Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

This evening, one of my students from last year told me that many of the seniors she knows have gone on dramatically restrictive diets– eating a piece of fruit at each meal– in order to improve their chances of finding a job.  Apparently, many employers believe that attractive people represent their companies better and, when it comes to women, attractive means very thin.

The job market for recent college graduates is tight, so for the most part, these young women don’t think about protesting the unfairness of these standards, even when they do recognize how unhealthy restrictive diets can be.  This, of course, goes to show how economic problems can have very gendered.  I also have to wonder about the degree to which the beauty standards involved have been influenced by imported Hollywood movies.

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