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This is the first of three books in a series about eating disorders. It is a classic on the subject.

The book is very emotional about its explanations regarding a link between eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa and our culture and how our culture views and treats women, and how this paradigm has to change if we are ever going to be able to combat these terrible diseases.

The book was very eye-opening and definitely gives the reader food for thought. The author uses scientific studies as well as her own battles with eating and weight gain and dieting, and stories from other women, to make her point - that these diseases are a cultural issue.

It's a quick read - roughly 200 pages. It goes by fast. I would recommend this book to people who are interested in women studies or even culteral studies, or for people who want to know the mental toll that bulimia and anorexia nervosa can have on the human body.

Speaking of women's studies, one thing I do disagree with is that the book does paint these two diseases as female diseases, which of course is true, however there are men who also suffer from these diseases, although it is much less common.

So, in closing, I give it four out of five stars.

This is a profoundly disturbing treatise, superficially about the fashion of women’s bodies—but at its base, the obsession about which Chernin writes is for power over the minds of women and men. Chernin’s approach to this obsession is feminist, to be sure, because she is discussing the seizure of power underlying the focus on size. On the way, however, she uncovers some truths that are equally applicable to diet-obsessed modern men:
* 90% to 98% of dieters eventually gain back all the weight they lost—and more
* Failing leads to feelings of depression and self-loathing over loss of control—emotional states conducive to weight gain, creating a feedback loop
* Samoan women, accepted by their society as beautiful at heavy weights and large sizes, rarely exhibit the hypertension “caused” by lower levels of obesity in women whose societies reject them for being fat

Along the way, Chernin speculates about a number of things that may be related to the current obsession over weight. Chinese foot-binding, for instance, is reeled into the discussion, along with 19th-century corsetry and modern-day plastic surgery: "And if there is a vast conspiracy to make women unhappy with their natural bodies, it is one willingly entered into by women themselves: if hundreds of thousands of women have their breasts enlarged, more will have their breasts reduced, their thighs sucked slimmer and tummies tucked in the endless battle with fat."

Why would women conspire against their own natures? Chernin lays this issue firmly in the woman’s own desire to meet a shifting ideal, and in the urge to retain youth. Pre-pubescent lack of body fat and slender shape is the fashion. In other words, women are trying to be girls at an age when they were non-sexual. (It is in reasoning about why men would *want* girlish women that Chernin is most feminist; she believes men are subtly jealous of the woman’s generative ability, her womb, and thus seek to keep women in a physical state that belies this power.)

Certainly a man is allowed a greater latitude of size by society than are women, as long as that mass is well distributed. Let his belly sag, though, or breasts form, and he will become an object of ridicule no less than the oversize woman. For men, the ideal also seems to be the adolescent form—but for the zenith of male sexuality, post-puberty, when hormones are at their peak. Men are meant to respond to their lustful impulses, says this cultural norm, while women are meant to show their purity by being physically unable to respond to them.

There are, in addition, puritanical impulses that support the fashion for slenderness. Lust and gluttony are both loss-of-control sins. Despite the fashion for prepubescence, the curvaceous, obviously-fertile woman is secretly an occasion of sin for the lusty; her even fatter sister is presumed to be a walking sign of her own gluttony. And even darker sins are concealed by this puritanical reaction: "I don’t think even I could exaggerate the pain these women suffer because they are large. In the face of their obesity our normal standards of humanity vanish and we are possessed by A FORM OF RACIAL REVULSION for the bodies of these women." [Emphasis mine.]

Again and again, Chernin asks us to look at the fat woman, with her “rounded cheeks, plump arms…, broad shoulders,… full thighs, rounded a**… of a woman made that way according to her nature, walking with head high in pride of her body, however it happened to be shaped.” We need, she insists, to see each woman as she is meant to be, ripe and full of promise, not cut her down to some Procrustean ideal.

I believe we also need to get rid of this "tolerated intolerance." We would not condone discrimination on the basis of skin color or any of the other physical expressions of someone's life-style or innate characteristics. Why is it socially acceptable when based on size or body shape?

This thoughtful, powerful, and well-researched study of women`s preoccupation with food and weight is one of the best feminist reads ever. I began the book with expectations of simply enjoying a valid cultural history of food and eating. Soon, however, I could`nt put it down, as I recognized myself and many of my friends and relatives in Chernin`s case histories and literary examples. She captures perfectly the feelings of guilt and low self-esteem that ensue when you don`t stick to a society-prescribed diet, even though that diet may be harming you physically and emotionally. She mentions at length the uneasiness felt by women who are miraculously happy with their bodies, because a culture and media obsessed with willowy, thin figures subtly pressure them to feel uneasy. The structure of the book is set up as a neat balance between real-life studies of anorexia and other weight disorders juxtaposed with cultural and literary views on women and their appetites and figures. The section on Margaret Atwood`s novel "The Edible Woman" and its treatment of the anorexic personality is just one instance where Chernin`s insights amaze you. At the book`s fascinating conclusion, I felt like cheering. It makes one feel proud to be a woman, no matter what size you wear or which body part you dislike. I`m not going to say that it turned my entire self-image around, but it definitely helped set me on a path of self- discovery and liking my physical body beter. That`s why I hope today`s young women will find and read it, too. Oh, and the poem comparing designer jeans to girdles is priceless!