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Appetites: Why Women Want
"Where are the lines between satisfaction and excess, between restraint and indulgence, between pleasure and self-destruction? And why are they so difficult to find, particularly for women?" (from Appetites)
What do women want? Did Freud have any idea how difficult that question would become for women to answer? In Appetites, Caroline Knapp confronts that question and boldly reframes it, asking instead: How does a woman know, and then honor, what it is she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining, and controlling women and their desires?In this, her final book, completed shortly before her death last June, the best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs turns her brilliant eye toward how a woman's appetite --for food, for love, for work, and for pleasure--is shaped and constrained by culture. She uses her early battle with anorexia as a powerful exploration of what can happen when we are divorced from our most basic hungers--and offers her own success as testament to the joy of saying "I want."
Provocative, important, and deeply familiar, Appetites beautifully--and urgently--challenges all women to learn what it is to feed both the body and the soul.
What do women want? Did Freud have any idea how difficult that question would become for women to answer? In Appetites, Caroline Knapp confronts that question and boldly reframes it, asking instead: How does a woman know, and then honor, what it is she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining, and controlling women and their desires?In this, her final book, completed shortly before her death last June, the best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs turns her brilliant eye toward how a woman's appetite --for food, for love, for work, and for pleasure--is shaped and constrained by culture. She uses her early battle with anorexia as a powerful exploration of what can happen when we are divorced from our most basic hungers--and offers her own success as testament to the joy of saying "I want."
Provocative, important, and deeply familiar, Appetites beautifully--and urgently--challenges all women to learn what it is to feed both the body and the soul.
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 2004
173 people are currently reading
6280 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Knapp
17 books258 followersCaroline Knapp was an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism.
From 1988-95, she was a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, where her column "Out There" often featured the fictional "Alice K." In 1994, those columns were collected in her first book, Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes.
Knapp won wide acclaim for Drinking: A Love Story (1996), which described her life as a "high-functioning alcoholic" and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks. She followed Drinking with Pack of Two, also a best-seller, which recounted her relationship with her dog Lucille and humans' relationships with dogs in general.
(from Wikipedia)
From 1988-95, she was a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, where her column "Out There" often featured the fictional "Alice K." In 1994, those columns were collected in her first book, Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes.
Knapp won wide acclaim for Drinking: A Love Story (1996), which described her life as a "high-functioning alcoholic" and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks. She followed Drinking with Pack of Two, also a best-seller, which recounted her relationship with her dog Lucille and humans' relationships with dogs in general.
(from Wikipedia)
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May 25, 2014
By the middle of Appetites, I wanted to quote every single word Caroline Knapp wrote. In this memoir, she addresses three of my favorite topics: feminism, eating disorders, and sexuality. Knapp integrates these issues by sharing her own battle with anorexia and analyzing hunger through a psychological and sociocultural lens.
Knapp can write. Her writing style is so vivid, so passionate, and so powerful that you can't help but admire her strength, even as she exposes herself and makes herself vulnerable. She hones in on the idea of appetite and how women struggle to fulfill their varying hungers. By defining "appetite" early in the book, she strides forward and discusses how women's desires lead them to focus on pleasing men, how it causes people in contemporary society to value materials instead of themselves, and how the pressure to appease the patriarchy and its expectations can contribute to eating disorders. Here's a passage that pertains to internal and external satisfaction and how society shapes our perception of happiness:
If only we lived in a culture in which internal measures of satisfaction and success - a capacity for joy and caring, an ability to laugh, a sense of connection to others, a belief in social justice - were as highly valued as external measures. If only we lived in a culture that made ambition compatible with motherhood and family life, that presented models of women who were integrated and whole: strong, sexual, ambitious, cued into their own varied sources to explore all of them. If only women felt less isolated in their frustration and fatigue, less torn between competing hungers, less compelled to keep nine balls in the air at once, and less prone to blame themselves when those ball come crashing to the floor. If only we exercised our own power, which is considerable but woefully underused; if only we defined desire on our own terms.
Appetites isn't a memoir in the typical sense. Instead of centering the book on herself, Knapp supplements her analysis of feminism and eating disorders with anecdotes from her life. She uses her experiences as a springboard to discuss how anxious parenting styles can affect self-esteem, how emptiness or a need for control can lead to an eating disorder, and most importantly, how to heal from a war with one's own burning hungers.
Even though Knapp dives deeply into the intricacies of desire and how the world contorts our cravings against us, she ends Appetites on a hopeful note. She reveals how she used rowing to recuperate and how thinking about bigger issues lessened her self-absorption. While I would describe this book with words like painful, poignant, and piercing, I would also use words such as compelling, influential, and mind-changing. Here's a paragraph toward the end of the book that describes what really motivates our desires:
Being known. This, of course, is the goal, the agenda so carefully hidden it may be unknown even to the self. The cutter cuts to make the pain at her center visible. The anorexic starves to make manifest her hunger and vulnerability. The extremes announce, This is who I am, this is what I feel, this is what happens when I don't get what I need. In quadraphonic sound, they give voice to the most central human hunger, which is the desire to be recognized, to be known and loved because of, and in spite of, who you are; they give voice to the sorrow that takes root when that hunger is unsatisfied.
Highly, highly recommended for anyone even remotely interested in feminism, eating disorders, psychology, or sexuality. If I could I would buy anyone interested a copy of Appetites and send it straight to their home, because this is a book worth reading. Writing this review on my birthday is probably one of the greatest gifts I've experienced yet, and even though Caroline Knapp has passed away, I hope she knows just how much of an impact her ideas will have on society as time passes.
Knapp can write. Her writing style is so vivid, so passionate, and so powerful that you can't help but admire her strength, even as she exposes herself and makes herself vulnerable. She hones in on the idea of appetite and how women struggle to fulfill their varying hungers. By defining "appetite" early in the book, she strides forward and discusses how women's desires lead them to focus on pleasing men, how it causes people in contemporary society to value materials instead of themselves, and how the pressure to appease the patriarchy and its expectations can contribute to eating disorders. Here's a passage that pertains to internal and external satisfaction and how society shapes our perception of happiness:
If only we lived in a culture in which internal measures of satisfaction and success - a capacity for joy and caring, an ability to laugh, a sense of connection to others, a belief in social justice - were as highly valued as external measures. If only we lived in a culture that made ambition compatible with motherhood and family life, that presented models of women who were integrated and whole: strong, sexual, ambitious, cued into their own varied sources to explore all of them. If only women felt less isolated in their frustration and fatigue, less torn between competing hungers, less compelled to keep nine balls in the air at once, and less prone to blame themselves when those ball come crashing to the floor. If only we exercised our own power, which is considerable but woefully underused; if only we defined desire on our own terms.
Appetites isn't a memoir in the typical sense. Instead of centering the book on herself, Knapp supplements her analysis of feminism and eating disorders with anecdotes from her life. She uses her experiences as a springboard to discuss how anxious parenting styles can affect self-esteem, how emptiness or a need for control can lead to an eating disorder, and most importantly, how to heal from a war with one's own burning hungers.
Even though Knapp dives deeply into the intricacies of desire and how the world contorts our cravings against us, she ends Appetites on a hopeful note. She reveals how she used rowing to recuperate and how thinking about bigger issues lessened her self-absorption. While I would describe this book with words like painful, poignant, and piercing, I would also use words such as compelling, influential, and mind-changing. Here's a paragraph toward the end of the book that describes what really motivates our desires:
Being known. This, of course, is the goal, the agenda so carefully hidden it may be unknown even to the self. The cutter cuts to make the pain at her center visible. The anorexic starves to make manifest her hunger and vulnerability. The extremes announce, This is who I am, this is what I feel, this is what happens when I don't get what I need. In quadraphonic sound, they give voice to the most central human hunger, which is the desire to be recognized, to be known and loved because of, and in spite of, who you are; they give voice to the sorrow that takes root when that hunger is unsatisfied.
Highly, highly recommended for anyone even remotely interested in feminism, eating disorders, psychology, or sexuality. If I could I would buy anyone interested a copy of Appetites and send it straight to their home, because this is a book worth reading. Writing this review on my birthday is probably one of the greatest gifts I've experienced yet, and even though Caroline Knapp has passed away, I hope she knows just how much of an impact her ideas will have on society as time passes.
June 26, 2009
It's unfortunate that this book gets pegged as an "anorexia memoir"--even by a blurb on the cover, because it's also/instead a fantastic analysis of some particular flavors of cultural misogyny, both external and internalized. That said, Knapp does an amazing job of weaving in her personal experience to make most of what she says even more engaging.
Combining memoir and analysis can get tricky--oftentimes authors tend to overgeneralize, or get too caught up in the particulars of their own story to make any general critiques at all, but Knapp walks the line in a particularly graceful way (her writing reminds me of bell hooks' Wounds of Passion). I'm only halfway through, but this is one that I will read again and again, and should be on any feminist's bookshelf.
Combining memoir and analysis can get tricky--oftentimes authors tend to overgeneralize, or get too caught up in the particulars of their own story to make any general critiques at all, but Knapp walks the line in a particularly graceful way (her writing reminds me of bell hooks' Wounds of Passion). I'm only halfway through, but this is one that I will read again and again, and should be on any feminist's bookshelf.
April 17, 2009
This book was very important to me. I'm extremely grateful I read this; it said a lot of things I needed to hear. Caroline Knapp, a former anorexic, delves into why women believe they need to deny themselves those things they desire, and why they shouldn't feel like they should. Women need to not only get in touch with their appetites, but what those appetites are, why they are there. Why do women feel the need to starve themselves? Why do some steal, others shop, others cut, others purge? She goes into all of this, where it might come from, and maybe how to fix it, even if it's just a little bit. This really helped me realize that I had an eating disorder; it also pointed me in the right direction before it became something too serious. I am grateful to Caroline Knapp and to my professor who required us to read it. I would recommend this to any woman who has felt the need to deny herself something because she didn't think she deserved it (be it food, sex, or other things), and to men who want to understand better how a woman's mind works and where some of our insecurities come from.
January 10, 2012
I had such high hopes for this book after reading Drinking: A Love Story, but I was disappointed. The writing is flowery and self-indulgent. The theme is important but somehow underdeveloped, despite chapter after chapter of rambling on. It would be nice if more actual research had been included rather than most paragraphs starting off with "I think." Is this book a memoir, a social commentary, or a research study? I can't really tell, and if it's trying to be all three, it doesn't work. As it stands, this book would have been better off as an essay, after cutting out about 3/4 of the content, in which the author is essentially repeating the same point over and over again after running it through a thesaurus to find different flowery words to use.
December 30, 2010
One of the best books of feminism I've ever read. My copy keeps on getting loaned out to friends, who have almost all then bought copies of their own for re-reading. Really, really smart, gripping, and emotionally absorbing.
January 5, 2011
Second time I have read this book. The first time it was life altering the second time it served as a progress check up and how to proceed in the new year. Loved it the first time and loved it again!
December 16, 2007
this book is really stunning. it took me a little time to get into it, but once I did I was really impressed with the intricate job Knapp does of weaving so much truth into this - about appetite in the largest sense of the word, and how culture shapes it. I loved this passage in particular:
"Sorrow is stubbornly resistant to insight. I can put together the puzzle pieces of anxiety and guilt and self-hatred, I can draw neat lines between culture and alienation from body and self, I can trace pieces of my anorexic history to this moment and that one, this lesson and that message. Sorrow is what runs beneath all that, a more mysterious pull that seems at once deep as earth and free-floating, and that casts the matter of appetite in a strong and singular light, all individual and known longings blurred and indistinguishable beneath its glare. . . It simply makes its presence felt, periodically and without obvious cause on a sleepless night or the first waking moment of a bad morning, a sudden pang of hollowness and yearning that seems wholly unrelated to any specific want, that seems instead to speak to a deeper variety of hunger, an oceanic brand from which other appetites merely split off, diverge, reveal themselves to be smaller rivers and tributaries of feeling that always, somehow, lead back to this."
"Sorrow is stubbornly resistant to insight. I can put together the puzzle pieces of anxiety and guilt and self-hatred, I can draw neat lines between culture and alienation from body and self, I can trace pieces of my anorexic history to this moment and that one, this lesson and that message. Sorrow is what runs beneath all that, a more mysterious pull that seems at once deep as earth and free-floating, and that casts the matter of appetite in a strong and singular light, all individual and known longings blurred and indistinguishable beneath its glare. . . It simply makes its presence felt, periodically and without obvious cause on a sleepless night or the first waking moment of a bad morning, a sudden pang of hollowness and yearning that seems wholly unrelated to any specific want, that seems instead to speak to a deeper variety of hunger, an oceanic brand from which other appetites merely split off, diverge, reveal themselves to be smaller rivers and tributaries of feeling that always, somehow, lead back to this."
August 21, 2022
Pain festers in isolation, it thrives in secrecy.
A remarkable, enlightening summary of women's hunger: the craving for something that's just out of reach and the lengths some women will go to fulfill their desire.
While the author is consistent with the examples of food, shopping, and sex; the information in this book can apply to really any aspect of a woman's life, I believe. With shared personal experience and stories of others, this book explains how some women have a complicated relationship with their appetites, why they choose to punish themselves for it, and why doing so is counterproductive. I also appreciated the ending, not to spoil but her hoping her newborn niece finds the honor her appetite deserves was the heart touching moment necessary to close such a tense read.
As a person currently struggling with my "appetite," it was nice to read a little insight into my own issues from a broad perspective. I don't own this book, I borrowed a copy from my library, but I'm considering buying my own copy so I can annotate my favorite lines- like the one above. Anyway, would recommend even if you haven't struggled with seeking fulfillment, I think a lot of people can benefit from the contents of this book.
A remarkable, enlightening summary of women's hunger: the craving for something that's just out of reach and the lengths some women will go to fulfill their desire.
While the author is consistent with the examples of food, shopping, and sex; the information in this book can apply to really any aspect of a woman's life, I believe. With shared personal experience and stories of others, this book explains how some women have a complicated relationship with their appetites, why they choose to punish themselves for it, and why doing so is counterproductive. I also appreciated the ending, not to spoil but her hoping her newborn niece finds the honor her appetite deserves was the heart touching moment necessary to close such a tense read.
As a person currently struggling with my "appetite," it was nice to read a little insight into my own issues from a broad perspective. I don't own this book, I borrowed a copy from my library, but I'm considering buying my own copy so I can annotate my favorite lines- like the one above. Anyway, would recommend even if you haven't struggled with seeking fulfillment, I think a lot of people can benefit from the contents of this book.
November 7, 2007
my mind wizard recommended this to me and i was suspect, as i am not and have never been anorexic. this book blew me away - it's not so much about anorexia but about what women do to themselves to fill the emptiness that permeates their lives. the theme of hunger is not just about food but about the insatiable needs of love, understanding, respect, good relationships, meaningful work. you might starve yourself, gorge yourself, shop until you're drowning in debt, chainsmoke, be promiscuous, dedicate your life to your job, etc, and it's all just a symptom of the overarching problem of wanting. it's a slow read, but probably because you have to let it sink in. i hadn't read anything so intellectually stimulating since college and i keep recommending it to women i know who will find some truth in at least part of the book. the death of the writer (of lung cancer) before APPETITES' publication is truly sad.
June 21, 2025
Caroline Knapp's stellar book 'Appetites' revolves around the concept of female desire: how societal conditioning about traditional gender roles shape and restrain them; how in a male-dominated world, their appetites often get defined by the needs and demands of men; how women are never really encouraged to indulge their hunger; and most importantly, how these unfulfilled, suppressed, hidden appetites materialize in different ways, often resulting into perpetual self-punitive behaviors.
What I love the most about this book is the insight it provides into the psyche of someone struggling with their needs and desires.Throughout her essays, Caroline largely focuses on explaining the inner working of women, even as she seeks to explicate how larger, wider social environments and conditions affect and shape their idea of satiety.
Undoubtedly, her powerful writing complements and reinforces the message. Caroline exposes her vulnerability with so much power and compassion that her writing doesn't fail to touch your soul. Read this paragraph, for instance:
𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞-𝐚𝐧𝐝-𝐚-𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬. 𝐈𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬, 𝐬𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐩. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐬𝐚𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐧𝐢𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐭, 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞, 𝐬𝐨 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐭, 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐭𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭, 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐈 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫.
I love how she describes the body as a medium of expression, something working as a fill-in to communicate the underlying emotions that are at the core of every person's appetite and which often get disregarded or remain unrecognized. And I also love how she writes about her eating disorder with compassion and understanding---and hope. The idea of faith is further strengthened in the final chapter where she also questions the possibility of being able to have our hunger satisfied, of experiencing fulfillment, the desire that is central to the concept of the human appetite.
To say that this book has provided me with the ultimate answers relating to my appetite and its fulfillment wouldn't be a complete truth. This book has, in fact, opened up a new sphere of exploration and has helped me form the necessary questions to recognize and to understand my appetite. And this, I feel, is what makes this book so special---and meaningful---to me. Highly recommended.
What I love the most about this book is the insight it provides into the psyche of someone struggling with their needs and desires.Throughout her essays, Caroline largely focuses on explaining the inner working of women, even as she seeks to explicate how larger, wider social environments and conditions affect and shape their idea of satiety.
Undoubtedly, her powerful writing complements and reinforces the message. Caroline exposes her vulnerability with so much power and compassion that her writing doesn't fail to touch your soul. Read this paragraph, for instance:
𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞-𝐚𝐧𝐝-𝐚-𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬. 𝐈𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬, 𝐬𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐩. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐬𝐚𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐧𝐢𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐭, 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞, 𝐬𝐨 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐭, 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐭𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭, 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐈 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫.
I love how she describes the body as a medium of expression, something working as a fill-in to communicate the underlying emotions that are at the core of every person's appetite and which often get disregarded or remain unrecognized. And I also love how she writes about her eating disorder with compassion and understanding---and hope. The idea of faith is further strengthened in the final chapter where she also questions the possibility of being able to have our hunger satisfied, of experiencing fulfillment, the desire that is central to the concept of the human appetite.
To say that this book has provided me with the ultimate answers relating to my appetite and its fulfillment wouldn't be a complete truth. This book has, in fact, opened up a new sphere of exploration and has helped me form the necessary questions to recognize and to understand my appetite. And this, I feel, is what makes this book so special---and meaningful---to me. Highly recommended.
January 15, 2016
This is the book I needed someone to give me a long time ago, when I first struggled with my needs vs. being full vs. being empty vs. wanting and longing. What I thought I learned long ago and again and again as I age I could finally understand well enough through this book to actually heal and know that there is nothing wrong in wanting, or in how I have tried to navigate unmet longings. This book was an experience to read, the type of book that I ached and angered through, stopped, said I'd never finish, then picked it up again. It was fulfilling in the ways it needed to be. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is not yet sure what it means to be feminine or a woman or long for something that is certain to hurt over and over and no matter how hard you seem to work for it or fashion yourself into the right shape can never be yours by no fault of your own. I recommend this book for anyone who has also fought loss with emptiness only to find it left you lonely rather than strong. I recommend this book for anyone who has been told that what you hunger for is inappropriate or wrong, that you need to apologize for not just what you want, but who you are. I recommend this book to everyone.
October 13, 2020
If you are a woman, this book is a must-read. Knapp's dissection of a woman's appetites both illuminated many of the patterns I had noticed in myself and my female friends -- in the way we speak about ourselves to each other, and the way we speak about each other. It also helped me dissect my relationship with my mother. During the time of the pandemic, when many of us hunger for many things that we can simply not fill, the desire to be fed is more demanding than ever. It makes me look forward for breaking out of my endless cycle of self-analysis and actually changing my life once I am able to.
I can't recommend this highly enough, both in terms of content and in terms of Knapp's beautiful writing.
I can't recommend this highly enough, both in terms of content and in terms of Knapp's beautiful writing.
July 17, 2011
Fascinating subject! Knapp took what seemed to be a simple topic of the desire to eat and relates it to our struggles with mothers, men, loneliness, and our universal need for pleasure. I've already lent my copy out ...
December 17, 2022
everyone should read this book
April 20, 2013
Unlike Drinking: A Love Story, this book is not captivating and gets lost in a series of wandering passages of ungrounded moralizing. Whereas Drinking was an intensely personal gripping story of how alcohol nearly broke her spirit, Appetites suffers from the fact that her addiction to food ... or lack of food as it may be ... was never as strong. Thus she has far less source material to work with, and she covers up for that absence by generalizing, postulating, moralizing, and taking digressions to discuss other things such as compulsive shopping that are interesting asides but do little to advance the central story.
In short, this memoir appears to be an attempt to capitalize off the success of Drinking but with inferior material that more often than not misses the mark.
In short, this memoir appears to be an attempt to capitalize off the success of Drinking but with inferior material that more often than not misses the mark.
December 16, 2020
The most intellectually stimulating book I've read in a while. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand our modern, consumerist culture. I think so many women, including myself, have felt that they want more than this society can offer us. We get stuck in a trap, repeatedly trying to fill this hunger with external pursuits like shopping, drinking, work, dieting, binge eating and overall perfectionism. And yet, it doesn't work! We must go inward, to ask ourselves what we really need and want in our lives. That is the overall message of Appetites.
How sad that Caroline Knapp passed away in 2002. After reading Appetites, I found myself wondering what she would have had to say about the state of the world today. We have lost a gifted writer and social commentator.
How sad that Caroline Knapp passed away in 2002. After reading Appetites, I found myself wondering what she would have had to say about the state of the world today. We have lost a gifted writer and social commentator.
February 21, 2024
it's a good book, and it was interesting to read about navigating desire/pleasure as a woman while restricted by society/self. howeverrrr, knapp makes it clear that her scope derives from the "primarily white, affluent, and highly educated... the most privileged populations" (makes sense bc this is also a strong memoir on her own experience). if you're looking for something more intersectional and less generalized, i'd go for something else. otherwise, some of the book still resonated w me, but i could go on...
***also trigger warning for this book: eating disorders, addiction, selfh@rm
***also trigger warning for this book: eating disorders, addiction, selfh@rm
May 12, 2017
I want to assign this book to my younger self and then to all her friends. It touches on appetites of all sorts, from hunger to desire, and how the ways in which femininity is reinforced or policed can constrict women's appetites. The sections on motherhood and modeling intimacy or restraint felt particularly poignant as well.
August 20, 2007
I have always had issues with weight and body image. This book was one of the most helpful and insightful to me. I wept through the first chapter because I kept hearing myself described - and I didn't feel crazy because of it.
August 23, 2022
About 20 years post-publication, much of the book feels dated, especially the content that is anecdotal ( which feels like the majority of the second half). But this book is redeemed by Knapp’s strong writing about her own personal experiences, filled with insight and candor.
March 8, 2024
4.5 stars rounded up
"I devoted a monumental amount of energy to this endeavor - thinking about food, resisting food, observing other people's relationships with food, anticipating my own paltry indulgences in food - and this narrowed, specific, driven rigidity made me feel supremely safe: one concern, one feeling, everything else just background noise."
"And at every turn - on billboards, magazine covers, in ads - men are surrounded by images of offering, of breasts and parted lips and the sultry gazes of constant availability: take me, you are entitled, I exist to please you. For all the expansion of opportunity in women's lives, there is no such effort on behalf of female appetite, there are no comparable images of service and availability, there is no baseline expectation that a legion of others will rush forward to meet our needs or satisfy our hungers. The striving, self-oriented man is adapted to, cut slack, his transgressions and inadequacies explained and forgiven."
"What an extraordinary sensation: anorexia, the most profound form of antagonism toward body and self, experienced as pride."
"In the prevailing view...'normalcy can be easily summarized: men and women are the same and they're all men.'"
"I remember grieving anorexia quite distinctly, weeping over the loss of that predictable futile safety, which was really a way of weeping over the self, the poor scared self who needed that safety and felt there was no other way to attain it." :c
"The therapist asked, What did it protect you from? That, I answered, meaning: that very emptiness, that very level of despair and disappointment, those tears, which always managed to be unwept, denied, starved away. In a word: sorrow."
"Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be. This, I think, is the coarse grit at the bottom of the ocean, the floor beneath appetite's sea: simple human sorrow."
"They weep because the men in their lives so often seem incapable of speaking the language of intimacy, and because their children grow up and become distant, and because they are expected to acquiesce to this distance, and because they live lives of chronically lowered expectations and chronic adjustment to the world of men, the power and strength of a woman's emotions considered pathological or hysterical or sloppy, her interest in connection considered trivial, her core being never quite seen or known or fully appreciated, her true self out of alignment with so much that is valued and recognized and worshipped in the world around her, her love, in a word, unrequited.
"She had to learn, too, that she could feel good physically by herself, that pleasure could originate within her own body, that her own desire did not depend on male desire for its satisfaction."
"I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to please and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them; I am one of the least spontaneous people I know."
"I thought about my sister, whose body had just delivered this new life and was now prepared to feed and soothe it, and I thought about women and their bodies in general, about how much of us view the body as an enemy and a locus of shame instead of a blessing or a gift, about the despair and loathing that greets so many of us as we wake to the feel and sight of our own hips and thighs and breasts, about the extent to which the astonishing capacities of those bodies are minimized, forgotten, disregarded, turned into sources of the most cruel contempt."
"I devoted a monumental amount of energy to this endeavor - thinking about food, resisting food, observing other people's relationships with food, anticipating my own paltry indulgences in food - and this narrowed, specific, driven rigidity made me feel supremely safe: one concern, one feeling, everything else just background noise."
"And at every turn - on billboards, magazine covers, in ads - men are surrounded by images of offering, of breasts and parted lips and the sultry gazes of constant availability: take me, you are entitled, I exist to please you. For all the expansion of opportunity in women's lives, there is no such effort on behalf of female appetite, there are no comparable images of service and availability, there is no baseline expectation that a legion of others will rush forward to meet our needs or satisfy our hungers. The striving, self-oriented man is adapted to, cut slack, his transgressions and inadequacies explained and forgiven."
"What an extraordinary sensation: anorexia, the most profound form of antagonism toward body and self, experienced as pride."
"In the prevailing view...'normalcy can be easily summarized: men and women are the same and they're all men.'"
"I remember grieving anorexia quite distinctly, weeping over the loss of that predictable futile safety, which was really a way of weeping over the self, the poor scared self who needed that safety and felt there was no other way to attain it." :c
"The therapist asked, What did it protect you from? That, I answered, meaning: that very emptiness, that very level of despair and disappointment, those tears, which always managed to be unwept, denied, starved away. In a word: sorrow."
"Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be. This, I think, is the coarse grit at the bottom of the ocean, the floor beneath appetite's sea: simple human sorrow."
"They weep because the men in their lives so often seem incapable of speaking the language of intimacy, and because their children grow up and become distant, and because they are expected to acquiesce to this distance, and because they live lives of chronically lowered expectations and chronic adjustment to the world of men, the power and strength of a woman's emotions considered pathological or hysterical or sloppy, her interest in connection considered trivial, her core being never quite seen or known or fully appreciated, her true self out of alignment with so much that is valued and recognized and worshipped in the world around her, her love, in a word, unrequited.
"She had to learn, too, that she could feel good physically by herself, that pleasure could originate within her own body, that her own desire did not depend on male desire for its satisfaction."
"I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to please and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them; I am one of the least spontaneous people I know."
"I thought about my sister, whose body had just delivered this new life and was now prepared to feed and soothe it, and I thought about women and their bodies in general, about how much of us view the body as an enemy and a locus of shame instead of a blessing or a gift, about the despair and loathing that greets so many of us as we wake to the feel and sight of our own hips and thighs and breasts, about the extent to which the astonishing capacities of those bodies are minimized, forgotten, disregarded, turned into sources of the most cruel contempt."
April 7, 2023
this book has started fire within, I now must read every book about feminine desire
April 19, 2020
"You can't worry about Appetite (joy, passion, lust, hunger) when you're worrying about appetite (frosting, fat grams)."
Knapp does a phenomenal job of linking the ways that women come to want and desire in ways that hurt us. She talks about mothers, the body, and sexuality, and how the way that young girls grow up in relation to these. When witness our mothers as their daughters, we see if they are able to fully indulge or not, how much their hunger costs them, how much they actually want or can even allow themselves to want. Or when sexual education does not teach girls and young women to know their bodies and feel entitled to their own sexual appetites, the disconnect is confusing in an age where women have more sociopolitical freedoms than ever before. Some of my favorite quotes about this are:
Knapp describes our desire as being inextinguishable. In a culture of consumerism, there is always a new goal, a new yearning, a new hunger. Capitalism uses emotional deficiencies that are encouraged in women who are dissatisfied to urge us to buy more, shop more, and want more tangible substitutions for what is missing emotionally. She talks about how in infancy, "feed me" expresses something beyond a physical need for food and also begins to mean "love me, take care of me, show me that the world is a safe place, heed my will." I liked how she used these concepts to talk about the consequences of feeling "a sensation of being too full of emotion, too hungry, too needy, too large for their own bodies, and an attendant compulsion to release those feelings and to punish the self for having them in the first place." We starve and we binge and we cut and we have sex with people who do not treat us well to compensate for the too much-ness of it all. Many times I had to put down this book just at the overwhelming seen-ness I felt when Knapp explored appetites. 4/5
Knapp does a phenomenal job of linking the ways that women come to want and desire in ways that hurt us. She talks about mothers, the body, and sexuality, and how the way that young girls grow up in relation to these. When witness our mothers as their daughters, we see if they are able to fully indulge or not, how much their hunger costs them, how much they actually want or can even allow themselves to want. Or when sexual education does not teach girls and young women to know their bodies and feel entitled to their own sexual appetites, the disconnect is confusing in an age where women have more sociopolitical freedoms than ever before. Some of my favorite quotes about this are:
"When you hear nothing about the body, you stop listening to it, and feeling it; you stop experiencing it as a worthy, integrated entity."
"We did not learn how to feel or experience our bodies [...] Instead, we learned how to look at them, to pair sexuality with desirability, to measure the worth of our bodies by their capacity to elicit admiration from others. [...] To be sexy is to be found sexy, to be permitted to want, you must first be wanted."
"Permission is not the same as agency; the ability to say yes is not the same as the ability to say yes, with him but not with him, or yes, like this but not like that."
Knapp describes our desire as being inextinguishable. In a culture of consumerism, there is always a new goal, a new yearning, a new hunger. Capitalism uses emotional deficiencies that are encouraged in women who are dissatisfied to urge us to buy more, shop more, and want more tangible substitutions for what is missing emotionally. She talks about how in infancy, "feed me" expresses something beyond a physical need for food and also begins to mean "love me, take care of me, show me that the world is a safe place, heed my will." I liked how she used these concepts to talk about the consequences of feeling "a sensation of being too full of emotion, too hungry, too needy, too large for their own bodies, and an attendant compulsion to release those feelings and to punish the self for having them in the first place." We starve and we binge and we cut and we have sex with people who do not treat us well to compensate for the too much-ness of it all. Many times I had to put down this book just at the overwhelming seen-ness I felt when Knapp explored appetites. 4/5
May 17, 2011
Caroline Knapp writes so eloquently (if a bit redundantly) about the conflicting appetites of women. Her willingness to explore her own struggles (with eating disorders and alcoholism) is matched only by the quality of her interviews with other women. She gives name to so many emotions and feelings and beliefs shared by women, it's as if she is speaking for our collective soul. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who has not experienced such turbulence, you will immediately understand and recognize a friend or family member in the stories she tells. The poignancy of the battles described is only underscored by the fact that Ms. Knapp was lost too soon, to cancer, in her early 40s. I read her books and wish I could talk to her, ask her her opinion and advice. I guess these are the next best thing.
July 29, 2018
This book is such a sensitive and cogent exploration of desire and appetites in general, but also very specifically about hungers in women. I want to quote passages of it to all the women I know. It explores the complex messages that we get about desire- desire for food, sex, love, acceptance, things, family - and the ways in which those desires are mediated or ignored or redirected in ways that harm or limit or constrain us. As a woman who has strong desires and hungers and who has been shamed for those wants, it was a book that I needed to read to better understand the ways in which I struggle against the messages I’m given about my wants and needs in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Read this book. Read this book. Read this book.
June 6, 2022
I had no plans on reading this, and it wasn't on my reading list. I finally had the experience of being utterly sold on a book by an enthusiastic bookseller—in Korea! Apparently, this volume is popular in Korea for reasons that are miserably clear.
I definitely didn't resonate with everything in this memoir; in fact, I actually think the experience it describes is even narrower than the author makes it out to be. Still, the writing is striking and honest and beautiful, and there were some parts of it that I reluctantly connected to. I devoured this book very quickly, tugged along by the excellent writing and disarming, almost embarrassing, honesty.
March 12, 2012
This book is a must read for any woman who has ever had body image problems and/or complicated relationships with food, sex, or shopping (which is every woman I know). This book allowed me to look critically at how I and society as a whole views women's bodies and why. It forced me to examine my own feelings about my body, about food, and about my desires in life: where those attitudes and thoughts came from, if they are helping or hindering me from living a happy life, and how to change those that are harmful.
December 11, 2007
this is a fairly brilliant book. i have to read it again to give it five stars, but honestly, anything by this author is worth picking up.
this book talks about the story of one woman's struggle with eating and appetites, and also the cultural phenomenons that play into women not being "fed". it has been said before, but it is said eloquently and beautifully in this book. i am so sad caroline knapp passed away - she was such a great writer (and person).
this book talks about the story of one woman's struggle with eating and appetites, and also the cultural phenomenons that play into women not being "fed". it has been said before, but it is said eloquently and beautifully in this book. i am so sad caroline knapp passed away - she was such a great writer (and person).
May 21, 2008
When I read this several years ago, I thought it was the most insightful analysis of women's body image issues and also how cravings/addictions can manifest themselves in a variety of ways that I had ever read. If you haven't read her book on her battle with alcoholism, I really recommend it. Sadly this book on Appetites came out after Knapp died from lung cancer at a young age.
August 16, 2019
Puts words to what feels like a fundamental emotional truth about a certain kind of female life. It's damning in its insight yet shyly hopeful, and ends with a hard-won faith in the capacity for change. One more reason Caroline Knapp is one of my favorite authors and intellects.
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