logized in our culture into something much more than a physical condition or a potential health hazard. In addition, it is important to understand that the exclusions and the tension of social life makes fat individuals to lose hope, to abandon a world that does not want them. They instead retreat to the pleasure of eating in solitude. But being frozen out of the "normal" world and labelled as deviant makes their privatized life take on an illicit or furtive quality. Since it is pursued in secret, eating often feels to them either like calculated or premeditated stealing; indeed, one of the stereotypes of obese people is that they substitute eating for normal human contact and even sexuality.
             It is the case that overweight women are assumed to have personal problems, because they are stereotypically viewed as unfeminine, antisocial, hostile and aggressive. One of the reasons for this assumption is that despite all the gains and insight of women's liberation movements, women are still judge very much on the basis of physical appearance. No matter what medical evidence we acquire to the contrary, being overweight is fundamentally viewed as an intentional act. One clue to understanding why obesity is treated as a violation of sex roles is suggested by linking fatness with an "autoerotic or self indulge
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