Home > Work > The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness
1 " What unites the women who seek to reduce their weight is the fact that they look for an answer to life's problems in the control of their bodies and appetites. A woman who walks through the doors of a weight watching organization and enters the women's reduction movement has allowed her culture to persuade her that significant relief from personal and cultural dilemma is to be found in the reduction of her body, thus, her decision, although she may not be aware of it, enters the domain of the body politik and becomes symbolically a political act." p.101 "
― Kim Chernin , The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness
2 " Women practice their obsession with the body in private. Alone, with despair, we glance into the mirror and down at the scale, hopeful and anguished in our quest for the body's reduction. "
3 " It is re-enactment of the ritual feast, in which the eating of an animal's flesh, or a piece of cake shaped like a breast, signifies the coming together of human and divine, individual with collective, tribal ancestor with member of the tribe, human community with nature, or a woman with her own body and feelings. "
4 " [In the case of Ellen West], whatever chance the woman might have had to grow and to express herself will now have vanished. For her obsession with her body is, fundamentally, an expression of violence towards her soul. "
