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.

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial.

We know that ever woman wants to be thin. Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness.

In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right?

Fat is a social disease, and fat is a feminist issue.

From a child's point of view, there is rarely a great time for parents to separate, even if there has been a lot of commotion and fighting.

I've always felt very sympathetic from the first days of writing about women that, whatever the woman, whether she is trying to be a woman in the conventional sense or breaking the boundaries, those struggles are quite difficult.