No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.

Celebrity culture is something that pains me.

The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.

Our idea of a healthy body is so destabilised that insecure people have come to bolster their own bodies by deeming others - those with fat bodies - less worthy, less capable and less employable.

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right?

If I were afraid of wrinkles, I'd probably be hiding in a cupboard, because I have a lot of them.

Mothers unconsciously allow more latitude to sons, and open encouragement, and with daughters they treat them as they would treat themselves.