Analyse af Peggy Orensteins 'The Fat Trap'

The story the fat trap by Peggy Orenstein is generally about Americans' relationship with food and about the fact that there are way too many overweight people and way too many girls with eating disorders. She tries to problematizes the role that parenting has on daughters, eating habits and body image. She thinks that diet and health has become to important for many people. She believes that people are thinking about their body way too much especially girls. The biggest problem for her is not the many overweight(which is also a problem) but more those who think too much about their weight. She thinks that it is terrible that there are so many young people with anorexia, and now she is worried for her daughter to get it to.

She focusses a lot on how hard it is to get your child to live healthy, without giving them an obsession about how their body has to be perfect. In page 1 line 10-11 She writes, “Parents, then, are left in quandary, worrying about both the perils of obesity and those anorexia. How can you simultaneously encourage your daughter to watch her size and accept her body?” Which perfectly summarize what the whole text is about. It's about these two opposites which are both terrible but you have to choose one of them. In the last section, she shows how difficult a task it is for parents to avoid getting their children thinking about their body. She has done all she could for her child to have a healthy relationship with health and her body. In spite of all that, these obsessions can’t be avoided as this would require isolating completely from the outside world.