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the economics of thinness
NEW YORK
It is rational for ambitious women to try as hard as they can to be thin. That is a tragedy
Mireille guiliano is a slim and successful woman. She was born in France and studied in Paris before working as an interpreter for the United Nations. She then worked in the champagne business and in 1984 joined Veuve Clicquot whose performance was, at the time, rather flat. She fizzed up the ranks and launched their American subsidiary. In 1991 she became its chief executive and ran it with great success. In her apartment overlooking downtown Manhattan, she offers a glass of water before quipping "You know how much I love water." She is correct; drinking plenty of water is a key rule in "French Women Don't Get Fat", her bestselling book on how to lose weight and stay slim "the French way".
In the book she describes her discomfort when as a teenager she gained weight while spending a summer in America. Her uneasiness comes to a head when she returns home to France and her father, instead of rushing to hug her, tells her she looks "like a sack of potatoes". She goes on a new diet plan, remembers her old French habits (lots of water, controlled portions, moving regularly) and tips the scales back in her favour.
As a successful woman who is willing to talk publicly about her appearance and her weight, Ms Guiliano is rare. "Of course no one wants to talk about it," she says. "It is much easier to pretend it comes naturally." Successive waves of feminism have told smart women they should have emancipated themselves from vanity-as they have from domestic servitude and an existence defined by procreation.
But as a woman greatly affected by a comment about her weight she is not rare. Aubrey Gordon, the co-host of the Maintenance Phase, a podcast which unpicks the problems with modern weight loss and wellness, was told by a doctor that she was overweight aged just ten. Roxane Gay, an American writer, describes the shock on her parents' faces when she returned home from her first term at boarding school, aged 13, weighing 30 pounds (around 14 kgs) more than she did...