There was an interview with a Chinese lady a few years ago in one of the leading Slovene newspapers that I cannot get out of my head. She said something most peculiar: »I don’t know what European women complain about. In China women have jobs too. When we get home we cook and clean and we don’t have all the electric appliances you European women have here. Still we do not complain.« You will have to excuse me ladies, for I am not painting a too pretty picture of Western culture here. We have machines that do our laundry, subsequently we have more time to watch television and eat. Then we...

When I was a child, my mother never bought me a Barbie doll. Still there have been more than enough images along the way that made me think I was fat. The thought got intensified when doctors told me to lose weight. I wasn’t really fat, only swollen from tranquilizers I was taking. I kept looking at the fatness of my bottom in mirrors for years and I always found myself fat. The subconscious, full of photoshoped images of models, would not accept the fact that in mirrors objects appear larger. I had a ‘panic attack’ every time they would not keep larger sizes of clothes in stores. The...