The literary Miss Dahl

"In New York, my mum and her friends were constantly waging a battle against the dread affliction of fat. They wrapped themselves in seaweed to ward it off, climbed treadmills with an almost religious fervor, and saw a bevy of nutritionists, trainers, and Russians with heavy biceps to ensure it didn't darken their doors.

"There were cabbage-soup diets, steak diets, grapefruit-and-boiled-egg diets, and failing that, a trip to a spa in Miami where everything was counted for you and printed out on a computer.

"At my school on the Upper East Side, we daughters translated the insidious information we received with clumsy teenage logic, and applied it to our mealtimes...

"We didn't think we were fat; we just sure as hell didn't ever want to get that way. Fat was the girl who sat alone in the cafeteria eating macaroni and cheese... Fat was what came between you and your Calvins. Fat, according to the silent mantra of our mothers, was something that could slink up on you in the night, like a witch from a bad fairy tale, slovenly, spreading, and out of control."

Sophie Dahl, in "Secrets of the Flesh" from the March issue of Vogue.