Hate The Sinner, Not The Sin?

I've talked along these lines before, but something a bit more specific has bothered me lately--they way we discuss anorexia. In my experience, we hear the word "anorexia" and say, "Oh what an awful disorder! Unrealistic beauty standards are destroying women and girls!" But when we hear someone called an "anorexic" we say, "God, that annoying Paris-wannabe needs to fucking eat something already."*

This is in part because of the latest influx of pro-ana groups like the one on RingsWorld or the Teen Vogue message boards. But by sneering at these groups, aren't we agreeing with them that anorexia is a lifestyle choice rather than a medical condition?

I am guilty of all of this as well. I'm wondering why. Is it that most of us don't really believe, in our hearts, that anorexia nervosa is an illness? We ascribe the behavior to shallow bitches, the TV-style prom queens who possibly made us miserable when we were teens. I suppose it's that we know that these pro-ana girls think they're better than we are. But aren't we hypocrites if we don't ascribe that to their disorder? Shouldn't all this arouse more pity than hatred and derision?

One pro-ana advocate recently live-blogged her suicide. Mamavision.com is in fact a great blog regarding eating disorders, and she manages to treat the "pro-ana" community as the horror it is without ridiculing the girls who are so far gone that they proudly post photos of their feeding tubes.

So, what do you guys think? Do you find that we treat people with eating disorders like they just have a bad personality? Is some level of derision warranted--and if so, why?

*Which is reminding me of that frosh year psychopathology lecture about clinical terminology, and the PC way to use it was saying that someone "suffered from schizophrenia" rather than saying they were "a schizophrenic." The move is against defining people by their disorders. Probably applicable here, no?