Today, 'fat' has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt.

Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated.

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.

If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don't work. They don't help you understand why you're eating more than your body wanted in the first place.

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.

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.

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.