My inter-library loan was taking too darn long, so I hit up Barnes & Nobles Friday night after we’d gone out to dinner with friends and picked up Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.
I literally had trouble putting it down, and found myself reading til about 2 a.m.! I’m about a third of the way through now, and could see myself finishing it by mid-week.
Courtney Martin’s style is so easy, and for someone who is only 25, she writes like a pro about the preoccupation young women today feel towards their bodies.
Instead of being “good girls” like our moms were maybe taught to be, our generation somehow got the notion we need to be “perfect girls,” a third wave of “feminism” where body-loathing is the norm, a now-essential part of being female.
This obsession with perfection often manifests itself in disordered eating — women on the brink of eating disorders who don’t necessarily go all the way there, but live on the cusp — girls live lives of deprivation, obsessiveness, over-exercising, preoccupation with body image, etc.
Kind of an aside here, but does anyone remember that scene in Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan’s character (Cady) visits the house of Rachel McAdam’s Queen Bee character (Regina) for the first time?
Though “the Plastics” are all beautiful and thin, Regina, Gretchen and Karen are standing in the mirror, striking poses and poking at themselves, criticizing the most ridiculous parts of their bodies.
They look over at Cady, who is watching them preen and poke with a look of sheer horror (”what could these girls have to say bad about their perfect plastic bodies?!”) and they ask her what she hates about her own body.
Taken aback, she says that her breath smells bad in the morning and the girls squeal “eeewww” in disgust.
The scene is so telling and speaks so much to what Martin is talking about, the unwritten code of being a self-loathing woman today — Cady’s now the exception to the rule; she likes herself as she is and she doesn’t body bash (in the beginning of the movie, at least — later she becomes consumed with vanity and popularity and all that comes with it).
Anyway, I’ve often thought of my own disordered eating as though I showed up for a scary movie trailer, but after seeing the gruesome scenes, left before I could actually sit through it.
Yea, I lost money on the ticket (years of obsessiveness) … but the refund wasn’t as important as getting the hell out of the theater (getting help, blogging).
I didn’t have it in me; I was able to stop myself before my disordered eating got out of control.
Martin’s book is a reaffirmation of so many thoughts I’ve had over the years; she just put them on paper in her own voice, but otherwise, it’s like listening to myself at times — which makes it a comforting read.
I want to wait til I am finished with the book to say much more, but wanted to see if anyone else was going to be reading it. I know MamaV’s book club is discussing it a chapter at a time.
How about you? Have you read this book?
My inter-library loan was taking too darn long, so I hit up Barnes & Nobles Friday night after we’d gone out to dinner with friends and picked up Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.
I literally had trouble putting it down, and found myself reading til about 2 a.m.! I’m about a third of the way through now, and could see myself finishing it by mid-week.
Courtney Martin’s style is so easy, and for someone who is only 25, she writes like a pro about the preoccupation young women today feel towards their bodies.
Instead of being “good girls” like our moms were maybe taught to be, our generation somehow got the notion we need to be “perfect girls,” a third wave of “feminism” where body-loathing is the norm, a now-essential part of being female.
This obsession with perfection often manifests itself in disordered eating — women on the brink of eating disorders who don’t necessarily go all the way there, but live on the cusp — girls live lives of deprivation, obsessiveness, over-exercising, preoccupation with body image, etc.
Kind of an aside here, but does anyone remember that scene in Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan’s character (Cady) visits the house of Rachel McAdam’s Queen Bee character (Regina) for the first time?
Though “the Plastics” are all beautiful and thin, Regina, Gretchen and Karen are standing in the mirror, striking poses and poking at themselves, criticizing the most ridiculous parts of their bodies.
They look over at Cady, who is watching them preen and poke with a look of sheer horror (”what could these girls have to say bad about their perfect plastic bodies?!”) and they ask her what she hates about her own body.
Taken aback, she says that her breath smells bad in the morning and the girls squeal “eeewww” in disgust.
The scene is so telling and speaks so much to what Martin is talking about, the unwritten code of being a self-loathing woman today — Cady’s now the exception to the rule; she likes herself as she is and she doesn’t body bash (in the beginning of the movie, at least — later she becomes consumed with vanity and popularity and all that comes with it).
Anyway, I’ve often thought of my own disordered eating as though I showed up for a scary movie trailer, but after seeing the gruesome scenes, left before I could actually sit through it.
Yea, I lost money on the ticket (years of obsessiveness) … but the refund wasn’t as important as getting the hell out of the theater (getting help, blogging).
I didn’t have it in me; I was able to stop myself before my disordered eating got out of control.
Martin’s book is a reaffirmation of so many thoughts I’ve had over the years; she just put them on paper in her own voice, but otherwise, it’s like listening to myself at times — which makes it a comforting read.
I want to wait til I am finished with the book to say much more, but wanted to see if anyone else was going to be reading it. I know MamaV’s book club is discussing it a chapter at a time.
How about you? Have you read this book?