HOW WOMEN'S DIETS REFLECT FEAR OF POWER

THIS IS AN ARTICLE BEING POSTED ON NEW YORK TIMES IN 1981.

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Why? Why have so many millions of American women, over the last decade, become so concerned about their weight? The subject has not received much attention, except on a superficial level. It deserves better.
There is, for example, the medical explanation: Women diet because of the long-proclaimed correlation between obesity and ill health. Yet that fails to cover the intense upset many women experience because of two or three pounds of overweight. And in any event, medical opinion has changed dramatically in recent years. Dr. Reubin Andres, clinical director of Baltimore's National Institute on Aging, has found, for example, based on his review of 40 worldwide studies involving six million people, that ''there's something about being moderately overweight that's good for you.''
The psychological explanation tends to be shallow, to trivialize the problem, as though women go on periodic binges of eating and dieting simply to relieve the standard frustrations and unhappinesses of their lives. ''Food is so fundamental,'' writes James Hillman, former director of studies at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, ''that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology.''
Even more astounding, perhaps, is the neglect of the modern woman's obsession with weight by today's feminist leaders - this despite the fact that the weight-watching movement and the women's liberation movement both developed during the l960's. Indeed, in my view, this obsession involves some of the most fundamental questions feminists themselves have raised - core issues of women's identity, of the child's relationship to the mother, of the society's response to women's claims for power.

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I LIKE THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE I FOUND THIS TOPIC VERY INTERESTING. AS A WOMAN, I BELIEVE THIS TOPIC IS CLOSELY TIGHT TO MY LIFE. DIET IS THE MOST COMMON CONVERSATION TOPIC AMONG GIRLLY GOSSIPS. NOT NECESSARILY ABOUT THE METHOD OF DIETING BUT DEFINITELY THE WEIGHT OF SOMEONE. THE AUTHOR USES MANY EXAMPLES AND FACTS TO PROVE HER POINTS. THROUGHOUT THE ARTICLE SHE PRESENTS HER VIEWS ON DIETING VERY WELL.