Check out this article on Slate.com by Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love: A Polemic, that grapples a pretty popular subject these days.

In this piece, "Navel gazing: Why Even Feminists Are Obsessed With Fat," Kipnis takes on the growing obsession with fat that is not just limited to reality shows anymore. She discusses the increasing number of books and plays recently introduced that analyze the cultural aspects of weight and beauty in the U.S., such as Leil Labute’s Fat Pig, Eve Ensler’s The Good Body, and the newest addition, Fat: An Anthropology of an Obsession, a collection of short essays edited by Don Kulck and Anne Meneley.

At the end of the article, Kipnis puts her own two cents in:

The reason they're incompatible [feminism and femininity] is simple. Femininity is a system that tries to secure advantages for women, primarily by enhancing their sexual attractiveness to men. It also shores up masculinity through displays of feminine helplessness or deference. But femininity depends on a sense of female inadequacy to perpetuate itself. Completely successful femininity can never be entirely attained, which is precisely why women engage in so much laboring, agonizing, and self-loathing, because whatever you do, there's always that straggly inch-long chin hair or pot belly or just the inexorable march of time. (Even the dewiest ingénue is a Norma Desmond waiting to happen.)

For another book on the issue, check out our review of Wendy Shanker’s The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life.