L ike most high-powered New York women magazine editors, I have a weakness for anything Marc Jacobs, a penchant for apple martinis and a guilt complex whenever I go more than a month without a Brazilian bikini wax. But there is at least one major way in which I differ from my ultra-polished, manicured-pedicured colleagues: I have a 300-pound man inside of me. And not in a good way.

Just as the Incredible Hulk only bursts out of Bruce Banner when he's angry, my inner internet fan-site freak only appears when there's a major Star Wars event occurring. This being the weekend of the worldwide opening of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, I've been seeing a lot of him.

That's more than I can say for Manhattan media glamour gals Anna Wintour, Kate Betts and Plum Sykes. Their likes were nowhere to be found at the Clones preview I attended on May 7 (a full nine days before the film's ofcial release date, let it be noted). There was also a real dearth (get it?) of women at the 10:30 showing on Thursday's opening night. Come to think of it, there was never a plethora of females any of the 29 times I saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre either. Not that I'm complaining. A Star Wars flick is one of the few places where there's no queue for the women's loo.

My obsession with Star Wars dates back to the summer of 1977. I was six years old when my Uncle Mike (himself a 300-pound man) took my two brothers and me to see Episode IV: A New Hope. My uncle had planned on making it a boys' night, but since my mother could really do with a quiet, child-less night in, she begged him to take me too. Big mistake. From then on, with Carrie Fisher as my heroine, I whined and whinged until my mother allowed me to go out in public sporting Princess Leia's infamous donuts 'do.

A few years later, so besotted was I with Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, that I convinced my best girlfriend to put on a Star Wars opera in her garage for the neighbourhood kids. After a few sold-out shows (OK, it was a small garage), we parlayed the act into a singing duo: the New Hopes. Our first single was The Eye Of Chewbacca, sung to the tune of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger:

"It's the Eye of Chewbacca/ He's the king of the fight/ Rising up out of the Falcon in the Death Star/ He's helping Han, Luke and Leia to escape in the night/ He's so hairy/ A Wookie/ The Eiiiiiiiiiiye/ Of Chewbacca."

Sadly, it failed to chart, and the New Hopes split soon after. However, the song - which we sang a cappella and recorded on cassettes and sold for 25 cents each - did get the attention of many a guy in my class. No doubt they also loved the fact that I had doubles of every action figure from the original series.

Now it's 2002, and with the same certainty that I face my monthly bill, I've been awaiting Episode II and the 300-pound man's arrival. I knew the time would come that I'd temporarily stop frequenting painfully trendy Sex-And-The-City-style bars like Butter and the Hudson Hotel and start prowling supermarket aisles at 2am looking for Clones-approved packaged foods. (God, I love this new Episode II cereal with its Yoda- and lightsabre-shaped marshmallow bits.)

I knew, too, that I'd have to give up hanging with my usual fabulous crowd of stylists and well-dressed gay publicists and writers - at least until Labor Day, when Star Wars should be well out of theatres. Their replacement: a roly-poly high-school teacher. But not just any roly-poly high-school teacher - one I'd met waiting for Duran Duran tickets to go on sale back in the mid-80s (that's another story). God bless him, Brian Greenspan, 31, can recite episodes I, IV, V and VI verbatim (give him until tomorrow and he'll have II down pat) and with profound dramatic delivery; he's been known to collapse into a quivering, sobbing heap whenever he watches Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn die in Menace; and he goes by the online moniker Frozen Han, a nod to his most prized possession: a $1200 cast-bronze replica of Han Solo post-carbonation from Empire.

Between Brian and me, we've seen Menace more than 70 times, which may brand us in the eyes of an uncaring word as not fit to wipe our own bottoms. Strange as it may seem, though, there are film fanatics out there whose capacity for worship is even more pronounced than mine. How else to explain Natalie Portman's decision not to publicly disclose where she goes to college (although any Star Wars fan worth his or her 12-inch doll collection knows that Queen Amidala is a student at America's most renowned university)? Or that Spider-Man starlet Kirsten Dunst's security people strongly suggested she turn her Hollywood home into a fortress? "They told me I could make my house a lockdown," the 20-year-old actress told Vanity Fair. "You put metal shades on the windows and doors, press a button, and - slam! - they come down, and then no one can get in or out. I don't know if I'll do that, but after Spider-Man comes out, it could be a little scary."

Yeah, it could get scary, because for you, Ms "Look at me" Ingenue, it's just a job - a lucrative job that gets you a vast and adoring global audience. But for me, Ms 29-screenings-of-Menace fan (plus three times on VHS and once on DVD), it's a religion. (You think it's overstating the case to call it a religion? Consider this: I didn't go to church 29 times that or any other year.)

It wasn't the first ever, true demonstration of Yoda's might that had me tearing up near the end of Episode 2; it was being struck by the realisation that there's only one movie left in this series that gave structure, direction, meaning and purpose to my life. Because it wasn't my teacher, it wasn't my parents, and it wasn't my Botox-preoccupied associates who taught me that we all have a dark side, and that we could all be swayed to it - it was Star Wars. Whenever I feel strong, I am Princess Leia; whenever I feel arrogant, I am Anakin; whenever I feel stupid, I am Jar Jar Binks. Star Wars has defined the way I look at the world.

That's why I can understand what's going on in the hearts of fans of rival franchises, those who worried more about Peter Jackson bringing justice to the Lord Of The Rings than about their own personal hygiene, and the legions of comic-book devotees who camped out for Spider-Man tickets in the hope of making the webbed-one's flick the biggest blockbuster of 2002 (ahem -good luck!). The 300-pound man inside me reminds me that I'm just like them, only with better shoes.

In my new, esteemed position as executive editor of a US young women's magazine, I work among the kind of jaded individuals who would respect me more if they saw me staggering into a meeting with my bra strap hanging out of my bag than toting my cardboard Yoda stand-up. My spacious office with the view of downtown Manhattan is bereft of the things I wish I could display: my collectors' edition Boba Fett, my George Lucas-autographed all-access pass to Skywalker Ranch, my myriad Ewan-McGregor-as-Obi-Wan-Kenobi postcards. When I cut myself opening a bottle of champagne last week, I didn't even use my beloved Phantom Menace plasters (Iknow that unopened the box will be worth more some day).

The truth is, outwardly I may be a designer bag-toting corporate whore, but deep down that 300-pound man is going to be inside of me forever. And not in a good way.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones is out now. Spider-Man is out on June 14