My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.

Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

A culture fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival--or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.

Health makes good propaganda.