When one of us tells the truth, he makes it easier for all of us to open our hearts to our pain and that of others.

In all the years I've been a therapist, I've yet to meet one girl who likes her body.

People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America.

I think anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman's statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. Anorexia signifies that a young woman is so delicate that, like the women of China with their tiny broken feet, she needs a man to shelter and protect her from a world she cannot handle. Anorexic women signal with their bodies "I will take up only a small amount of space. I won't get in the way." They signal "I won't be intimidating or threatening." (Who is afraid of a seventy-pound adult?)

Most parents of adolescent girls have the goal of keeping their daughters safe while they grow up and explore the world. The parents' job is to protect, the daughter's job is to explore.

I want to write. I have always wanted to write. I do not care it I am not good at it. I just want to try.

Parents wrongly assume that their daughters live in a world similar to the one they experienced as adolescents. They are dead wrong. Their daughters live in a media-drenched world floded with junk values. As girls turn from their parents, they turn to this world for guidance about how to be an adult.