WOMEN'S BODIES

Marion Woodman, The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia, and the Repressed Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts) (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980) ("In essence I am suggesting that 20th-century women have been living for centuries in a male-oriented culture which has kept them unconscious of their own feminine principles. Now in their attempt to find their own place in a masculine world, they have unknowingly accepted male values--goal-oriented lives, compulsive drivenness, and concrete bread which fails to nourish their feminine mystery. Their unconscious femininity rebels and manifests in some somatic form. In this study, the Great Goddess either materializes in the obese or devours the anorexic. Her victim must come to grips with her femininity by dealing with the symptom. Only by discovering and loving the goddess lost within her own rejected body can a woman hear her own authentic voice. This book suggests practical ways of listening, and explores the meaning of the feminine as it 'slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.'" Id. at 9-10.).