The year was 1968. The watershed event: a protest march at the Miss America beauty contest in Atlantic City, New Jersey, launches feminism as a national movement. Inspired by the civil rights movement in the American South, American women had begun to question the limiting roles assigned to them as “the second (and unequal) sex.” Women in the crowd were invited to dump their bras, hair rollers and pots and pans into a “freedom trash can.” Some women burned their bras.In this environment, it was probably inevitable that women would turn their attention to the oppressive fear of fat and preoccupation with body size that permeated most women’s lives.In New York City, a young woman named Carol Munter used her awakening feminist consciousness to adopt a new approach to a problem that had plagued her for most of her life—compulsive eating. She threw out her diet books and her scale, and decided to eat whatever she truly wanted. More than 50 pounds over her ideal weight, s…