Susie Orbach Quotes

Celebrity culture is something that pains me.

I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update.

Many young girls are constantly consumed by controlling and managing their body image to the extent that they are much more involved in the production of the self than in living.

Today, 'fat' has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt.

A wanted pregnancy as much as a dreaded pregnancy can play differently than all one's previous imaginings.

I thought of the analyst Winnicott's observation: 'It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found'.

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial.

When they took TV to Fiji they found that after 3 years nearly 12 girls out of 100 were over the toilet bowls with bulimia because they felt inferior.

Fat is a social disease, and fat is a feminist issue.

There are so many young women who tip over into being a facsimile: they don't really inhabit their lives or their bodies.

Mothers unconsciously allow more latitude to sons, and open encouragement, and with daughters they treat them as they would treat themselves.

We know that ever woman wants to be thin. Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness.

No one leaves a long-term relationship scot-free or without conflict.

Boys, young men, men of all ages are being captivated by the new visual grammar which pushes men to pout and posture.

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it.

Bodies are becoming our personal mission to tame, extend and perfect.

Not that it was Twiggy's fault, but the ubiquity of her image created a sense in young women that to be stylish meant to be skinny, flat-chested with an ingenue face and straight hair.

I'm a therapist and that fascinates people because they think I carry secrets.

Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated.

I'm the sort of person who likes to undo everything.

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.

If I were afraid of wrinkles, I'd probably be hiding in a cupboard, because I have a lot of them.

The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.

From a child's point of view, there is rarely a great time for parents to separate, even if there has been a lot of commotion and fighting.

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right?

There is no such thing as a neutral therapist.

Our idea of a healthy body is so destabilised that insecure people have come to bolster their own bodies by deeming others - those with fat bodies - less worthy, less capable and less employable.

I think it is one of the capacities of human beings, to create style.

... within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation.

In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right?

In general, the Western body has become a global brand.

Skinny is only one body type.

I think what's most interesting about me is the work that I do.

The truth is, we don't have an easy language for emotional life. That's why we have writers.

Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were.