To the Body Imaging Industry

The companies that scan women's bodies and produce the models that explain them — Hologic, InBody, DexaFit, and others — are shaping what women believe about their own tissue. For an estimated 1 in 9 women, the models in those waiting rooms don't reflect what they're living in. They should.

To the body imaging industry —

For an estimated 1 in 9 women who walk through your doors and use your tools, the models your tools produce don't reflect what they're living in. They come for bone density readings, body composition analysis, and increasingly, answers about why their bodies look and feel the way they do. What they find are reference models and clinical percentages that erase their condition.

Lipedema is a chronic, progressive adipose tissue disorder rooted in vascular, hormonal, and lymphatic dysfunction. It causes disproportionate fat accumulation in the legs and sometimes the arms in a pattern that is clinically distinct from general obesity. It is not reducible through diet or exercise. It is not a function of lifestyle. And it does not look like the bodies in your materials.

Classical visual demonstrations typically reduce the human body to a binary: red for muscle, yellow for fat, white for bones. There is nothing in between. No fibrosis. No inflamed tissue. No representation of adipose tissue that is hypersensitive, structurally damaged, and resistant to the interventions your models implicitly recommend. For 1 in 9 women, the space between red and yellow is where their condition lives — and your tools don't show it exists.

A body composition tool measures what it measures. It cannot determine the nature of fat tissue — whether it is typical subcutaneous fat or lipedema adipose tissue, which behaves differently, responds differently, and requires a different clinical conversation entirely. When your models imply a clinical meaning your tools cannot support, that is not neutral presentation. It is deception by omission, and for women with lipedema, it is one more place the system told them something wrong about themselves. Personal trainers, clinicians, and health professionals across the United States are using the results of your scans to make definitive statements about these women's bodies — and for an estimated 1 in 9 of them, those statements are built on a foundation your tools cannot see.

We are asking for three things. First, a disclaimer — one line, on every body composition result and patient-facing model — that says what the evidence already supports: for an estimated 1 in 9 women, this depiction of healthy fat tissue is not an accurate picture of what you are seeing in your body. To learn more about lipedema, visit [lipedema resource]. Second, a recognition that your setting is one of the most powerful points of contact for reaching women who do not yet have a name for their condition — and that education materials placed here can start conversations that the clinical system has failed to start for decades. Third, a longer-term investment in measurement tools that can do what your current tools cannot: help women understand not just how much fat tissue they carry, but how much of it is healthy and how much is diseased. That distinction exists. Right now your industry is not measuring it.

Connective Truth is an education and advocacy initiative of the Moore Family Charitable Foundation working to close the lipedema recognition gap in clinical and community settings. We would welcome a conversation about what accurate representation looks like in your materials.