Am I Thin Enough Yet? The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity.

THERE is nothing better calculated to make some reviewers' hearts sink than a feminist tract. Not this reviewer. On the contrary, I am a convert. Ever since I read Carol Adams's The Sexual Politics of Meat, I can't get enough -- of feminist tracts, that is. Her jolly little number, which ends with the resounding injunction, "Eat rice, have faith in women," pursues the parallels between carving meat, rape, and racism. What we have in this sort of writing is nothing less than a genre. It's quite pointless to show inconsistencies in evidence or argument. One should just sit back and enjoy it. There is something hilariously attractive in the way these ladies pick up a dotty idea and solemnly and relentlessly pursue it.

The things that put off first-timers -- the strained interpretations of texts for unlikely readings, the failure to present and confront discrepant evidence, the grim intonation of the trite, the manic tunnel vision, the promiscuous mixture of pretentious and long-winded academic style with manifest and naive ideology -- all become familiar friends for the seasoned reader.

The omens are good. It takes a peculiar talent to write a book about why American ladies are obsessed with thinness when everyone else and the facts say that they are fatter than ever. And Mrs. Hesse-Biber has got the genre's language just right. I was encouraged by her early ringing call to "examine the various manifestations of patriarchy . . . a system of interrelated social structure and practices in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women." This is good. A lesser soul might have thought that just "oppress" would do.

And surely the author must get a red star for chiding us for thinking that the struggle against sexual harassment and ageism is enough. What, she says, about weightism? Will we never learn? The section on "the rise of consumer culture and the practice of corseting" is riveting. Conditioned as I am by hegemonic patriarchal repression, I had never really understood before how corseting "demonstrates women's emerging roles as both consumer and commodity during the rise of capitalism." How could we have failed to see that "thin waists symbolize passivity, degradation, and more perversely, bondage"? She is first-rate on capitalism throughout. Quite untroubled by brute facts and opinions of the world, she wo-manfully carries on assuming it's bad and assuming that all we readers assume it's bad too.

The main thesis is that patriarchy and capitalism coerce ladies into thinness. Denied proper participation in the world of work, they seek security in marriage. To get their man they succumb to his demands that they be thin and dive into the lavatory to make themselves sick after eating. The evil food industry urges them on, intent on "reaping" profits (capitalism is repeatedly "reaping" in this book; I liked "profit-building juggernauts" too). This, some may object, is the same food industry so often blamed for making ladies fat. Mrs. Hesse-Biber is magnificent when faced with such churlish complaints. It makes them fat and thin, so it's doubly bad.

But quite rightly she usually does not allow herself to be sidetracked by silly criticisms. For she has to take us on to change the world. Social activism is the thing. Let's boycott the profit-building juggernauts. However, I have to say she is weak on boycotts. She appears only to boycott some industries, like cosmetics, food, and pharmaceuticals. Had she thought of her sisters fighting battles against the car industry's exploitation (yes, and oppression and domination) of women in its advertisements, battles against the alcohol industry, against firms hurting the environment and lady animals, indeed against the whole advertising industry, she would have seen (like Carol Adams) that the struggle is all one. Nothing less than a total boycott (surely girlcott) of everything will do.

But her other solutions are interesting. She is surely right to mention the value of the "exciting" German project in which women use their own bodies as objects of study ("Each woman chooses a body part -- hair, legs, and so on -- and then asks others to recollect events in their lives focused on this area"). Even more challenging is the idea of "a one day bike ride to promote awareness." How does she end? Can she match Carol Adams's "Eat rice, have faith in women"? Not quite. But she goes for a simple message that we can all understand and wholeheartedly support. It is beautiful in its pathetic predictability. To make a new femininity, women must have "space." That alone must give Sharlene 9 out of 10.