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Article: Eat Fat.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- November 3, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"Religion is a form of nourishment," Simone Weil wrote. She fasted to resist the Nazis, and some would label her an anorectic -- and a suicide -- pointing out that her death from tuberculosis was hastened by her minimal food intake. But one of her biographers, Robert Coles, believes that this view is simplistic: "Her hunger was for God, not a slim waistline."
Still, since the 1890s, when the ice cream sundae was invented and the first weight-loss fads began, a cultural connection between thinness and saintliness has been forged. Now fat acceptance activists -- or anti-dieters -- have been trying to jettison the guilt and castigation associated with girth. They ...