"In the latter two essays dualism is explore not only via gendered representations but as a more general contemporary construction of self that shapes male experience as well as female. Dualism, of course, was not invented in the twentieth century. But there are distinctive ways in which it is “embodied” in contemporary culture, giving the lie to the social mythology that ours is a body-loving, derepressive era. We may be obsessed” with our bodies, but we are hardly accepting of them. In “Anorexia Nervosa” I consider the way in which anoretic’s sense of embodiment, as well as other obsessive body practices of contemporary culture. My aim, however, is not to portray these obsessions as bizarre or anomalous, but, rather, as the logical (if extreme) manifestations of anxieties and fantasies fostered by our culture. I develop this theme further in “Reading the Slender Body,” where I decode the meanings of “fat” and “thin” in our culture to expose the moral significances attached to them, revealing the slender, fit body as a symbol of “virile” mastery over bodily desires that are continually experienced as threatening to overtake the self. This construction of self is then located within consumer culture and its contradictory requirement that we embody both the spiritual discipline of the work ethic and the capacity for continual, mindless consumption of goods."