food habits resultant from serious trauma, sexual abuse or loss. And I honestly do feel for those people, like you do. And, as you say, the problem is being able to discern between people who genuinely suffer from any of the above, and people who have opted to let themselves destroy their bodies with utter crap and scream that they have the RIGHT to do so, and DEMAND us to find their lack of control or genuine general personal hygiene and personal care beautiful or sexy.  It's infuriating and so unbelievably self entitled. And leaves genuine suffers of OED (over eating disorders) and those mentioned above abandoned without support that they need, or medical care they urgently require.  Engorged cankles, swollen hands like look like someone inflated a PVC surgical glove, double chins and buckling knee caps with their own version of Amy Slaton's unique forehead protruding over the hinge-joint is not sexy. These are signs of severe health problems that cause serious physical pain.  I used to self harm, and when I see these HAES people encourage each other to gorge and 'fuck society's expectations', I feel like I'm looking at someone holding a razor blade to their scarred cigarette burn pocked skin and saying that blood is beautiful, show it off, tell society to fuck off or accept your beautiful blood if society raises legitimate well-meaning concerns, society doesn't understand that blood letting is healthy and natural. Sure why else would our bodies flood us with endorphins after cutting if it WASN'T natural?? Tee Hee!  (Self destruction ISN'T natural. Hurting yourself is NOT normal! And encouraging others to follow suit is IRRESPONSIBLE, RECKLESS and DANGEROUS!).  These 'body positive' blogs that are just ream after ream of photos of cream-stuffed pigs and cows with bowed cottage cheese calves and dimples on their massive bloated upper arms, a grin drowning in their fleshy face, above their distended and tumefied tummies, are just as bad at the pro-ana myspace accounts and youtube videos  from the early to mid 2000s. (I know they still exist, but myspace is where it really took off I think?). Looking at someone whose stomach stretches down to touch her toes and applauding her is sick. As sick as applauding someone whose ribs protrude so fiercely that you could cut yourself off them passing by, or whose pelvis juts violently against the papyrus translucent skin stretched taut above that fragile osteoporosis that was intended to take the brutality of a baby within it (intended by evolution). Going on from your brilliant comparison to smoking or dating a smoker. I'm a smoker (Inadvertent maintaining of my self harm habits I suppose, plus the addiction to nicotine, and a way of dealing with my fidgeting habit of needing to do something with my hands), but no way would I attempt to convince people to take it up, or target unhappy teens and tell them to embrace cigarettes, they're great for stress and disguising fidgety hands, plus you'll look SO cool and rebellious too. I'm not a fucking moron, nor do I want to encourage people with no addiction to become addicts to something that will definitely impair their quality of health (and life). I was vehemently opposed to smoking all through my childhood and teens, giving out to my dad for smoking, especially if I was in the room when he lit up.  But as a tipsy undergraduate, I stupidly took up the habit. It was my fault but I knew the risks, I thought I could quit whenever, and here I am, close 10 years later still smoking, coughing up gunk and waking up to the taste of an ashtray in my mouth some mornings. My dad's dead because of cancer, definitely caused by smoking, and guess what? I still smoke. I am disgusted with myself and ashamed of myself whenever I have a smoke, I have cut down, but I haven't quit. I'm pathetic in a sense because I know the dangers, I know the path I'm on (a horrible slow agonising death surrounded by a broken grieving family who will bury me 2 decades sooner than if I quit), and yet still that first drag in the morning with my coffee is just perfection. Every other drag? Disappointment and self loathing. Would I decide to lie to myself and start a movement to embrace my addiction? To lie to other people? To freak out and cry discrimination if I was told to leave a restaurant because I lit up a smoke indoors, beside some children or people trying to enjoy their meal?  Would I go online and rally together of smokers with my tale of woe and leave nasty Yelp reviews, to encourage people to boycott that restaurant because they're smokephobic? No. Because, once again, I'm not a fucking moron who expects everyone else to pander to my problems. My addictions. I'm not deluded. I'm a smoker and yet I hate tasting the smell of smoke off my boyfriend. I am repulsed by it, and instantly imagine his own slow and agonising premature death whenever I get a taste or whiff of cigarettes off him. I'm not going to encourage him to smoke more to normalise my heavy smoking, nor am I going to expect him to find me smoking sexy because of an ever so slight phallic oral comparison. I don't expect people to nod when I light up, I move away from other people to respect their space when I smoke. I bin my cigarettes. I don't proudly instagram photos of the butts and gloat about how many smokes I had and how wonderfully heavy and tender my lungs feel. I'm not in denial nor am I trying to kill other people with my horrible affliction. I have thrown my own tobacco away before over allowing an ex smoker have one, and I have been spat at for refusing to make a cigarette for a 13 year old in his school uniform.  I hate the HAES movement because they are killing their own supporters. They are engaging with people who aren't heavy, and telling them that gaining huge amounts of weight (smoking) is healthy and normal. They are actively converting healthy people to their way of thinking and eating, like Big Tobacco did similarly to housewives, doctors, labourers and kids with smoking back in the 30s to late 50s. Like Big Tobacco, HAES should be culpable for the reduced quality of life and the deaths of those individuals they convert into literal consumers. They are peddling misinformation and skewed 'scienitific' findings like a dealer peddles his new gear, on the niave, the vulnerable, the unhappy. You're absolutely right, they deserve every ounce of hate and contempt we give them. (I had to say paraphrase you and say 'ounce', they are obsessed with sizes and quantities!)