I suspect that Ms. Winfrey’s legacy won’t be just the big things she built — the school she created, the girls she educated and the fortune she amassed. It won’t be just the movies she produced or the novelists she promoted or the politicians whose fortunes she boosted. It won’t be just her talk show or her magazine or her philanthropy, the firsts she’s achieved or the good she’s done.
It will also be the idea that every woman’s body is a battleground, that our appetites are to be mistrusted and subdued, that fat is an enemy to be combated with every weapon available, that the war is never over and that thinness is a woman’s true life’s work, just as it’s been so much of hers.