As unfortunate as it might be that women like Ayelet Waldman obsess over food and their bodies, it seems all too tempting to believe that this "condition" is in one's genes and therefore out of voluntary control. Why emphasize this, rather than the ways in which many women have made positive changes to their lives by rejecting the thin ideal and overcoming their preoccupations with food and weight?

Too many of Salon's female writers are apologists for women's neurotic behavior. Must we all be fractured, flawed, abused, and damaged? I am afraid that women who don't buy into the compulsory ritual of collective female suffering must pose a great threat to someone out there.

Women obsess about their weight because they are convinced their looks are the most interesting and valuable thing about them. Men don't obsess about their weight because the think -- they KNOW -- that whether or not they put on 10 or 15 pounds, they are still smart, funny, can change a tire, fix a garbage disposal, and might have a chance at that hot little blonde in the corner (ya never know unless you try, right?). Fat simply isn't part of their equation, even if it is part of their stomachs and thighs.

Women never seem to be satisfied with how they look because they are always, always comparing themselves to some other woman and feelng despair that her bosom isn't as big, her thighs aren't as thin, she isn't as tall, she isn't as tiny, she isn't as blonde, she isn't as dark and mysterious, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Men just don't think this way. They are convinced of their worth regardless of how much taller, better looking, richer, smarter, funnier are the men around them.

So what's the reason for this? Myself, I think it has to do with women's fear of open, healthy competition - a fear to be seen to be striving. When you refuse to compete openly because it's not 'feminine', when you pretend your whole life that winning isn't really that important 'as long as we all just have fun', when you refuse to take control of your life and be goal-directed, which means to *set* and *achieve* milestones (i.e. compete),...you turn all that sublimated desire to compete/win, against yourself. You savage yourself with messages of loss and self-hatred: "I'm not good enough as I am". You slyly pick out other thin women and talk sneeringly abou them (how dare they succeed where you have failed!), and pretend this catty hatred is somehow 'saner' than bemoaning your thighs but refusing to put the fork down or, lacking that, run the 40 miles or so a week it would take to burn off the excess calories you've eaten and stay slim. Or, barring that, to just accept the consequences of your behavior and put a different spin on the memory -- I didn't put the fork down, and I gained weight, but my oh my weren't those yams *tasty*, I wish I could eat some more right now!

In the arena of weight, appearance and self-esteem, women need to take a page from men's books. Self acceptance is an attitude. It's achieved with practice. A good dose of rational thinking doesn't hurt either. Slender does happen to look better than fat - it's not a tryannical idea that only women labor beneath, it applies to all people- male and female. it's just a fact. But it's also a fact that weight is not the most important fact about *anyone*, it is just one fact among many. Women must decide - if it's important to them to be slender, then take in fewer calories than you burn. If you don't consciously set out to do this, then expect failure. If you fail, keep it in perspective - extra fat is not the end of the world, or the end of your looks, or even remotely tied to your worth as a human. And don't be a poor sport and get pissed at other women for succeeding where you can't, or won't.

Ayelett Waldman offers a good perspective on the fat issue.

Here's another one:

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.995/pop-cult.995

My adolescence and college years were a haze of weight obsession and bulemia. But it ended a long time ago. I am about Ayelet's age, and I can honestly say that my middle aged friends and I are are very very far beyond self-loathing about what we eat. Sometimes we are chubby, sometimes we are just right, sometimes we diet and lose ten pounds and feel proud then slowly gain it back. But it is never about self-loathing. There are far more substantial things to worry about, far better ways of determining our self-worth.

I just want readers to be clear that self-loathing about food is not universal among forty-something women. In fact, for me and my friends, surrendering a bit of youth in order to be free from obsessiveness about weight and appearance is not such a bad deal.

It's great that some readers don't obsess about their weight -- congratulations -- but don't trivialize the struggles of others, because it's a serious problem for a lot of women (and some men). I think that to tell weight-obsessed women to "get over it," or to point out that weight doesn't matter, you're telling us what we already know. We all know that we shouldn't obsess about weight. That doesn't mean we should just shut up about our feelings.

Ayelet Waldmen is not an "apologist" for neurotic behavior or for anything else. She is just expressing how she feels, which is good for women, especially on a subject where so many feel the same way. We will never get anywhere on these issues if we can't be honest about what society/patriarchy/consumer culture has done to the body image of women in this country.

We know it's stupid to obsess about weight. That doesn't make the obsession, or the depression and the diet problems, any less real.

She is just expressing how she feels, which is good for women, especially on a subject where so many feel the same way. We will never get anywhere on these issues if we can't be honest about what society/patriarchy/consumer culture has done to the body image of women in this country.

*Laughs herself silly*

So patriarchy, whatever, that is, is the cultprit? And expressing oneself is the solution? Because, of course, we women NEVER talk about these things, and suffer in silence, thinking that we are alone in obsessing about weight. Whereas we should have weight consiciousness-raising sessions in which to be told that it's not our fault we cannot control our own bodies, it's Patriarchy that is to blame.

Really. Sometimes I think that after the Pankhursts, feminism has been nothing but one enourmous wank.