Louise O'Neill: If I was a fat woman telling the same story, would people want to hear me?

 — the reality of living in a fat-phobic culture means my thinness inherently makes the story of my eating disorder and recovery more palatable

Picture: Miki Barlok

Before I started writing my third novel — in which I had initially decided to have a fat protagonist — I put a call-out on social media saying I wanted to speak to fat women about navigating the world in a bigger body.

The women who responded to me were incredibly generous with their time and I was blown away by their honesty, but as I listened to their stories, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with writing the book as planned. I realised that I had conflated my own experience of anorexia and bulimia with being fat, assuming the discomfort and self-loathing that I had endured would be similar.