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Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body
"Why does every one of my friends have an eating disorder, or, at the very least, a screwed-up approach to food and fitness?" writes journalist Courtney E. Martin. The new world culture of eating disorders and food and body issues affects virtually all -- not just a rare few -- of today's young women. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues -- a generation told that they could "be anything," who instead heard that they had to "be everything." Driven by a relentless quest for perfection, they are on the verge of a breakdown, exhausted from overexercising, binging, purging, and depriving themselves to attain an unhealthy ideal. An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics: In Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters , Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her exposé reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple -- and often dangerous -- new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness." With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 17, 2007
70 people are currently reading
3003 people want to read
About the author
Courtney E. Martin
11 books184 followersCourtney is a weekly columnist for On Being, a Peabody Award-winning public radio conversation, podcast, and Webby Award-winning website. Her newest book,
The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream
explores how people are redefining the "good life" in the wake of the Great Recession.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones, among other publications. Courtney has given two TED talks, one on the reinvention of feminism and the other (forthcoming in September) on the reinvention of the American Dream. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and MSNBC, among other major media outlets. She is a widely sought after speaker, who gives several dozen lectures and speeches annually.
Courtney’s first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women was awarded a Books for a Better Life nomination and was called "smart and spirited" by The New York Times. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists , Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors , released in conjunction with a documentary film, called Rebirth, by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Whitaker, CLICK: When We Knew We Were Feminists , co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan, and The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive , the life story of AIDS activist Marvelyn Brown.
Courtney has surprised herself by co-founding a series of status quo bucking enterprises: the Solutions Journalism Network, popularizing the practice of rigorous, compelling reporting about responses to social problems, FRESH Speakers Bureau, and Valenti Martin Media. Courtney also does ongoing strategy work with TED and the Aspen Institute. She is on the Council of Advisors of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Family Story, and Feministing.com.
Courtney is a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and has held residencies at the Roc
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones, among other publications. Courtney has given two TED talks, one on the reinvention of feminism and the other (forthcoming in September) on the reinvention of the American Dream. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and MSNBC, among other major media outlets. She is a widely sought after speaker, who gives several dozen lectures and speeches annually.
Courtney’s first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women was awarded a Books for a Better Life nomination and was called "smart and spirited" by The New York Times. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists , Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors , released in conjunction with a documentary film, called Rebirth, by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Whitaker, CLICK: When We Knew We Were Feminists , co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan, and The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive , the life story of AIDS activist Marvelyn Brown.
Courtney has surprised herself by co-founding a series of status quo bucking enterprises: the Solutions Journalism Network, popularizing the practice of rigorous, compelling reporting about responses to social problems, FRESH Speakers Bureau, and Valenti Martin Media. Courtney also does ongoing strategy work with TED and the Aspen Institute. She is on the Council of Advisors of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Family Story, and Feministing.com.
Courtney is a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and has held residencies at the Roc
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
March 17, 2023
I don't know why I ordered this b/c I didn't like the excerpt in Bitch. The author consistently uses language that suggests she is speaking for ALL women who struggle with eating disorders and body image issues when she's really speaking for a very select few that share her stereotypical version of these problems:
"We win scholarships galore, science fairs, and knowledge bowls, spelling bees and mock trial debates....We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins. We do strip aerobics, hot yoga, always go five more minutes than the limit on any exercise machine at the gym....We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers."
Insinuating that eating disordered girls and women are ALL over-achieving and hyper-perfectionist (with disappointing parents and Ivy League degrees) is dangerous to those who are eating-disordered and not over-achieving, nor hyper-perfectionists. Sure, many with eating disorders fit the over-achieving stereotype but those who do not are no less disordered because their body image issues and eating stress manifest differently. I worry that someone who isn't obsessive-compulsive about working out or getting good grades but instead privately starves herself or binges and purges might conclude, "Oh well, I'm not THAT sick."
As an anorexia survivor, I might be a harsher judge of books like these because I've already read so many of them. Maybe also for that reason, I found that this book had nothing to add to the vast amount of literature out there on eating disorders in American women. Honestly, I don't think there's anything NEW about the normalcy of hating our bodies, sad as that may be.
"We win scholarships galore, science fairs, and knowledge bowls, spelling bees and mock trial debates....We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins. We do strip aerobics, hot yoga, always go five more minutes than the limit on any exercise machine at the gym....We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers."
Insinuating that eating disordered girls and women are ALL over-achieving and hyper-perfectionist (with disappointing parents and Ivy League degrees) is dangerous to those who are eating-disordered and not over-achieving, nor hyper-perfectionists. Sure, many with eating disorders fit the over-achieving stereotype but those who do not are no less disordered because their body image issues and eating stress manifest differently. I worry that someone who isn't obsessive-compulsive about working out or getting good grades but instead privately starves herself or binges and purges might conclude, "Oh well, I'm not THAT sick."
As an anorexia survivor, I might be a harsher judge of books like these because I've already read so many of them. Maybe also for that reason, I found that this book had nothing to add to the vast amount of literature out there on eating disorders in American women. Honestly, I don't think there's anything NEW about the normalcy of hating our bodies, sad as that may be.
January 29, 2015
I originally gave this book two stars, but I had only read about a quarter of the book before putting it down, thinking I wouldn't go back to it. I continued reading anyway, and based on the new material, had to downgrade my review to one star. The author lost me completely when I got to the part where she calls Britney Spears a "virgin-slut" before referring to her role as a mother as a "not that convincing performance". Madonna is also a "slut", Foxy Brown a "glorified video ho" and Lil' Kim is "white".
That was before I even got to the chapter where she gives us the "straight dope" on what guys "really" want their girlfriends to look like and what we should spend our time doing if we're "worrying about snagging a man". Her tips include watching the Daily Show and reading Amy Sedaris. She also suggests learning to mystify, however you do that.
Her cracks about skinny girls counting their carrot sticks at lunch and equating watching your diet with "living a watered-down life" also went unappreciated by me.
According to Ms. Martin, nearly all women suffer from disordered eating and body image issues. The causes include your neurotic, weak mother, your intimidated father, your participation in sports, your boyfriend, your friends, your over-achieving mother, your indulgent father, the media, viewing pictures of models, viewing pictures of athletes, people on the subway, sex-ed, no sex-ed, pornography, college, post-college and on and on. In other words, pretty much everything you see, do or experience sets you up for a disorder if you're a woman. If you go to the gym regularly or turn down another slice of pizza or a cookie, it also makes you suspect.
Ms. Martin also uses oddly inappropriate literary language and devices throughout the book, at one point referring to the traditional family model as "the burnt rice at the bottom of an old pot"
The title of this book was what enticed me to pick it up, but I wasn't expecting so much criticism of skinny girls or the blanket generalization. Books that try to analyze the causes of something as serious as self-esteem, body dysmorphia and eating disorders are really better left to experts who have the training, education and experience needed to properly synthesize and contextualize the data they present. This book puts the girls who don't like the dimples on their thighs in the same dysfunctional category as the girls who throw up until their teeth start to erode. It claims to be feminist, but I don't think referring to other women as "sluts" is very feminist at all.
That was before I even got to the chapter where she gives us the "straight dope" on what guys "really" want their girlfriends to look like and what we should spend our time doing if we're "worrying about snagging a man". Her tips include watching the Daily Show and reading Amy Sedaris. She also suggests learning to mystify, however you do that.
Her cracks about skinny girls counting their carrot sticks at lunch and equating watching your diet with "living a watered-down life" also went unappreciated by me.
According to Ms. Martin, nearly all women suffer from disordered eating and body image issues. The causes include your neurotic, weak mother, your intimidated father, your participation in sports, your boyfriend, your friends, your over-achieving mother, your indulgent father, the media, viewing pictures of models, viewing pictures of athletes, people on the subway, sex-ed, no sex-ed, pornography, college, post-college and on and on. In other words, pretty much everything you see, do or experience sets you up for a disorder if you're a woman. If you go to the gym regularly or turn down another slice of pizza or a cookie, it also makes you suspect.
Ms. Martin also uses oddly inappropriate literary language and devices throughout the book, at one point referring to the traditional family model as "the burnt rice at the bottom of an old pot"
The title of this book was what enticed me to pick it up, but I wasn't expecting so much criticism of skinny girls or the blanket generalization. Books that try to analyze the causes of something as serious as self-esteem, body dysmorphia and eating disorders are really better left to experts who have the training, education and experience needed to properly synthesize and contextualize the data they present. This book puts the girls who don't like the dimples on their thighs in the same dysfunctional category as the girls who throw up until their teeth start to erode. It claims to be feminist, but I don't think referring to other women as "sluts" is very feminist at all.
January 16, 2008
This was horrible. It made me feel bad about food, people, society, myself. The author wrote as if it were a thesis and while the writing isn't bad, it's just a bunch of borderline-anorexics complaining about their bodies. There aren't any suggestions for improvement or statements on how society could improve, just a lot of "___ sucks."
August 17, 2008
Putting this on the "read" shelf is kind of a lie, because I only got a third of the way through before I had to stop. Apart from the prose being clunky, histrionic, and inexplicably riddled with curse words, the material itself is a hot mess.
I was expecting concise exposition peppered between groups of case studies, and, indeed, this is what the book's intro would have you believe you're going to be getting, too. But instead, I had read maybe 8 pages of 'case studies' by the time I got to page 80--and those 8 pages weren't even left in the subjects' voices, instead falling prey to Martin's awkward narration. The vast majority of the other 72 pages were filled with Martin's amateur psychoanalysis of her family as she tries to figure out what exactly has made her a "perfect girl/starving daughter."
What a bunch of self-indulgent drivel.
Too bad, too, because I think that Martin's thesis--that there is a dark side to the current "alpha girl" ideal that so many young girls aspire to reach--is one worth exploring. It's too bad that she can't seem to get out of herself long enough to be the one to do it.
I was expecting concise exposition peppered between groups of case studies, and, indeed, this is what the book's intro would have you believe you're going to be getting, too. But instead, I had read maybe 8 pages of 'case studies' by the time I got to page 80--and those 8 pages weren't even left in the subjects' voices, instead falling prey to Martin's awkward narration. The vast majority of the other 72 pages were filled with Martin's amateur psychoanalysis of her family as she tries to figure out what exactly has made her a "perfect girl/starving daughter."
What a bunch of self-indulgent drivel.
Too bad, too, because I think that Martin's thesis--that there is a dark side to the current "alpha girl" ideal that so many young girls aspire to reach--is one worth exploring. It's too bad that she can't seem to get out of herself long enough to be the one to do it.
December 12, 2009
Eh. The writing is pretty lackluster, relying heavily on I, I, I, we, we, we. Martin tries to speak for all women, using sweeping generalizations, trying to show us how good, and how bad she is. She had Hispanic boyfriends in high school (oh my!), but of course, she still got straight As. She was smart AND drank Forties. Oh boy. Overall, I think she was embarking on an interesting project in this book, but it was just a whirlwind rampage through the low self-esteem of women, and didn't offer any analysis or solutions.
February 25, 2009
Full disclosure: Courtney is a good friend of mine. That said, I think this book is fabulous...personal, beautifully written and - while about a sad subject - hopeful.
March 23, 2016
This book had some great insights that I really appreciated--it put into words things I have often felt. Here are some quotes:
"There is not a finish line. This weight preoccupation will never lead us anywhere. It is a maniacal maze that always spits you out at the same point it sucked you up: wanting."
"We are conditioned to believe that everything is within our grasp, that the only thing between us and perfection is, well, us."
"Even if you don't feel like you have a disease, the quality of your life is diminished if you think about food and fitness obsessively. That, in turn, diminishes the quality of all of our lives."
"We are not our bodies. Our souls are not our stomachs. Our brains are not our butts. A lot of women have lost track of the truth that how we feel about our bodies does not have to be indicative of how we feel about ourselves."
"All daughters say to all mothers--sometimes in words, more often with our own bodies as a substitute for words--I came from you, your body was my first home, and you didn't suspect I sensed how you felt about it? Your genes imprinted themselves indelibly on me...creating an equation for what I would look like when I emerged. It was you. Even if I have Dad's knock-knees or Grandpa's curly hair, it is you that I become."
"We can't look up and out because we are too busy looking down, scrutinizing our bodies in magnifying full-length mirrors."
I have experienced and still experience obsessive, occasionally hate-filled thoughts about how my body looks. But as I read, I realized that I have escaped from a lot of the thought and behavioral patterns that used to trouble me. Thanks to my husband for seeing food as fuel for his body and getting excited when food is high in calories--more bang for your buck! Thanks to my husband's mother and sisters who never talk about food like it's their enemy and who don't critique their bodies in conversations with other women. Thanks to Relief Society basketball and yoga where I am reminded that a moving body can be a joyous thing and not a punishment or penance. Thanks to my babies for showing me what an amazing thing a mother's body is. I've come a long way from my college years, the worst body-image years for me, and I am grateful. I wish the author had interviewed women who had escaped from the obsession, who were living their lives free of it. I know women like this, and I'm continually trying to become one.
In the middle there were several chapters that I fundamentally disagreed with. The author is definitely a proponent of sexual "freedom" and also suggests that porn isn't necessarily a bad thing and could maybe even be helpful in some relationships. In my opinion, this author and the many who share her opinion on these matters, are wandering around in the dark.
"There is not a finish line. This weight preoccupation will never lead us anywhere. It is a maniacal maze that always spits you out at the same point it sucked you up: wanting."
"We are conditioned to believe that everything is within our grasp, that the only thing between us and perfection is, well, us."
"Even if you don't feel like you have a disease, the quality of your life is diminished if you think about food and fitness obsessively. That, in turn, diminishes the quality of all of our lives."
"We are not our bodies. Our souls are not our stomachs. Our brains are not our butts. A lot of women have lost track of the truth that how we feel about our bodies does not have to be indicative of how we feel about ourselves."
"All daughters say to all mothers--sometimes in words, more often with our own bodies as a substitute for words--I came from you, your body was my first home, and you didn't suspect I sensed how you felt about it? Your genes imprinted themselves indelibly on me...creating an equation for what I would look like when I emerged. It was you. Even if I have Dad's knock-knees or Grandpa's curly hair, it is you that I become."
"We can't look up and out because we are too busy looking down, scrutinizing our bodies in magnifying full-length mirrors."
I have experienced and still experience obsessive, occasionally hate-filled thoughts about how my body looks. But as I read, I realized that I have escaped from a lot of the thought and behavioral patterns that used to trouble me. Thanks to my husband for seeing food as fuel for his body and getting excited when food is high in calories--more bang for your buck! Thanks to my husband's mother and sisters who never talk about food like it's their enemy and who don't critique their bodies in conversations with other women. Thanks to Relief Society basketball and yoga where I am reminded that a moving body can be a joyous thing and not a punishment or penance. Thanks to my babies for showing me what an amazing thing a mother's body is. I've come a long way from my college years, the worst body-image years for me, and I am grateful. I wish the author had interviewed women who had escaped from the obsession, who were living their lives free of it. I know women like this, and I'm continually trying to become one.
In the middle there were several chapters that I fundamentally disagreed with. The author is definitely a proponent of sexual "freedom" and also suggests that porn isn't necessarily a bad thing and could maybe even be helpful in some relationships. In my opinion, this author and the many who share her opinion on these matters, are wandering around in the dark.
September 7, 2010
I applaud Martin for writing about this topic and for following her urge to talk about eating disorders so that they will stop consuming young women. However, there was a lot missing from this book. I agree with Martin that while our mothers' generation felt the pressure to be "good girls", our generation feels the pressure to be "perfect girls." What Martin doesn't examine is how this demand to be perfect is a result of a thoroughly narcissistic society.
I feel like Martin was trying to talk about too much without enough focus or enough depth. To cut her some slack, she was only 25 when she wrote this. She's still in that stage of "healthy girl rage" where she wants to take to the streets and just end eating disorders like that. Done. She ends her book by telling girls what they need to do or not do. It reminds me of people who tell an anorexic girl, "Just eat." Obviously, if it were so easy to "just eat," she would be eating. What's so often missing in studies of eating disorders, and it's missing here too, is the deeper psychological understanding of the relational and emotional component of eating.
I was also irked by Martin's continuous use of the pronoun "we" as if she is the voice of our generation. In doing so, she tends to overgeneralize the situation. Clearly, not every girl that grows up in this body-objectifying, women-devaluing society ends up with an eating disorder. The fact that Martin tries again and again to blame the nutsos who make ads, especially the fashion ads in "women's" magazines, is, while warranted, ultimately narrow and superficial. Yes, I believe that anyone who wants to make an ad or a music video should have to complete a serious round of therapy first, but I know girls who grew up in the same ultra-competitive, narcissistic communities that I did and didn't develop eating disorders or a flagellating sense of having to be perfect. So, what's the difference? That's what I'm interested in, and I would have liked it if Martin had examined that side more.
Finally, I'm confused as to how a book like this gets written without any mention of some of the media out there bucking the usual glorification of anorexic, dead-looking models and celebrities such as "Real Women Have Curves" or "Lovely and Amazing."
And, finally, for real, there is no research in this book. Interviewing her friends is worthwhile and interesting, but it's just not enough to carry this book.
I feel like Martin was trying to talk about too much without enough focus or enough depth. To cut her some slack, she was only 25 when she wrote this. She's still in that stage of "healthy girl rage" where she wants to take to the streets and just end eating disorders like that. Done. She ends her book by telling girls what they need to do or not do. It reminds me of people who tell an anorexic girl, "Just eat." Obviously, if it were so easy to "just eat," she would be eating. What's so often missing in studies of eating disorders, and it's missing here too, is the deeper psychological understanding of the relational and emotional component of eating.
I was also irked by Martin's continuous use of the pronoun "we" as if she is the voice of our generation. In doing so, she tends to overgeneralize the situation. Clearly, not every girl that grows up in this body-objectifying, women-devaluing society ends up with an eating disorder. The fact that Martin tries again and again to blame the nutsos who make ads, especially the fashion ads in "women's" magazines, is, while warranted, ultimately narrow and superficial. Yes, I believe that anyone who wants to make an ad or a music video should have to complete a serious round of therapy first, but I know girls who grew up in the same ultra-competitive, narcissistic communities that I did and didn't develop eating disorders or a flagellating sense of having to be perfect. So, what's the difference? That's what I'm interested in, and I would have liked it if Martin had examined that side more.
Finally, I'm confused as to how a book like this gets written without any mention of some of the media out there bucking the usual glorification of anorexic, dead-looking models and celebrities such as "Real Women Have Curves" or "Lovely and Amazing."
And, finally, for real, there is no research in this book. Interviewing her friends is worthwhile and interesting, but it's just not enough to carry this book.
January 16, 2020
There were quotes in this book that really spoke to me, and I have a new perspective about how the evolution of feminism may have created the "starving daughters" of which that Martin speaks. She's done quite a lot of research, and I value the resources guide in the back for other people talking about this issue. However, I was turned off partway through when Martin starts absolutely ripping "mindless" celebrities apart. It just didn't feel supportive of all people going through this struggle. Yes, Britney Spears seemed like she was speaking empty words, but she was also having a mental health crisis. And sure, Paris Hilton wasn't philosophizing like Socrates, but doesn't she also deserve a little sympathy as a fellow victim of the pressures of The Perfect Body, and probably even more so because she was in such a public position? Martin appears to agree that throwing hatred at other women will get us nowhere, so why does she do it?
Also, on a much less serious note, did everyone but me have rap battles to impress potential partners at high school parties? Haha Martin makes it sound like this experience was totally universal.
Also, on a much less serious note, did everyone but me have rap battles to impress potential partners at high school parties? Haha Martin makes it sound like this experience was totally universal.
September 5, 2009
I have mixed feelings for this book. (Drat, I just returned it to the library so I can't look up quotes properly.) Either way, Courtney E. Martin makes it clear what subset she's looking at, while at the same time I also think that isolates a lot of people who have eating disorders or eating disordered tendencies. While it could stem from control, not everybody has the opportunities as Martin did growing up. Even her attempts to show it showed socioeconomic and racial lines seemed delegated to one chapter and little spatters throughout the book. We get it -- she went to a really competitive, affluent high school, she went to the all-female college Barnard which is affiliated with Columbia Uni which is of course an Ivy League, because that's only where "perfect girls" exist -- in the very highly selective stratosphere of higher education.
Or maybe I'm just ranting and I have my own bias.
What I did like was the range of obsessions/thoughts/actions with weight/eating she illustrates in her book. A lot of them are from anecdotes or surveys but they still are a powerful point in her book. I admit some parts of the book I did relate to and I really didn't want to.
Near the end I was a little "eh" because she sounded a bit preachy when she herself said earlier some of the advice given in pamphlets sound like Girl Scouts advice that doesn't sound helpful or realistic. (Again, I really wish I had the book here so I could quote her...)
The inclusion of her own family made Martin more real to me, so that made it easier sometimes to see her as a real person who's my age, then a learned scholar about this.
Or maybe I'm just ranting and I have my own bias.
What I did like was the range of obsessions/thoughts/actions with weight/eating she illustrates in her book. A lot of them are from anecdotes or surveys but they still are a powerful point in her book. I admit some parts of the book I did relate to and I really didn't want to.
Near the end I was a little "eh" because she sounded a bit preachy when she herself said earlier some of the advice given in pamphlets sound like Girl Scouts advice that doesn't sound helpful or realistic. (Again, I really wish I had the book here so I could quote her...)
The inclusion of her own family made Martin more real to me, so that made it easier sometimes to see her as a real person who's my age, then a learned scholar about this.
August 6, 2007
Wow. She talks about the twisted thought process of every young woman in America. (and many young men). I'm so glad she explosed the dirty secrets of many "perfect" girls. Not only do many have eating disorders, but most just look perfect and are struggling with deep issues, and self hatread.
July 15, 2008
It is apparent from the introduction that the author has no idea what she is talking about. She based her thesis on anecdotal evidence! "So I wondered, why is it that all my friends either have an eating disorder or have disordered eating?" Shut up, you eating disorder dilettante.
December 17, 2020
I decided to edit this review now that my own knowledge has grown to update terminology and add on a few thoughts
I couldn't even finish this book. In fact I got to page 80 and got so sick of it that I had to stop. This book claims to stand up for girls of all backgrounds when really it talks about only straight, slim, white middle class, high achieving girls whose struggle with their self esteem stems from a need for perfection. They apparently believe being fat to be the worst thing one can possibly be (talk about privileged). Martin generalises enormously and appears to be blaming the parent's for their daughter's struggles. She mentions nothing about people from low income backgrounds, black people, Asian people, LGBTQI+ people, transgender people, fat people or anyone else who also may suffer from eating disorders or struggle with their own body image (ie. anybody).
Did you know that in the US black teenagers are 50% more likely to to exhibit bulimic behaviours that their white counterparts? Probably not, if you get information from Martin, because apparently EDs only affect perfect darling white middle class girls. If your theory only works for one demographic then it probably doesn't work. If you are going to speak about your own experiences only, that needs to be made clear. This book adds to the assumption that only white cis women suffer from EDs, an assumption which directly harms those from more marginalised backgrounds and even (shock) cis men (for whom eating disorders are increasing over the years). This assumption prevents others from getting the care they need, or even having their EDs recognised.
Not everybody with an eating disorder fits into the bracket she talks about. There has been no attempt to explain body image in girls who have to struggle to live comfortibly, to do well in school, or who have other issues to deal with because people from these backgrounds also have eating disorders. So clearly not everybody struggling with their body image feels that way because they are under pressure to live a perfect life.Granted she is talking from her own personal viewpoint but with the amount of interviews she conducts and the fact she is claiming to speak for a generation you would expect more. She claims to be a third wave feminist, yet there is no trace of inter-sectional feminism in this book at all. As a white middle class cisgender women with a voice, Martin has the responsibility to NOT cause harm to more marginalised groups than herself, which she completely ignores. I am a fat, white working class British women with incredibly low self-esteem and I could not relate to Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters at all. If anything she is speaking for the minority of women with body image issues; the white middle class all-American girl. If you don't fit into that category, don't bother reading.
I couldn't even finish this book. In fact I got to page 80 and got so sick of it that I had to stop. This book claims to stand up for girls of all backgrounds when really it talks about only straight, slim, white middle class, high achieving girls whose struggle with their self esteem stems from a need for perfection. They apparently believe being fat to be the worst thing one can possibly be (talk about privileged). Martin generalises enormously and appears to be blaming the parent's for their daughter's struggles. She mentions nothing about people from low income backgrounds, black people, Asian people, LGBTQI+ people, transgender people, fat people or anyone else who also may suffer from eating disorders or struggle with their own body image (ie. anybody).
Did you know that in the US black teenagers are 50% more likely to to exhibit bulimic behaviours that their white counterparts? Probably not, if you get information from Martin, because apparently EDs only affect perfect darling white middle class girls. If your theory only works for one demographic then it probably doesn't work. If you are going to speak about your own experiences only, that needs to be made clear. This book adds to the assumption that only white cis women suffer from EDs, an assumption which directly harms those from more marginalised backgrounds and even (shock) cis men (for whom eating disorders are increasing over the years). This assumption prevents others from getting the care they need, or even having their EDs recognised.
Not everybody with an eating disorder fits into the bracket she talks about. There has been no attempt to explain body image in girls who have to struggle to live comfortibly, to do well in school, or who have other issues to deal with because people from these backgrounds also have eating disorders. So clearly not everybody struggling with their body image feels that way because they are under pressure to live a perfect life.Granted she is talking from her own personal viewpoint but with the amount of interviews she conducts and the fact she is claiming to speak for a generation you would expect more. She claims to be a third wave feminist, yet there is no trace of inter-sectional feminism in this book at all. As a white middle class cisgender women with a voice, Martin has the responsibility to NOT cause harm to more marginalised groups than herself, which she completely ignores. I am a fat, white working class British women with incredibly low self-esteem and I could not relate to Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters at all. If anything she is speaking for the minority of women with body image issues; the white middle class all-American girl. If you don't fit into that category, don't bother reading.
January 11, 2009
Who doesn’t want to be perfect? We’re bombarded by images of perfection every day. Mothers are expected to work full-time, do more than their fair share of housework, volunteer for PTA fundraisers, and dazzle everyone at the local bake sale with their homemade peanut butter cookies. Our celebrities aren’t just actresses or singers anymore; now they do both, while simultaneously designing their own clothing line and serving as goodwill ambassadors to third world countries. Young girls are encouraged to get straight A’s, serve as student council president, play on the tennis team, and get perfect SAT scores. And every one of us is supposed to achieve these feats effortlessly, moving gracefully through life in stiletto heels and a perfect size six dress. According to Courtney E. Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, these expectations—whether they are from young girls' parents, from the media, or self-inflicted—have created a breeding ground for eating disorders among young women in America.
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters postulates that it is our obsession with perfection that creates an environment where disordered eating habits thrive. As Martin states: “The body is the perfect battleground for perfect-girl tendencies because it is tangible, measurable, obvious. It takes four long years to see 'summa cum laude' etched across our college diplomas, but stepping on a scale can instantly tell us whether we have succeeded or failed.” Women are striving for perfection on the scale because they think that’s a more attainable goal than being perfect in every other aspect of their lives. It’s the one thing they can completely control.
The book is told through interviews with hundreds of women and young girls from a variety of backgrounds and is laced with the author’s own flirtation with disordered eating and the observations of her friends and classmates. Surprisingly addictive and easy-to-read, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters never comes across as self-righteous or preachy and, instead, clues the reader in to the subtle ways that women everywhere are judged based on the way they look.
We all need to find a way to strive for something a little less impossible than perfection. While Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters doesn’t have all the answers, it deals smartly with the realities facing young women today, without stigmatizing disordered eating as “shameful” or “embarrassing.”
Review by Jen Johnson
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters postulates that it is our obsession with perfection that creates an environment where disordered eating habits thrive. As Martin states: “The body is the perfect battleground for perfect-girl tendencies because it is tangible, measurable, obvious. It takes four long years to see 'summa cum laude' etched across our college diplomas, but stepping on a scale can instantly tell us whether we have succeeded or failed.” Women are striving for perfection on the scale because they think that’s a more attainable goal than being perfect in every other aspect of their lives. It’s the one thing they can completely control.
The book is told through interviews with hundreds of women and young girls from a variety of backgrounds and is laced with the author’s own flirtation with disordered eating and the observations of her friends and classmates. Surprisingly addictive and easy-to-read, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters never comes across as self-righteous or preachy and, instead, clues the reader in to the subtle ways that women everywhere are judged based on the way they look.
We all need to find a way to strive for something a little less impossible than perfection. While Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters doesn’t have all the answers, it deals smartly with the realities facing young women today, without stigmatizing disordered eating as “shameful” or “embarrassing.”
Review by Jen Johnson
August 6, 2009
I found this depressing and disappointing. The author relied heavily on generalizations. First she tells us that she doesn't know any women who don't spend way too much time thinking about food and how it makes them good or bad, how she doesn't know any women who aren't weighing every calorie. Maybe she needs new friends. I know we've moved away from a culture where food is the heart of the home and people pick and choose their foods for health, for flavor and for pleasure, but yes, there are many people out there who do think of food as a positive sensual experience without being crazed binge eaters. Then she shares how our parents are all at fault for our eating problems no matter how they tried to raise us. Eating disorders aren't all our parents faults. Then as others have mentioned, she paints the picture of what kind of woman is the kind of woman who would have an eating disorder, ignoring that the types of women who develop disorders are as varied as the complicated systems, rules and lies disordered eaters find themselves living with. There are some interesting points and some helpful information, but they did not offset the rest of the book.
May 22, 2009
This book is so wonderful. It focuses on the unspeakable: how much women hate their bodies. What we are ashamed of we are silent about. Courtney Martin lets it all out: how food marks us as good or bad. How exercise marks us as good or bad. How our paycheck and resume marks us as good or bad. She encourages us to stop criticizing ourselves because our disordered eating and hateful thoughts are at the worst killing us and at the least stunting our potential.
The last chapter was the most inspiring as she imagines how we can begin to live in a different way than society has set out for us. I love this: "You may choose to order a burger instead of a salad simply because you feel like it. Or you may choose to order a salad instead of a burger because you realize that your pleasure in life comes from many sources, not just food." She encourages us to acknowledge and feed our myriad hungers, instead of living a life of denial, self-flagellation, dieting. She encourages us to make exercise truly fun (she does African dance!) instead of a penance.
If you've ever put yourself down when looking in the mirror please read this book!
The last chapter was the most inspiring as she imagines how we can begin to live in a different way than society has set out for us. I love this: "You may choose to order a burger instead of a salad simply because you feel like it. Or you may choose to order a salad instead of a burger because you realize that your pleasure in life comes from many sources, not just food." She encourages us to acknowledge and feed our myriad hungers, instead of living a life of denial, self-flagellation, dieting. She encourages us to make exercise truly fun (she does African dance!) instead of a penance.
If you've ever put yourself down when looking in the mirror please read this book!
May 28, 2010
vomititious heteronormative book on anorexia that is promoted as a book for ALL females to read. this book is only applicable to white, middle to upper class, heterosexual females. the author makes dangerous assumptions and has no credible researchers to back up what sh...e is arguing. women of color are a blip in the book. there is no information on lesbian anorectics and a whole chapter on "what men want." she uses the adjective anorexic and a noun for most of the book and transitions to the noun anorectic in the second to last chapter, making her appear even less credible than i already felt. if i could give this book zero stars i would. don't waste your time.
April 9, 2012
I'm pretty sure I hated this. I thought the author was only aware of the struggles of rich white girls. She vaguely mentioned that there were young women of colour who are also beginning to struggle with body image and eating disorders. I just found it poorly written, and it was not anything new that other books haven't handled in a more realistic fashion. I would NOT recommend this.
November 14, 2014
Eh. This was an ok read. She had some interesting points but overall, this left me with a very hopeless, depressed feeling. As a therapist, I also didn't feel she had enough of a focus on mental health as a factor leading to eating disorders, maintaining eating issues. Didn't really add much to this conversation.
June 19, 2013
It was long and repetitive but glad I read it. Truly I don't think this many women hate their bodies but I'm old and could be wrong. The perfectionist connection was interesting. She the writer certainly did her homework.
July 24, 2013
Anyone who has had an eating disorder or is close to someone who did/does should read this.
August 5, 2015
Overall, I thought this book had some interesting insights, but it definitely faltered. I felt that the author was torn between chronicling interviews and doing research, but also trying to create a personal narrative with beautiful prose. The struggle seemed to be one of voice, which distorted the message for me and made it difficult to follow her points. I found myself more interested in the quotes from other researchers than what the author was writing. (My reading this book follows up reading Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution by Laurie Penny, which was a better take on the overarching effects of pressures on women.)
Still, I found some great passages.
p. 30: Beneath that evidence lie more women who are harder to diagnose but who show evidence of wide-spread shame, guilt, self-hate, obsession, and deprivation. This borderline behavior is what I am most committed to talking about in this book. I want you to see it for what it is —not a normal part of being a girl, not an acceptable way of moving through the world, but a destructive pathology that is stripping us of our potential.
p. 34: My generation did not strive for goodness or politeness, blindly ascribe to our parents' values, or muffle our opposition to their rules. In stark contrast, most of us were brazenly vocal, sometimes antagonistic. We were "perfect girls," composing our picture of the perfect female life—well educated, daring, unsentimental, and of course, thin. ... We are not our mothers, not "good girls." we are "perfect girls," obsessed with appearing ideal. WE aren't worried about doing things "right." We are worried about doing things "impeccably."
p. 45: The daughters of baby boomers have driven straight on past equality to dominance when it comes to achievement—academic or otherwise. Unlike our brothers and boyfriends, who settle for being great at certain things and uninterested in others—a style borrowed perhaps from their fathers—we desire, like our mothers, to do it all and do it all near perfectly. Mediocrity is for sissies, and as inheritors of Title IX and "go-girl" feminism, we despise nothing more than weakness (except perhaps fatness, which we equate with weakness).
p. 54: I am looking for third-wave feminism to be a plank that I can smack down over the abyss between my intellect—bodies come in all shapes and sizes, I don't have to be good at everything, there is time—and my behavior—eating neurotically, wanting more all the time, immediately. I don't want to grow bitter, frustrated, and even sick as a result of a superwoman lifestyle. ... We still can't seem to eradicate the idea that a woman must be physically perfect, in addition to being liberated, brilliant funny, stylish, and capable—all effortlessly.
p. 108: Lots of guys in college who hooked up with lots of girls were still known for other things: their premed rigidness, their interest in the Middle East conflict, their brilliant sarcasm. But the girls I knew who hooked up a lot became known mostly for that quality alone. A guy can be a "slut" and a sweetie, a jock, a dreamer, a joker. When a girl is labeled a "slut," the rest of her identity seems to fall away. When that happens, her entire worth gets tied up in her ability to hook up with guys and, therefore, her ability to look beautiful, thin, and desirable, to be fun, to dance on the bar. She doesn't have the opportunity to be taken seriously once she has garnered the "easy" label.
p. 113: Women wade through a cesspool of self-doubt—they replay the event, or what they can remember of it, in their heads and blame themselves for not being more assertive. Eventually they find some anger buried deep inside and try to climb on it to get out of their self-hate.
p. 118: This business of growing up a girl—developing a woman's body and interpreting what it means, its capacity to give pleasure followed by such pain, its vulnerability to pregnancy, to disease, to violation, to self hate—is so incredibly complicated. It feels alike a ten-ton weight is handed to every girl at the age of twelve, and then she is invited to mount the tightrope of adolescence. It is as if we look at these spindly-legged, pony-tailed girls, fresh out of sixth grade, and say, "Now you will be grown. You will be watched. You will fight every day of your life to be respected—by yourself and others. You will have to read between the lines, protect your reputation, be wary of your best friends. You will have myriad hungers. You will need to control these constantly."
p. 122: Girls learn that, while their voices may not be heard, their bodies speak volumes.
p. 134: "Girls feel we have to look good and perform well, not look silly or dumb. I think that's part of the perfectionism—maintaining an image."
p. 141: "Proving that you are hot, worthy, of lust, and necessarily that you seek to provoke lust is still exclusively women's work. It is not enough to be successful, rich, and accomplished."
p. 142: Being smart, outspoken, dedicated, and/or college-bound is potentially powerful but also potentially disempowering in the slick social world of high school. If you are considered tense, for example, you lose power. If you talk too much, become too emotional, or "take things too seriously," you lose power. If you "make a big deal" out of age-old traditions of female objectification, you lose power. As Levy writes, "Raunch culture, then, isn't an entertainment option, it's a litmus test of female uptightness."
p. 150: Being noticed is ordinary, fleeting, and impersonal. Being seen is extraordinary, lasting, and intimate. Being noticed is common and only skin-deep. Being seen is rare and profound. .. Being seen is rarely about physical beauty. ... Being noticed, by contrast, is easy. It is par for the course for most young women, especially young, to be noticed, a deeply engrained ritual of our culture. Men watch. Women are watched.
p. 159: A girl who loves herself is very attractive. If they're convinced, I'm convinced.
p. 166: There is no one-size-fits-all beauty, no perfect girl, no ideal guy. There is only a fit, plain and simple and miraculous.
p. 180: "someday" soothes insecurities, and numbs discomfort, and keeps perfect girls running obediently in the hamster wheel of weight preoccupation. Someday we will be thin. Translation: someday we will be happy, loved, and powerful.
p. 184: True health is "the middle path," along which control is sometimes lost, sometimes won, without much fanfare. There are unexpected and delightful detours along the way. There is no "good" or "bad," only "right now"—tastes, moods, the occasional craving, like different kinds of weather, all welcomed and satisfied without judgment. True health is balance. Balance is freedom.
p. 223: "...I have a tendency to believe that everything comes down to self-discipline—if I fail at something, be it not doing well on an exam or eating too much at a meal, then that represents a breakdown of self-control." In the next breath she admits: "I hate being this way; I dislike that I am associating myself with the superficial, diet-obsessed women I scoff at. I am often shocked and frustrated with myself that, despite being an insightful,, self-aware feminist, I feel bad when I eat a freaking bagel."
p. 233: Perfect girls like to move full steam ahead, climb the ladder of success two rungs at a time, run rather than walk. Perfect girls are planners. Most like to set short-term goals and then take the appropriates steps to reach them as quickly and efficiently as possible. If there is a spot/boy/job at a team/bar/company that we desire, we are usually petty adept at doing whatever it takes. This tendency—to stick to a goal under any and all duress—makes us especially vulnerable to eating disorders.
p. 234: When we young women hit the real world, we aren't accustomed to the idea of climbing the career ladder one rung at a time. We don't plan on paying our dues in dead-end jobs. Perfect girls are impatient; we dream big and fall hard. Efficiency, not resiliency, is our strong suit. We're in the market for fireworks, record breakers, unprecedented success. We are running, full force, without time to consider where the finish line might be.
p. 236: Her life no longer fit into six-month spurts of goal setting, pursuing, and achieving. Her success as a journalist depended on her own efforts, but also on time, the whims of her supervisors, the economy—chance.
...
Maintaining a healthy, steady self-image is based on achievable goals and states of being that are independent of the market or your managers. Sara came to understand that time and patience, not rapid tenacity, were what she needed in order to survive the inevitably rocky post-college period. She had to have faith in her goodness as a well-intentioned, intelligent, and kind person beyond the front-page bylines she had hoped for or the promotions she thought her potential promised. It was not her thinness or her killer commitment that would make her happy, it was her acceptance of the present—albeit confusing, sometimes disappointing, and occasionally boring—moment.
p. 238: "Sometimes there is so much disparity between what young women are told to expect and what actually happens that they get disillusioned. The ones who blame themselves tend to get depressed. If they aren't good at managing their tough feelings, sometimes they get stuck exercising massive amounts of control in order to just keep going, or worst-case scenario, they back off from the ladder altogether and give up the climb. It is all much worse if they grew up seeing themselves as special or precious."
...
Hard work, patience, depersonaliztion, unwavering self-confidence, and resilience are all necessary skills to get to the top. There is no leaping, only radical humility. Turns out we must climb the ladder like mere mortals. This is a deflating realization, but accepting it is ultimately healthy for mind and body, and also can be a great relief.
p. 249: "If you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be."
p. 258: In those moments, it was not her religion textbook or her feminist reader that she most longed for. It was self-acceptance. It was comfort. It was faith in the beauty of her body regardless of its size. These things don't come from the intellect alone. They come from the soul. You can rationalize until you are blue in the face, but you are never going to believe that you are beautiful unless you believe it in the regions below your brain.
...
Spirituality requires that perfect girls stop thinking, planning, judging, and start sensing. It requires that we start listening to the quiet but insistent starving daughter within us— the part that cries and wants and hungers so voraciously when ignored or when fed paltry substitutes for what it craves.
It also requires us to embrace the possibility that the most basic of our needs and desires, the most average of everyday life, will have to feed us. Perhaps true spirituality is found not in our grandparents' tall-steeple religions but in the joy of a walk in the snow on a Sunday afternoon or the warmth of a bowl of split pea soup. Perhaps the very thing we are trying to run from—our ordinariness, the ordinariness of everyday life—is where divinity dwells.
p. 262: The women whom my generation looks up to seem to fly above the messiness of life, their bodies like well-crafted statements of who they are. But any woman who appears to be effortlessly perfect is spending hours a day sweating and grunting in a gym, or undergoing messy cosmetic surgery.
When "real" women try to get to perfection by transcending the messiness of life, they get in trouble. They get sick. They get sad. They get, as Heather did, split in two. They spend so much energy denying their sensible hungers and cravings that their inner starving daughters start asserting themselves in big, aggressive ways. Instead of escalating the mundanities of earthly existence, they become ravaged by them.
p. 269: Ultimately you cannot organize a soul or a life. You cannot achieve well-being. You can only move toward wellness and peace of mind and happiness with a humble, transparent intention. You can only admit your smallness in a large and overwhelming world, and then be surprised by the power of that smallness. You can only see your body for what it is—a miracle of coordination, curves, resiliency, a partner in your life's journey.
p. 282: The fast is pull of angst-inducing memories. Once you've eaten something, you've eaten it. Stop remembering that you've eaten it. Stop evaluating whether it was good or bad that you ate it. Don't reward yourself. Don't chastise yourself. Forget about it. It happened. It's over. No big deal.
There is no measure of a life well lived. You have to create joy and not push away sadness. Don't weigh yourself. The number is irrelevant. How do you feel? Stop being a perfect girl and start enjoying your life's little wonderful things.
p. 283: Quirks can push people head over heels into love. A set of formidable hips can make a man swoon. It is our strangeness, not our sameness, that attracts people to us.
...
You know what is really, powerfully sexy? A sense of humor. A taste for adventure. A healthy glow. Hips to grab on to. Openness. Confidence. Humility. Appetite. Intuition. A girl who makes the world seem bigger and more interesting. A girl who can rap. A loud laugh that comes from her belly. Smart-ass comebacks. Presence. A quick wit. ... A woman who realizes how beautiful she is.
p. 284: Don't worship women who make it all look easy. Seek out mentors who are wise and generous and evolved most of the time and amusingly flawed the rest, women who are honest about the hard work and small and profound rewards—such as getting to know a young woman like you.
p. 287: I am not superwoman. I did not stick to my plan. I won't burn as many calories. I am not even in great shape. But I am not a hypocrite. I am not in pain. I am not in a mental arm-wrestle with myself. I am breathing deeply. I am moving, I am seeing the world around me. I am healthy. I am not perfect, but I am happy. [Describing her stopping during the run after listening to her body.]
Still, I found some great passages.
p. 30: Beneath that evidence lie more women who are harder to diagnose but who show evidence of wide-spread shame, guilt, self-hate, obsession, and deprivation. This borderline behavior is what I am most committed to talking about in this book. I want you to see it for what it is —not a normal part of being a girl, not an acceptable way of moving through the world, but a destructive pathology that is stripping us of our potential.
p. 34: My generation did not strive for goodness or politeness, blindly ascribe to our parents' values, or muffle our opposition to their rules. In stark contrast, most of us were brazenly vocal, sometimes antagonistic. We were "perfect girls," composing our picture of the perfect female life—well educated, daring, unsentimental, and of course, thin. ... We are not our mothers, not "good girls." we are "perfect girls," obsessed with appearing ideal. WE aren't worried about doing things "right." We are worried about doing things "impeccably."
p. 45: The daughters of baby boomers have driven straight on past equality to dominance when it comes to achievement—academic or otherwise. Unlike our brothers and boyfriends, who settle for being great at certain things and uninterested in others—a style borrowed perhaps from their fathers—we desire, like our mothers, to do it all and do it all near perfectly. Mediocrity is for sissies, and as inheritors of Title IX and "go-girl" feminism, we despise nothing more than weakness (except perhaps fatness, which we equate with weakness).
p. 54: I am looking for third-wave feminism to be a plank that I can smack down over the abyss between my intellect—bodies come in all shapes and sizes, I don't have to be good at everything, there is time—and my behavior—eating neurotically, wanting more all the time, immediately. I don't want to grow bitter, frustrated, and even sick as a result of a superwoman lifestyle. ... We still can't seem to eradicate the idea that a woman must be physically perfect, in addition to being liberated, brilliant funny, stylish, and capable—all effortlessly.
p. 108: Lots of guys in college who hooked up with lots of girls were still known for other things: their premed rigidness, their interest in the Middle East conflict, their brilliant sarcasm. But the girls I knew who hooked up a lot became known mostly for that quality alone. A guy can be a "slut" and a sweetie, a jock, a dreamer, a joker. When a girl is labeled a "slut," the rest of her identity seems to fall away. When that happens, her entire worth gets tied up in her ability to hook up with guys and, therefore, her ability to look beautiful, thin, and desirable, to be fun, to dance on the bar. She doesn't have the opportunity to be taken seriously once she has garnered the "easy" label.
p. 113: Women wade through a cesspool of self-doubt—they replay the event, or what they can remember of it, in their heads and blame themselves for not being more assertive. Eventually they find some anger buried deep inside and try to climb on it to get out of their self-hate.
p. 118: This business of growing up a girl—developing a woman's body and interpreting what it means, its capacity to give pleasure followed by such pain, its vulnerability to pregnancy, to disease, to violation, to self hate—is so incredibly complicated. It feels alike a ten-ton weight is handed to every girl at the age of twelve, and then she is invited to mount the tightrope of adolescence. It is as if we look at these spindly-legged, pony-tailed girls, fresh out of sixth grade, and say, "Now you will be grown. You will be watched. You will fight every day of your life to be respected—by yourself and others. You will have to read between the lines, protect your reputation, be wary of your best friends. You will have myriad hungers. You will need to control these constantly."
p. 122: Girls learn that, while their voices may not be heard, their bodies speak volumes.
p. 134: "Girls feel we have to look good and perform well, not look silly or dumb. I think that's part of the perfectionism—maintaining an image."
p. 141: "Proving that you are hot, worthy, of lust, and necessarily that you seek to provoke lust is still exclusively women's work. It is not enough to be successful, rich, and accomplished."
p. 142: Being smart, outspoken, dedicated, and/or college-bound is potentially powerful but also potentially disempowering in the slick social world of high school. If you are considered tense, for example, you lose power. If you talk too much, become too emotional, or "take things too seriously," you lose power. If you "make a big deal" out of age-old traditions of female objectification, you lose power. As Levy writes, "Raunch culture, then, isn't an entertainment option, it's a litmus test of female uptightness."
p. 150: Being noticed is ordinary, fleeting, and impersonal. Being seen is extraordinary, lasting, and intimate. Being noticed is common and only skin-deep. Being seen is rare and profound. .. Being seen is rarely about physical beauty. ... Being noticed, by contrast, is easy. It is par for the course for most young women, especially young, to be noticed, a deeply engrained ritual of our culture. Men watch. Women are watched.
p. 159: A girl who loves herself is very attractive. If they're convinced, I'm convinced.
p. 166: There is no one-size-fits-all beauty, no perfect girl, no ideal guy. There is only a fit, plain and simple and miraculous.
p. 180: "someday" soothes insecurities, and numbs discomfort, and keeps perfect girls running obediently in the hamster wheel of weight preoccupation. Someday we will be thin. Translation: someday we will be happy, loved, and powerful.
p. 184: True health is "the middle path," along which control is sometimes lost, sometimes won, without much fanfare. There are unexpected and delightful detours along the way. There is no "good" or "bad," only "right now"—tastes, moods, the occasional craving, like different kinds of weather, all welcomed and satisfied without judgment. True health is balance. Balance is freedom.
p. 223: "...I have a tendency to believe that everything comes down to self-discipline—if I fail at something, be it not doing well on an exam or eating too much at a meal, then that represents a breakdown of self-control." In the next breath she admits: "I hate being this way; I dislike that I am associating myself with the superficial, diet-obsessed women I scoff at. I am often shocked and frustrated with myself that, despite being an insightful,, self-aware feminist, I feel bad when I eat a freaking bagel."
p. 233: Perfect girls like to move full steam ahead, climb the ladder of success two rungs at a time, run rather than walk. Perfect girls are planners. Most like to set short-term goals and then take the appropriates steps to reach them as quickly and efficiently as possible. If there is a spot/boy/job at a team/bar/company that we desire, we are usually petty adept at doing whatever it takes. This tendency—to stick to a goal under any and all duress—makes us especially vulnerable to eating disorders.
p. 234: When we young women hit the real world, we aren't accustomed to the idea of climbing the career ladder one rung at a time. We don't plan on paying our dues in dead-end jobs. Perfect girls are impatient; we dream big and fall hard. Efficiency, not resiliency, is our strong suit. We're in the market for fireworks, record breakers, unprecedented success. We are running, full force, without time to consider where the finish line might be.
p. 236: Her life no longer fit into six-month spurts of goal setting, pursuing, and achieving. Her success as a journalist depended on her own efforts, but also on time, the whims of her supervisors, the economy—chance.
...
Maintaining a healthy, steady self-image is based on achievable goals and states of being that are independent of the market or your managers. Sara came to understand that time and patience, not rapid tenacity, were what she needed in order to survive the inevitably rocky post-college period. She had to have faith in her goodness as a well-intentioned, intelligent, and kind person beyond the front-page bylines she had hoped for or the promotions she thought her potential promised. It was not her thinness or her killer commitment that would make her happy, it was her acceptance of the present—albeit confusing, sometimes disappointing, and occasionally boring—moment.
p. 238: "Sometimes there is so much disparity between what young women are told to expect and what actually happens that they get disillusioned. The ones who blame themselves tend to get depressed. If they aren't good at managing their tough feelings, sometimes they get stuck exercising massive amounts of control in order to just keep going, or worst-case scenario, they back off from the ladder altogether and give up the climb. It is all much worse if they grew up seeing themselves as special or precious."
...
Hard work, patience, depersonaliztion, unwavering self-confidence, and resilience are all necessary skills to get to the top. There is no leaping, only radical humility. Turns out we must climb the ladder like mere mortals. This is a deflating realization, but accepting it is ultimately healthy for mind and body, and also can be a great relief.
p. 249: "If you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be."
p. 258: In those moments, it was not her religion textbook or her feminist reader that she most longed for. It was self-acceptance. It was comfort. It was faith in the beauty of her body regardless of its size. These things don't come from the intellect alone. They come from the soul. You can rationalize until you are blue in the face, but you are never going to believe that you are beautiful unless you believe it in the regions below your brain.
...
Spirituality requires that perfect girls stop thinking, planning, judging, and start sensing. It requires that we start listening to the quiet but insistent starving daughter within us— the part that cries and wants and hungers so voraciously when ignored or when fed paltry substitutes for what it craves.
It also requires us to embrace the possibility that the most basic of our needs and desires, the most average of everyday life, will have to feed us. Perhaps true spirituality is found not in our grandparents' tall-steeple religions but in the joy of a walk in the snow on a Sunday afternoon or the warmth of a bowl of split pea soup. Perhaps the very thing we are trying to run from—our ordinariness, the ordinariness of everyday life—is where divinity dwells.
p. 262: The women whom my generation looks up to seem to fly above the messiness of life, their bodies like well-crafted statements of who they are. But any woman who appears to be effortlessly perfect is spending hours a day sweating and grunting in a gym, or undergoing messy cosmetic surgery.
When "real" women try to get to perfection by transcending the messiness of life, they get in trouble. They get sick. They get sad. They get, as Heather did, split in two. They spend so much energy denying their sensible hungers and cravings that their inner starving daughters start asserting themselves in big, aggressive ways. Instead of escalating the mundanities of earthly existence, they become ravaged by them.
p. 269: Ultimately you cannot organize a soul or a life. You cannot achieve well-being. You can only move toward wellness and peace of mind and happiness with a humble, transparent intention. You can only admit your smallness in a large and overwhelming world, and then be surprised by the power of that smallness. You can only see your body for what it is—a miracle of coordination, curves, resiliency, a partner in your life's journey.
p. 282: The fast is pull of angst-inducing memories. Once you've eaten something, you've eaten it. Stop remembering that you've eaten it. Stop evaluating whether it was good or bad that you ate it. Don't reward yourself. Don't chastise yourself. Forget about it. It happened. It's over. No big deal.
There is no measure of a life well lived. You have to create joy and not push away sadness. Don't weigh yourself. The number is irrelevant. How do you feel? Stop being a perfect girl and start enjoying your life's little wonderful things.
p. 283: Quirks can push people head over heels into love. A set of formidable hips can make a man swoon. It is our strangeness, not our sameness, that attracts people to us.
...
You know what is really, powerfully sexy? A sense of humor. A taste for adventure. A healthy glow. Hips to grab on to. Openness. Confidence. Humility. Appetite. Intuition. A girl who makes the world seem bigger and more interesting. A girl who can rap. A loud laugh that comes from her belly. Smart-ass comebacks. Presence. A quick wit. ... A woman who realizes how beautiful she is.
p. 284: Don't worship women who make it all look easy. Seek out mentors who are wise and generous and evolved most of the time and amusingly flawed the rest, women who are honest about the hard work and small and profound rewards—such as getting to know a young woman like you.
p. 287: I am not superwoman. I did not stick to my plan. I won't burn as many calories. I am not even in great shape. But I am not a hypocrite. I am not in pain. I am not in a mental arm-wrestle with myself. I am breathing deeply. I am moving, I am seeing the world around me. I am healthy. I am not perfect, but I am happy. [Describing her stopping during the run after listening to her body.]
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 17, 2018
I have a bunch of issues with this book but mainly it's the way she almost suggests that having an eating disorder makes you smarter/better than other people by constantly associating it with perfectionist/type A personalities. You don't have to be smart to have an eating disorder! Having one doesn't make you smart! Not everyone with food issues is a high achieving narcissist. Any part where she talks about hip hop is super white and cringey. It's at its best where she is just doing journalism, reporting other women's experiences and what she found from working with groups. Anytime she brings out that universalizing "we" its unbearable. This book didn't know if it wanted to be a personal account or not - it probably should have stuck to that rather than ascribing the author's views and experiences to every woman with an eating disorder. And even though she starts that book with a preface that she's only focusing on heterosexual women, she really presents a universe where it seems like it would be impossible to have an eating disorder lacking a sexual attraction to men because she puts so much importance on men/women sexual relationships (in the most shallow, early 2000s hook-up culture, which isn't even really a world that existed for the vast majority of people - studies keep showing millennials have the least sex of any generation and do not have one night stands at nearly the rate the elderly like to think we do.) Just a really misguided, disjointed project.
April 21, 2008
Well, I have to say, I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would, plus Martin writes for feministing, my fave feminist blog of all time. (And, since this is going to be wordy, I would recommend it to any female friend, just because the subject matter is SO important and Martin writes well.). I first read an excerpt of it in an issue of Bitch from last summer, and got extremely annoyed when Martin lumped in "hot yoga" as one of the things this new generation of crazily perfectionist girls do as manifestations of their not-quite-full-blown-but-certainly-borderline-disordered-eating. Being a hot yoga teacher, I know from my own experience and those from other women I practice with that, if the owners of the studio and the teachers in it are committed to the authentic practice of yoga (accepting all things, your body included, as they are), then yoga works against the culture of thinness achieved at any cost.
That specific example aside, overall the book was an interesting analysis of body-loathing as our generation (meaning slightly younger than Generation X and Y, I suppose) experiences it. There are some tangents I think she should have skipped; for example, race is not adequately explored in her musings on hip-hop culture, although it is in her discussions of socioeconomic status. On the other hand, I think her exploration of what it meant to have a generation of supermoms raising us who STILL had to do a majority of the housework is incisive and fresh. The father chapter is particularly interesting.
God, this is a long-ass review. My final point, I guess, is not really a criticism per se, because although I wish the book had gone into this in more depth, that it didn't gave me more of a chance to think about my own ideas...maybe it's the yoga, but Martin introduces the idea very early that this drive for perfectionism leaves many talented, smart, motivated young women with emptiness at their core. I immediately thought, "That's because we're lacking in spiritual experiences!", but Martin didn't address that until near the end of the book. I think a lot of what yoga has to offer, as does much of Eastern thinking, practice, and philosophy, is what we lack. At one point Martin talks about a therapist telling her weight-obsessed friend that "you are not your body," but that misses the entire point. Women are a multiplicity of things, certainly, many of which are not visible in the mirror. To say, "I feel fat," however, with the obvious implication that fat = bad, is in fact tantamount to saying, "I feel bad about myself," an ugly sentiment indeed. The parsing and disassociation ("It's not me, it's just my body") makes it even easier for women to mentally segregate, loathe, surgically alter, abuse, and occasionally starve the bodies upon which our earthly existence depends. Instead of denying our critical need to unify mind and body (tellingly, yoga means union in Sanskrit--specifically between the body and mind), the solution lies in compassion, starting first with ourselves. We ARE our bodies, as much as we our brilliant minds, and we need to love our bodies and minds as that--our own precious, impermanent resources in this lonely world.
I'll get off my soapbox now. Read the book.
That specific example aside, overall the book was an interesting analysis of body-loathing as our generation (meaning slightly younger than Generation X and Y, I suppose) experiences it. There are some tangents I think she should have skipped; for example, race is not adequately explored in her musings on hip-hop culture, although it is in her discussions of socioeconomic status. On the other hand, I think her exploration of what it meant to have a generation of supermoms raising us who STILL had to do a majority of the housework is incisive and fresh. The father chapter is particularly interesting.
God, this is a long-ass review. My final point, I guess, is not really a criticism per se, because although I wish the book had gone into this in more depth, that it didn't gave me more of a chance to think about my own ideas...maybe it's the yoga, but Martin introduces the idea very early that this drive for perfectionism leaves many talented, smart, motivated young women with emptiness at their core. I immediately thought, "That's because we're lacking in spiritual experiences!", but Martin didn't address that until near the end of the book. I think a lot of what yoga has to offer, as does much of Eastern thinking, practice, and philosophy, is what we lack. At one point Martin talks about a therapist telling her weight-obsessed friend that "you are not your body," but that misses the entire point. Women are a multiplicity of things, certainly, many of which are not visible in the mirror. To say, "I feel fat," however, with the obvious implication that fat = bad, is in fact tantamount to saying, "I feel bad about myself," an ugly sentiment indeed. The parsing and disassociation ("It's not me, it's just my body") makes it even easier for women to mentally segregate, loathe, surgically alter, abuse, and occasionally starve the bodies upon which our earthly existence depends. Instead of denying our critical need to unify mind and body (tellingly, yoga means union in Sanskrit--specifically between the body and mind), the solution lies in compassion, starting first with ourselves. We ARE our bodies, as much as we our brilliant minds, and we need to love our bodies and minds as that--our own precious, impermanent resources in this lonely world.
I'll get off my soapbox now. Read the book.
December 17, 2019
This book was interesting, but Martin’s “perfect girl” concept is irritating and oversimplified. I’m in recovery from an eating disorder, so this book covers a perspective that I'm already familiar with. Martin doesn’t add much to the pre-existing body of research and feminist theory related to eating disorders. Her writing is pretty but the book really isn't anything special. This book does, however, provide plenty of catchy quotes. If only the entire book was as interesting as its best passages.
What Martin fails to acknowledge is the diversity in the backgrounds and experiences of people with eating disorders. There are plenty of perfectionists with eating disorders, but there’s way more to any complex mental illness than a singular character trait. Martin tries but ultimately fails to address eating disorders beyond the experiences of white, middle class, straight American women. A few anecdotes about women of color don't make up for this. So her perfect girl theory falls flat outside of her own experiences. Not to mention that Martin fails to acknowledge the existence of EDNOS, the most common eating disorder diagnosis, beyond a single mention at the start of the book.
At the end, Martin discusses what she thinks women should do to combat body image issues and disordered eating. It was pretty and sounds great on paper, but if you actually read what she's saying, it’s oversimplified and useless. Case in point: "The past is full of angst inducing memories. Once you've eaten something, you've eaten it. Stop remembering you've eaten it. Stop evaluating whether it was good or bad that you ate it. Don't reward yourself. Don't chastise yourself. Forget about it. It happened. It's over. No big deal." Sweet sentiment, but how does this help anyone who suffers from disordered eating? Actual solutions outside of sweet but overall useless prose would greatly improve this book.
What Martin fails to acknowledge is the diversity in the backgrounds and experiences of people with eating disorders. There are plenty of perfectionists with eating disorders, but there’s way more to any complex mental illness than a singular character trait. Martin tries but ultimately fails to address eating disorders beyond the experiences of white, middle class, straight American women. A few anecdotes about women of color don't make up for this. So her perfect girl theory falls flat outside of her own experiences. Not to mention that Martin fails to acknowledge the existence of EDNOS, the most common eating disorder diagnosis, beyond a single mention at the start of the book.
At the end, Martin discusses what she thinks women should do to combat body image issues and disordered eating. It was pretty and sounds great on paper, but if you actually read what she's saying, it’s oversimplified and useless. Case in point: "The past is full of angst inducing memories. Once you've eaten something, you've eaten it. Stop remembering you've eaten it. Stop evaluating whether it was good or bad that you ate it. Don't reward yourself. Don't chastise yourself. Forget about it. It happened. It's over. No big deal." Sweet sentiment, but how does this help anyone who suffers from disordered eating? Actual solutions outside of sweet but overall useless prose would greatly improve this book.
May 11, 2007
This is one of those feminist books that falls almost into the category of narrative nonfiction: having interviewed more than 100 young women on the topic, Martin analyzes the social factors that go into self-starvation and its many related manifestations.
It's an admirable feat to make a book on such an unhappy topic an enjoyable read, but her analysis, her dynamic writing, her
openness and passion make this so incredibly interesting--instead of just depressing. There's none of the weight of Reviving Ophelia. Rather, there's fun and spunk reminiscent of Female Chauvinist Pigs (which, if you haven't read it, is a terrific romp--Ariel Levy, hard-core journalist, follows around and interviews those involved with Girls Gone Wild, Hooters, Playboy, etc.--and combines her findings with astute social commentary).
Being mostly sedentary, I didn't relate to her chapter on sports--but other than that, I think she really got it exactly right: there are so many places on the spectrum of unhealthy eating, all brought about by a combination of very complicated forces.
Perhaps my favorite chapter has to do with interviewing young women on the upper east side (some of the most privileged in the world) and comparing their responses to those of working class young women in Santa Fe. Their responses were remarkably similar. I'd never thought of it before, but American society tends to think of disordered eating as the province of the white and rich (as proven by numerous studies that present a sample patient and, when told that she's white, responders say she's anorexic; when told that the theoretical woman is black, they say that she's fine).
I got my copy (beautiful, hardcover, new) from the Strand for $12. (On Monday. Today, Friday, I've almost finished the book. That's how good it is.) Oh, Strand, how I do love thee.
It's an admirable feat to make a book on such an unhappy topic an enjoyable read, but her analysis, her dynamic writing, her
openness and passion make this so incredibly interesting--instead of just depressing. There's none of the weight of Reviving Ophelia. Rather, there's fun and spunk reminiscent of Female Chauvinist Pigs (which, if you haven't read it, is a terrific romp--Ariel Levy, hard-core journalist, follows around and interviews those involved with Girls Gone Wild, Hooters, Playboy, etc.--and combines her findings with astute social commentary).
Being mostly sedentary, I didn't relate to her chapter on sports--but other than that, I think she really got it exactly right: there are so many places on the spectrum of unhealthy eating, all brought about by a combination of very complicated forces.
Perhaps my favorite chapter has to do with interviewing young women on the upper east side (some of the most privileged in the world) and comparing their responses to those of working class young women in Santa Fe. Their responses were remarkably similar. I'd never thought of it before, but American society tends to think of disordered eating as the province of the white and rich (as proven by numerous studies that present a sample patient and, when told that she's white, responders say she's anorexic; when told that the theoretical woman is black, they say that she's fine).
I got my copy (beautiful, hardcover, new) from the Strand for $12. (On Monday. Today, Friday, I've almost finished the book. That's how good it is.) Oh, Strand, how I do love thee.
September 9, 2009
I read about anorexia. I think it’s because ages ago when I was a nurse, an anorexic woman was admitted to my floor. She was so thin, it hurt to look at her. That was way before anorexia was widely known as a disease and we had no idea what to do with her or how to help her. How inconceivable that someone would want to starve themselves. The few days she was with us stayed with me over the years and so I’m drawn to books about it.
My latest was Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Striking New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin. Always on the brink of an eating disorder herself, Martin interviewed over 100 women and girls about their views on their bodies and eating. This generation of girls has witnessed their mothers who were feminist overachievers: they worked outside the home, pulled second shifts, and did it with what seemed to be an uncomplaining ease. Their daughters absorbed this well. Add that, along with demands on girls to be smart, thin, athletic, accomplished and beautiful, into the vise that is our cultural beliefs about women, and out pops a young woman with an eating disorder.
While Martin adds little that is new about eating disorders, she does stress that the disease is not just for white upper-class girls anymore. African-American, Latino and Native-American girls have been affected, as well as many boys and middle-aged women. And she does bring the disease into the current generation of young women, where body hatred and obsession with weight are the new rites of passage.
I think moms with girls should read at least one book on anorexia. Other good ones are Naomi Wolf’s Beauty Myth, Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted and Caroline Knapp’s Appetites. Just to be made aware. I asked my post-college aged daughter if she knew any anorexic girls, and of course she new some.
My latest was Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Striking New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin. Always on the brink of an eating disorder herself, Martin interviewed over 100 women and girls about their views on their bodies and eating. This generation of girls has witnessed their mothers who were feminist overachievers: they worked outside the home, pulled second shifts, and did it with what seemed to be an uncomplaining ease. Their daughters absorbed this well. Add that, along with demands on girls to be smart, thin, athletic, accomplished and beautiful, into the vise that is our cultural beliefs about women, and out pops a young woman with an eating disorder.
While Martin adds little that is new about eating disorders, she does stress that the disease is not just for white upper-class girls anymore. African-American, Latino and Native-American girls have been affected, as well as many boys and middle-aged women. And she does bring the disease into the current generation of young women, where body hatred and obsession with weight are the new rites of passage.
I think moms with girls should read at least one book on anorexia. Other good ones are Naomi Wolf’s Beauty Myth, Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted and Caroline Knapp’s Appetites. Just to be made aware. I asked my post-college aged daughter if she knew any anorexic girls, and of course she new some.
February 23, 2012
*Tapping into the hunger for life*
Despite the author being in her mid-twenties---no, *because* the author is in her mid-twenties---this book provides a hard-hitting and authentic look at the struggles of a generation of girls who have been encouraged by others to be anything, yet have pushed themselves to be everything. Filled with the wisdom (and language) that can only be known and passed on by one who has grown up in a culture bursting with eating disorders and food/fitness fanaticism, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters adds valuable insights and approaches to the relentless pursuit of perfection.
Courtney's insights such as "We hunger because we are hungry for the world. We starve because we are overwhelmed by this hunger" are nicely complemented with her (perhaps idealistic yet) keen advice of: "We must reckon with our inner perfect girls, harness their ambition and optimism, and throw out the self-criticism. Teach them how to be quiet and listen, to be comfortable with slowness, to savor a victory. Teach them about the strength and knowledge born of failure, pleasure for pleasure's sake, the inevitability and beauty of imperfection."
Clearly, the drive for perfection---fueled by unhealthy obsessions, impossible standards, and extreme expectations---taunts the current generation of teenagers and young women. Ideally, this drive would be derailed with an awareness that the real sources of hunger and healing go well beyond the realms of food and fitness. But, realistically, we can hope that the author's plea for young women to "stop obsessing about your body [and start] listening to it more" will help some find balance between the drive for unattainable perfection and the journey towards self-acceptance.
Despite the author being in her mid-twenties---no, *because* the author is in her mid-twenties---this book provides a hard-hitting and authentic look at the struggles of a generation of girls who have been encouraged by others to be anything, yet have pushed themselves to be everything. Filled with the wisdom (and language) that can only be known and passed on by one who has grown up in a culture bursting with eating disorders and food/fitness fanaticism, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters adds valuable insights and approaches to the relentless pursuit of perfection.
Courtney's insights such as "We hunger because we are hungry for the world. We starve because we are overwhelmed by this hunger" are nicely complemented with her (perhaps idealistic yet) keen advice of: "We must reckon with our inner perfect girls, harness their ambition and optimism, and throw out the self-criticism. Teach them how to be quiet and listen, to be comfortable with slowness, to savor a victory. Teach them about the strength and knowledge born of failure, pleasure for pleasure's sake, the inevitability and beauty of imperfection."
Clearly, the drive for perfection---fueled by unhealthy obsessions, impossible standards, and extreme expectations---taunts the current generation of teenagers and young women. Ideally, this drive would be derailed with an awareness that the real sources of hunger and healing go well beyond the realms of food and fitness. But, realistically, we can hope that the author's plea for young women to "stop obsessing about your body [and start] listening to it more" will help some find balance between the drive for unattainable perfection and the journey towards self-acceptance.
August 18, 2009
Three and a half stars, really.
It was difficult to separate my own blinding frustration with the issues discussed from the book itself. This is less the author's fault and more reflective of how much I've read up on the topic of body image in past few years. The "perfect girl/starving daughter" metaphor is somewhat overplayed. It's an apt way of describing the internal dichotomy so many young women struggle with in modern times, but, by the eight reference, the repetition became overkill.
A frequent criticism of the book (looking back at other reviews) is that it doesn't offer concrete solutions to reverse to epidemic of eating disorders/negative body issues. I don't necessarily agree. For one, Martin never claims to have all the answers to the problem at hand. Maybe there is no concrete cookie-cutter solution. Later chapters dicuss the importance of supportive community, mentors, "intergenerational" interaction, and spirituality to name just a few. In earlier chapters, Martin also discusses the importance of father/daughter relationships and the need to look outside one's physical self.
I can't say that this book is exceptionally original in terms of content, but the author provides insight into the sometimes paradoxical thinking of third-wave feminists (myself included) who struggle to balance achievement and ambition against a society that constantly demands a level of almost god-like, inhuman perfection. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about "What Men Want" and plan to share it with my male associates.
It was difficult to separate my own blinding frustration with the issues discussed from the book itself. This is less the author's fault and more reflective of how much I've read up on the topic of body image in past few years. The "perfect girl/starving daughter" metaphor is somewhat overplayed. It's an apt way of describing the internal dichotomy so many young women struggle with in modern times, but, by the eight reference, the repetition became overkill.
A frequent criticism of the book (looking back at other reviews) is that it doesn't offer concrete solutions to reverse to epidemic of eating disorders/negative body issues. I don't necessarily agree. For one, Martin never claims to have all the answers to the problem at hand. Maybe there is no concrete cookie-cutter solution. Later chapters dicuss the importance of supportive community, mentors, "intergenerational" interaction, and spirituality to name just a few. In earlier chapters, Martin also discusses the importance of father/daughter relationships and the need to look outside one's physical self.
I can't say that this book is exceptionally original in terms of content, but the author provides insight into the sometimes paradoxical thinking of third-wave feminists (myself included) who struggle to balance achievement and ambition against a society that constantly demands a level of almost god-like, inhuman perfection. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about "What Men Want" and plan to share it with my male associates.
November 13, 2008
I'm trying to read more feminist stuff and started here.
The good: I liked how she talks about a culture of weight obsession, in which girls feed off each other (so to speak) in their attitudes about food and body image.
The bad: I think nearly everyone would accept the premise of this book -- women in our culture have troubling relationships with food and body image -- as a given, yet the majority of the book is given over to proving that.
This reminded me in some ways of Reviving Ophelia -- how it used anecdotes from real girls and women to discuss a larger, societal problem. I wish she'd devoted more of the book to talking about how to actually address the problems -- as it was, it was many chapters of showing how messed up women are about food, then one about what to do about it, and that was pretty thin on actual tangible actions. I did like how she addressed the role of religion and/or spirituality in helping some women cope with their body issues. But I also agree with other reviews here that think she used the lens of perfectionism too heavily when looking at eating disorders -- obviously it's relevant in some cases, but obviously not in all.
The good: I liked how she talks about a culture of weight obsession, in which girls feed off each other (so to speak) in their attitudes about food and body image.
The bad: I think nearly everyone would accept the premise of this book -- women in our culture have troubling relationships with food and body image -- as a given, yet the majority of the book is given over to proving that.
This reminded me in some ways of Reviving Ophelia -- how it used anecdotes from real girls and women to discuss a larger, societal problem. I wish she'd devoted more of the book to talking about how to actually address the problems -- as it was, it was many chapters of showing how messed up women are about food, then one about what to do about it, and that was pretty thin on actual tangible actions. I did like how she addressed the role of religion and/or spirituality in helping some women cope with their body issues. But I also agree with other reviews here that think she used the lens of perfectionism too heavily when looking at eating disorders -- obviously it's relevant in some cases, but obviously not in all.
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