Many young girls are constantly consumed by controlling and managing their body image to the extent that they are much more involved in the production of the self than in living.

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.

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

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.

Beauty has been democratised. No longer the preserve of movie stars and models but available to all. But while the invitation to beauty is welcomed, it has become not so much an option as an imperative.

Skinny is only one body type.

... within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation.