"Given the topsy-turvy relationship of our culture to food, it is not the rise in eating disorders which is astonishing but the fact, rather, that so many people eat more or less normally. Contrary to what our nihilist and relativists tell us, there is a human nature and its
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correct justification in terms of outdoor living, communion with nature, the earth mother, Thoreau, Rousseau, ecology, healthy living, the plight of victims, and the other usual excuses. The real motivation is the desire to lose weight. A few months ago, The Stanford Daily
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published the statement of some resident psychiatrist, I believe, asserting that quite a few female students make an excessive and compulsive use of gymnastic facilities. In the near future, I suppose, this person will be officially credited with the discovery of an entirely new
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Syndrome, gymnastica nervosa perhaps, or jogging bulimia... We live at a time when the healthiest and the unhealthiest actions can have the same motivation. The true reason why many young people, especially women, join the ranks of smokers, these days, or do not give up smoking,
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not even at the urging of their Government, is the fear of gaining weight, a fear which this same Government, curiously, does its best to foster and intensify." - Rene Girard, Eating Disorders & Mimetic Desire
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