The great anxious focus on the minutiae of appetiteon calories and portion size and what's going into the body versus what's being expended, on shoes and hair and abs of steelkeeps the larger, more fearsome questions of desire blurred and out of focus. American women spend approximately $1 million every hour on cosmetics. This may or may not say something about female vanity, but it certainly says something about female energy, where it is and is not focused. Easier to worry about the body than the soul, easier to fit the self into the narrow slots of identity our culture offers to women than to create one...that allows for the expression of all passions, the satisfaction of all appetites. The great preoccupation with things like food and shopping and appearance, in turn, is less of a genuine focus on hungerindulging it, understanding it, making decisions about itthan it is a monumental distraction from hunger.
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About Caroline Knapp
Caroline Knapp was American writer and columnist. Caroline Knapp was an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism. She was the daughter of noted psychiatrist Peter H. Read more on Wikipedia →