No Fat Chicks

No Fat Chicks, Terry Poulton, Birch Lane Press, 1997

Here is the story of how women are told every day, not just that thin is in, but that if they don't look a certain way (which usually resembles a famine victim) they are automatically fat, worthless and should go into hiding. Knowing that only a few percent of women have any chance of actually reaching this "ideal" body type, the antifat industry has coerced women into creating a $50 billion industry in the quest to be thin.

Long term, diets have a more than 90 percent failure rate, over 11 million women suffer from eating disorders, and more than three-quarters of all women think they are too fat. Poulton also looks at the ridicule and discrimination suffered by fat people, another way the antifat industry has of guaranteeing that women will do anything, including surgery and taking up smoking, to avoid being one of Them.

This is a Wow of a book. Poulton has done an excellent job chronicling the treadmill that women are on, willingly, dieting, exercising and spending to achieve something that for most women is unachievable.