At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition--so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not show on her body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.

Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.

Aging in women is 'unbeautiful' since women grow more powerful with time, and since the links between generations of women must always be broken.

A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.

If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community.

Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.