Rather than feel comfortable with our bodies, we have become obsessed with manufacturing an idealized image of what we think we’re supposed to look like, or should look like. Such a quest has taken various paths from plastic surgery and self-mutilation to eye-lid surgery and the fetishization of youth.

Susie Orbach, a psychoanalyst and co-founder of the Women’s Therapy Center drew our attention to the psychological problems of body image and eating disorders before they were the stuff of headline news. Thirty years after the publication of Fat is a Feminist Issue, we may be familiar with the problem but it hasn’t gone away. In fact, the fixation on attaining the perfect physique is a multi-billion dollar industry. And instead of our bodies making things, we now make our bodies.

Orbach’s new book, Bodies, explores the role of the dieting and cosmetics industries in our visual culture and the world of marketing. The question is, can we fight back?