The message is "You have responsiblities, as a woman, to the community around you. You should weigh as much or as little as its standards of beauty allow you to. You need to be just decorative enough."

YOUNG women in America are beset by what might be considered a plague. According to medical estimates, as many as 20 percent of female adolescents suffer from the eating disorders of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. But "eating disorders" is a misnomer; these conditions are actually psychological disorders finding physical manifestations.

It is not inexplicable that 10 times as many women as men suffer from these illnesses. If a woman cannot find an internal coping method for her own pain, she will take socially dictated measures. If television and magazines do not lie, a woman in control of her life is attractive and a little slim, and a beautiful woman is a happy woman.

The problem is that they do lie. Bulimic and anorexic women grab hold of these myths because physical control is more readily attained than emotional control. Psychiatrists will tell you not to discuss food or appearance with these women, because doing so only encourages the illusion that appearances are all, and that the female psyche is negligible in that context.

But not only bulimics and anoerexics are hurt by the stress on appearances. For all the women who are in serious physical danger from eating disorders, countless more are in psychological danger, countless women who have eating concerns that control and paralyze their lives.

How often have we heard women refuse to go out, saying "All I'll do is eat," or, "I'm never going there again. I made a complete pig of myself''?

I am sure there are women in my dining hall who have serious eating concerns. I worry that someday, when one of them is eating a salad or some yogurt, a paradoxically ignorant tutor will approach and compliment them on their apparently pleasing slimness. And one of them might think this woman knows something. But both of them can easily find this kind of wisdom and judgment from their peers. The apple does not fall far from the tree, but the problem is now even Eve would not eat it.

"Girls" do not like to diet; girls like approval. Approval makes them feel good about themselves. But it is time we placed stock in our bodies as our selves, or an immediate extension of them, time we accepted them, time we stopped accepting weight recommendations and body advice. Only then will we get back our mental health, to which a healthy appearance is only subsidiary.

I understand that now, and I do not easily forgive myself when I identify women as "the one with the powerful thighs" or "kind of stout." It makes me nauseated to hear men in the Yard say things like "She can't be fat, because she's supposed to have all these guys after her."

I do not understand how we can continue to be hateful in a world where enough women hate themselves enough already--hate themselves enough to binge and purge, enough to starve themselves. We have presumed to tell American women that others can dictate the very amount of sustenence they can consume to look just how we like her to. It's time we all kept our mouths shut.