Pipher continues, “We are living in a culture that promotes a monolithic, relentless ideal of beauty that is quite literally just short of starvation for most women. For so many of us, thinness equals attraction, which equals value. This formula has created a generation of women whose behavior is self-destructive and whose thinking about themselves is punishing. To be a woman is to have a body image problem. For women, harmful eating patterns are becoming the norm. Women diagnosed as bulimic or anorexic are merely the extremes on a universal continuum.”