In "Too Close to the Bone: The Historical Context for Women's Obsession with Slenderness" the author Roberta Seid talks about how American women are obsessed with maintaining an "ideal" weight. She wrote this essay while working as a lecturer in the Program for the Study of Women and Men at USC. In this essay, she provides historical backgrounds on weight loss, and discusses where the image of an "ideal" weight came from. She then leads into a section that tells about women and weight loss compared to men and weight loss. She ends the selection with solutions she has for the problem. I intend to summarize the article, show that the reasoning she uses is not always sound, and I will also point out some weak spots in the article.
Women in the world have become "fatphobic" that is, they are becoming obsessed with ridding their bodies of fat. One explanation for the obsession is the role fashion has played in weight regulation. However, it does not explain the millions of women with clinical eating disorders, or explain why eating disorders have bloomed into social diseases. The best explanation is that we have allowed the pursuit of a lean, fat-free body bloom into a religion. Achieving thinness has not always been pursued by women. Body ideals in the early history of our world differed much from ours today. In centuries before, a slightly larger body was actually desired among the elite of society. A "silken" layer of fat was seen to grace the figures of elegant ladies. Those eras little resemble ours, however. One question often raised is "why do women suffer from disorders more than men?" The question can be answered many ways. One explanation is biology. Male standards are not as extreme or too far off the normal male body, while women's are. Another explanation is one of self-image. Women sometimes can be convinced that slender is beautiful, and in their eyes they must be beautiful.