The hunger within us.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Food habits of Americans - American Thought

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"The phenomenon of the New Year's Resolution, in which bad habits will be overcome suddenly and dramatically, treats all of life as a 12-step program with 11 steps in the wash. "

"FOOD FAT and philosophy: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Perhaps the modern vetsion of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" would blame not ourselves, but our inadequate supply of leptin, or our genes, or the heavy television advertising promoting endless streams of fatty foods. Culture specializes in that most childish of behaviors, passing the blame. We have been at this ever since Adam blamed God for putting Eve there in the first place and thus leading to the fall from grace.

Society shirks responsibility for personal choices in bizarre ways. Bad choices are someone else's fault. The latest biopic about Coco Chanel-who opined, "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels," all the while puffing away on 50 cigarettes a day--scandalized Paris because the poster showed the character smoking. The Nanny State had plenty of "Coco is a bad example for girls" choices. In the end, it was not her sun worshipping, despite Coco being a one-woman force in making the tan stylish rather than a sign of being among the rural working class, or her libertine lifestyle, or even her preoccupation with preternatural thinness, relying on replacing nutrition with nicotine. No, the picture of an actress smoking needed to be banned. Not disapproved, but banned.

In November 21309, the emotional charge to ban references to problems was kicking Kate Moss, a former "supermodel" possibly as notorious for her rocker-chick lifestyle (bad boys and cocaine) as for her 5'7" flame that, at the height of her career, carried a mere 100 pounds. Her misquote of Chanel in the course of an interview about her new fashion line--actually, a more concise and better-sounding, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"--created much handwringing about the negative influence on young girls when such a seminal figure seems to promote eating disorders. Not surprisingly, it created more distress in the mainstream media than released hacked e-mails that seem to indicate that global warming research has been sexed up to sell a political point, or the arrests in Minnesota concerning the recruitment of young Americans to train for and serve in terror groups in Somalia. These stories are more important, but offer fewer pretty pictures than one concerning whether a mannequin worries about dimples in her thighs. At 35, Moss no longer is a role model for very many little girls. A 1990s fashion icon, she is yesterday's news except...