Womansize: Tyranny of Slenderness

In this challenging book, Kim Chernin argues that our society’s increasing demand that women should be thin is no accident of fashion, but has a political meaning. It is, she insists, an unrecognised aspect of male violence against women; it has to do with the male-imposed image of the child-woman, and the threat to male culture that a mature woman, and a mature woman’s body, represent.