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>> The American obsession with thinness means that some women can "cure" their fertility problems by gaining five pounds. Or it can be because the way our bodi

• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  That's just another way of saying the culture does this thing. If you are inferring that I am personally blaming individual women and implying they are neurotic, your inference is in error. My sister had serious fertility problems. She read many articles on the topic over the years and we talked about me possibly serving as a surrogate for her should she be simply unable to have a child of her own. She forwarded me some portion of those articles, so I am somewhat well read on the topic of fertility issues for American women. It takes about 25,000 stored calories to support a pregnancy. Being underweight suppresses ovulation. Anorexic women can outright lose their periods. I suspect this fact probably helped women pass themselves off as male soldiers and male pirates historically. Such professions are pretty physically demanding and I suspect it may have caused a lot of women to have fewer periods or no periods while passing themselves off as male, thereby helping them to hide their gender. My oldest son has pointed out that we are probably underestimating the number of women who did that because, by definition, those that fully succeeded were never identified and died as male. A recent-ish story supports that suggestion.