The shape we're in...

I came across this afticle on ninemsn a few days ago...

The shape we're in
Janice Turner

Thirty years ago, Susie Orbach identified fat as a feminist issue and went on to become the world’s most famous psychotherapist when she treated Diana, Princess of Wales. Today, as she tells Janice Turner, "body distress" is no longer an illness suffered by the few, but a Western epidemic.

Such was the revolutionary vigour of Fat Is A Feminist Issue when it was first published in 1978 that, for a moment, the screwed-up relationship between women and food looked like it could be resolved. In Susie Orbach’s urgent, crusading prose, all was illuminated: diets don’t work because they lead only to bingeing; we eat compulsively to try to soothe inner hurts; or we get fat as a subconscious rebellion, to opt out of how society insists we look and behave.

It became an instant classic, a student bookshelf staple, and Susie’s theories entered the mainstream in a thousand self-help bibles. Yet today, women and food are more embattled than ever.

Obesity and food disorders – which stem, Susie believes, from one root cause, the perversion of our natural appetites – are epidemic, while female body-loathing now begins in primary school, extending even into the retirement home. “I did not expect to be still writing about this three decades on,” Susie, 62, says.


This was the comment that I left below that article on ninemsn...

I can’t help but wonder what role the media plays in all of this!?! We get images of these "perfect" skinny women (Photoshopped within an inch of their life!) shoved down our throats at every turn. Billboards, magazines and every ad you can think of. No wonder our perception the female body shape is so screwed up. And there are so many mixed messages. We get photos of these skinny unrealistic models beside articles that say "your shape is perfect, be yourself and curves are back! (I'm not sure where they went in the first place)" and then turn around and there are 200 recipes for that "yummy" choc cake or "to-die-for" dessert. Even now on this page, right beside an article on how preoccupied we are and how screwed up our relationship is with food and our bodies and there are 7+ links to recipes, a photo gallery of Barbie (an unrealistic role model if there ever was) and an advertisement proclaiming "dieting" tips.

As I said before, it's no wonder we are all so screwed up!!!!