No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our 'beauty' so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.