Research has indicated that bulimics desire to weigh below the minimum healthy weight for their height. In order to examine differences between subjects' and raters' assessment of ideal body size, women participants were separated into four groups, consisting of 11 bulimics and 36 normal-weight females divided into dieters, restrained normals, and normals. Each subject was presented with a set of seven silhouettes, with one silhouette drawn from her photograph. The remaining silhouettes represented 2.5 percent, 5 percent, and 7.5 percent increases and decreases in the size of the original figure. Each subject selected her ideal figure from the seven randomly-presented silhouettes. Subsequently, female raters selected an ideal figure for each of the 47 subjects. The results indicated no differences between subjects' and raters' selection of ideal body size for any of the groups; no group desired to be thinner than the degree of thinness considered appropriate by others. However, neither the subjects nor the raters viewed any of the groups as being an ideal size at present, including the normal group who averaged 4.5 percent underweight. (Author/LLL)