“It goes all the way back to the Bible, where female consumption is linked to [original] sin.” (It’s Eve’s bite of the apple that triggers the fall of man.) Women have long been imagined as vessels of nourishment, breastfeeding, and cooking and sustaining others while they deny their own hunger.

After a brief exile during the body positive movement of the mid to late 2010s, “skinny culture” has recently slithered back into the mainstream. Health visits for eating disorders more than doubled among under 17s in recent years according to one study, celebrities openly use Ozempic and other GLP-1s, and “ultra-thinness” has returned as a beauty... See more