The Role of The Female in Western Culture

In Susie Orbach’s essay, “Fat as a Feminist Issue”, she argues that being fat is a rebellion against western society’s view of women. She begins her essay by explaining how prominent the issues of obesity and dieting have become, and how these issues negatively affect women. “Almost inevitably, the explanations offered for fatness point a finger at the failure of women themselves…” (para. 2), Orbach contends. She suggests that feminism, on the other hand, aligns itself with the perspective that women suffer from compulsive eating, and consequently obesity, not due to faults of their own, but because of “those painful personal experiences [that] derive from the social context into which female babies are born…and develop…” (para. 3). Furthermore, Orbach believes that insisting a woman’s heaviness is her own fault would not benefit anyone. She defends that overweight women are consciously defying the female stereotype in response to the inequalities between the sexes. She goes on to explain the difference between men and women—the capability to birth children—and how that affects women’s social roles. This difference, Orbach notes, “is used as the basis on which to divide unequally women and men’s labor, power, roles and expectations” (para. 5).

In western society, women have been confined to the social roles of the wife and the mother, which Orbach believes has effects that influence obesity. She states that a woman requires a man to step into either role, and that the acquisition of a man involves “learn[ing] to regard herself as an item, a commodity, a sex object” (para. 6). This perception of the female self leads to a preoccupation with appearance, claims Orbach, which necessitates critical inspection every element of a woman’...

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...n flaws readers may notice is that much of the information no longer seems relevant to western culture. I wonder how much more effective the paper could have been, had it been written more recently. If Orbach, who remains an active voice against dieting and a committed feminist, sought out up to date information and decided to rewrite this paper, I can only imagine how much more convincing it might be.

Works Cited

Cahill, Larry. “Why Sex Matters for Neuroscience.” Nature Reviews (10 May 2006). Web. 28 Sep. 2011. 1-8.

Resources/Nature%20Review%20Neuroscience/Subjects/Neuroethics/Why%20sex%20matters%20for%20neuroscience.pdf>.

Orbach, Susie. “Fat as a Feminist Issue.” They Say I Say with Readings. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 200-205.