An Interview with Susie Orbach

Was just reading Decca Aitkenhead's interview with Susie Orbach in the Guardian today. Orbach is probably best known for her book 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', written about 30 years ago. Nu - I'd love to fill this post with quotes from the interview, because it is having a strong impact on my thinking - today is supposed to be the beginning of my new eating regime! I shall content myself with one, and let you read the rest here if you wish.

"Her latest book, Bodies, maps the progress of our alienation, from a time when we took our bodies for granted to one where they are an endlessly perfectible work in progress. "When I was growing up," she explains, "one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right? We didn't expect to be that sportsman or that beauty queen. That was OK, that was what movie stars were for. That wasn't something that was essential for all of us." Yet today, movie-star looks are not just an aspiration but an imperative, and ordinary people think nothing of starving or surgically enhancing their bodies in a tireless campaign to make them look as though they belong to somebody else altogether."

And how did that evolution come to pass? Insert rant about diet and cosmetic industries. *sigh* It so happens that losing some weight should cause a drastic improvement in my current health. I need to reach that goal first, before obsessing about the looks of forty-something movie stars and why I don't look like them. To tell you the truth, I am more likely to lust after such women. The bodies that I really admire would be those of footballers like Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo; or the physical strength of the Williams sisters, although my mind does keep slipping back into thoughts of Nigella :-)