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?

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

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

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.

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

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