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What can an ethnographic case study contribute to the issue of the pathologization of dietary practices? By analyzing transformations in the research relationship with Neila, a young woman from an Algerian immigrant background who grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris and became anorexic while in an elite program preparing for a selective university entrance examination, we suggest breaking with the medical illusion that homogenizes the meanings attributed to the practices of fasting and vomiting, by showing how the research relationship creates an awkward mystery that both researcher and informant try to explain, without it dissipating.