1) "Am I Thin Enough Yet?: The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity" by Sharlene Hesse-Biber
A tendentious argument by a feminist sociologist that eating disorders are the product of patriarchal social and economic interests that regard women primarily as wives, mothers, and decorative objects. Hesse-Biber (Sociology/Boston Coll.) surveyed nearly 400 male and female students about their eating habits and attitudes and, over an eight-year period, conducted in-depth interviews of some 60 college-age women, primarly from white middle- and upper- middle-class families, to investigate why so many women see weight as defining their identity. She rejects the idea that eating disorders are a sign of psychopathology, finding instead that the fault lies not in the individual woman but in the messages society sends women. In her view, it is to the benefit of ruling patriarchal interests--the government, corporations, the media, and the traditional family--for women to be obsessed with their own bodies, for then they ``lose control over other important aspects of selfhood that might challenge the status quo.'' Today's cult of thinness, she argues, is comparable to the practice of foot binding in prerevolutionary China and to the wearing of tight corsets in the Victorian era, customs by which male-dominated societies effectively controlled not just the appearance but the behavior of women. Unless social activists change the institutions that have shaped our culture's view that women are defined by their bodies, Hesse-Biber asserts, the cult of thinness that now afflicts primarily upper-middle-class white women in wealthy Western societies will spread to people of color in these countries and to developing nations around the globe. She suggests ways in which women can initiate social change through personal gestures within their own circle of family, friends, and coworkers. Too academic to have wide appeal, but likely to stimulate lively discussion in classes devoted to women's studies.
2) "Looks" by Madeleine George
Even though Meghan is fat and Aimee is thin, they have a lot in common: Both use food to cauterize pain and both feel deeply wronged by the same girl. Together, they seek revenge. Meghan’s not just fat—she’s vast, enormous. Silently, she navigates Valley High’s hallways like an unreadable ocean liner. In contrast, Aimee darts from class to class, flinty, fierce and guarded. She’s hound-dog skinny, with sharp bones protruding at her shoulders and knees. George extracts adolescent fears and coping mechanisms with surgical precision. Her startling emotional and physical portraits leave readers captivated. Teens will instantly understand why Meghan and Aimee seek invisibility: When unseen, one’s far less likely to be hurt or exposed. Readers living with eating disorders will find unflinching accounts of binges and starvation as well. Luminous language places teens inside Meghan’s and Aimee’s struggling minds and bodies. (Fiction. 14 & up)
3) "Squashed" by Joan Bauer
4) "The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin" by Josh Berk
5) "Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty" by Nancy L. Etcoff
Is beauty truth? Skin deep? A cultural relative? All of these possibilities and more are probed in this scholarly disquisition on the nature of beauty by a Harvard Medical School psychologist. The bottom line is that the idea of beauty is biologically based, and it’s all about sex. Across all cultures (and many species), the survival of one’s genes is dependent on choosing a partner who is fit—and looks it: a male who can provide superior sperm or a potential mama who can and will do well in the caretaking business. For men, the unbeatable combination in a female may be youthful looks, shining hair, pale unblemished cheeks that can blush with ease, up-pointing, rounded breasts, and an hourglass figure—all part of a gestalt read as nubile and not already saddled with offspring. If the face is also symmetrical, and does not deviate too far from average, it may be judged beautiful and complete the formula for the ideal mate. Rather than support one formula over another for ideal beauty, Etcoff says rhat their very existence points to the high regard cultures have paid to beauty. And pay they do: with surgery, scarification, tattoos, cosmetics, nose rings, earrings, and the rest. Indeed, “the rest” forms a sizable subtext of the book as Etcoff reviews the trends for body shaping, implants, wigs, crinolines, high heels, perfumes, and all manner of artful dodges designed to make the deceiver irresistible. How those trends play out in today’s world of maxi-thin, maxi-tall runway models, anorexic teenagers, and adults obsessed with obesity also come up for discussion. In the end Etcoff wisely suggests that to focus on beauty and to want to attain it is not a sin; we should relax and enjoy it as part of our genetic heritage. But perhaps even more wisely, she notes that that is not all there is to beauty. She ends with a comforting anecdote about George Eliot, whom Henry James described “magnificently ugly.”
6) "Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting" by Gina Kolata
A dose of reality for would-be dieters, laced with a dash of history, science and sociology.
New York Times science writer Kolata (Ultimate Fitness, 2003, etc.) followed participants in a two-year study at the University of Pennsylvania that compared the Atkins low-carbohydrate diet with the LEARN (Lifestyle, Exercise, Attitudes, Relationships, Nutrition) low-calorie diet. To put the study in perspective, she goes back as far as the 19th century to recount various dieting fads: eating soap, chalk or pickles, drinking camphor tea, taking ipecac to induce vomiting, chewing food 100 times a minute. Kolata also takes a critical look at society’s changing standards of beauty, from hefty Lillian Russell to svelte Jennifer Aniston, and she presents the findings of nutrition and obesity researchers in the last half-century. She sat in on the Penn study participants’ group sessions and here lets them tell in their own words of their hopes and desires, progress, setbacks and problems. At the study’s end in 2006, no miracles had occurred. The reality, Kolata reports, is that no matter what the diet and how hard fat people try, most will not lose a lot of weight and keep it off for a long time. Many will keep trying, though, because being fat in America today is difficult. An epilogue suggests that researchers may have been looking for answers to the obesity epidemic in the wrong places. Those who call it a medical disaster may be alarmists, Kolata concludes; perhaps what has been pushing up the nation’s average weights is better health.
Offers many insights into the world of obesity research and the minds of dieters, but provides small comfort for anyone hoping to discover the fountain of thinness.
7) "Fat Girl: A True Story" by Judith Moore
Grim exploration of the author’s wretched childhood and consequent lifelong relationship with food.
Moore (Never Eat Your Heart Out, 1996) had it rough as a girl. Abandoned by her father at age three-and-a-half, she was left to the mercy of a vicious, violent mother and a possibly sociopathic grandmother. These loveless formative years had a lasting impact: “I hate myself. I have almost always hated myself.” After this introduction and a long consideration of her heavy, adult body and its impact on her life, Moore begins piecing together her past. Prominently featured are the parents who quickly divorced, resulting in long stretches of loneliness for Moore in Oklahoma and New York City. Self-pity might seem all but unavoidable in discussing such circumstances, but the tone here, rather than confessional or exculpatory, has the ring of the analytical. As the author relates the trials she endured—just how fat she was, how her clothing fit, how she started each school year scanning the schoolroom for a classmate heavier than she—the episodes come together to make up a work that could be an anthropological study of the habits of obese children, or a psychological study of the effect of lovelessness on a child’s development. Moore is matter-of-fact in describing childhood beatings; nor does she spare herself, confessing childhood misdeeds that included entering the homes of adults she admired and repeatedly raiding their pantries. Her greatest and most constant love is, of course, food. Here, she offers pages of unctuous descriptions of the texture of a cheeseburger, the composition of a dinner party menu, or the southern-fried feasts she imagines her father devouring as a young man.
Moore warns the reader not to expect a triumphant ending, and she’s true to her word, though her book is strongly written and starkly compelling to the end.
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