It is hard to think of a historical period when women’s bodies were not scrutinized and judged. However, in the 1990s, a fear of fatness, rising publicity surrounding eating disorders, and the emergence of feminist psychology all combined to suggest that anorexia – and later bulimia, too – served to redirect women’s attention from social progress achieved during the 1970s and early 80s to an activity more … all-consuming: watching our weight. The key texts that encompassed these theories included Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1990) and Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women  (1991).

This cartoon features another vampire – not the kinder, gentler vampire of Ginger Vee saves a jar, but one whose natural drives allowed him to exploit the 1990s zeitgeist. What this says about man-woman symbiosis is for you, Dear Reader, to determine.

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