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________binge and larf LIKE "RHODA" AND "ROSEANNE" BEFORE IT, "VERONICA'S CLOSET" MAKES WOMEN'S FOOD GUILT AND FEAR OF FATNESS THE BUTT OF THE JOKE. ________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY JOYCE MILLMAN | EVER SINCE RHODA MORGENSTERN took a plateful of chocolate cake in hand and uttered the immortal line, "I don't know why I should even bother to eat this. I should just apply it directly to my hips," TV sitcom writers have found a psychocomedic bounty in the complicated relationship between women and food. Rhoda ate because she was unhappy over not having a boyfriend, but men weren't attracted to her because she was "chubby," so she ate some more. When she finally got thin and married Joe (in that order), she passed the Twinkie torch to her klutzy younger sister, Brenda, who was even more of a self-loathing junk-food junkie than Rhoda. In the decades that followed, scenes of women using food as a comfort, a punishment and a weapon of self-assertiveness became sitcom staples on shows from "Designing Women" to "The Facts of Life" to "Roseanne" to "Cybill" (to name a few) -- female characters who were feeling bad about themselves pigged out on gallons of ice cream, mounds of chocolate, trays of Rice Krispies Treats. A women's studies professor recently posed me an interesting question: "Do we ever see the women on 'Melrose Place' eat?" Of course not. Those women don't need food -- they have sex. It's the funny/sad, unhappily single sitcom women who are always seeking solace in the sweet (or salty) stuff. And of course, they hate themselves, and their bodies, in the morning. The deep-rooted fear of fat, and the just-as-deeply-rooted guilt over enjoying food, have long been a part of women's humor. Once, on "Saturday Night Live," Gilda Radner, who was bulimic during her "SNL" years, did a bit where she enumerated -- in gross detail -- everything she ate over the course of one day, from good-girl diet stuff to fast food to a lint-covered cough drop she found in her coat pocket. Today, Janeane Garofalo's stand-up comedy routines resonate with bitter memories of being the fat girl on campus; in many of her TV and movie roles, it's sometimes hard to tell where her contempt for supermodel-worshipping society ends and her contempt for herself begins: "In the name of the sweet Baby Jesus, why the fuck am I so fat?" she complains bitterly in one episode of "The Larry Sanders Show." Of course, we did have Roseanne for all those years, partaking heartily of both food and sex, but she was a rarity. For so many women on TV, food is the tantalizing enemy. On most sitcoms, though, the binge sessions and self-loathing wisecracks are just incidental comic bits, played for hit-and-run laughs. But on NBC's "Veronica's Closet," the highest-rated new series this season, the heroine uses food as an emotional crutch to an extent not seen since the days of Rhoda and Brenda. "Veronica's Closet," which stars Kirstie Alley as the head of a "Victoria's Secret"-type lingerie and romance empire, is about the skeletons rattling around in a successful woman's closet. Alley's Veronica "Ronnie" Chase may look like she has it all -- fame, fortune, an endless wardrobe of silk lounging pajamas -- but, inside, she's a mess. She has just divorced her philandering husband (but still pines for him sometimes), she's insecure about running the business, she hasn't had sex in a long time and, most of all, she thinks she's fat. The recurring joke of the show is that Ronnie has put on a little weight -- OK, a lot of weight -- since her days as the Veronica's Closet catalog model. And the writers of "Veronica's Closet" seem to take savage pleasure in ridiculing Ronnie's appetite and figure. N E X T+P A G E +| "IF I CAN'T HAVE SEX, I GOTTA EAT!" ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC WHITE