Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image (Live Girls) [Paperback]

Ophira Edut (Editor), Rebecca Walker (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2004 | Series: Live Girls

Pick up a magazine, turn on the TV, and you'll find few women who haven't been fried, dyed, plucked, or tucked. In short, you'll see no body outlaws. The writers in this groundbreaking anthology reveal a world where bodies come in all their many-splendored shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. In doing so, they expand the national dialogue on body image to include race, ethnicity, sexuality, and power—issues that, while often overlooked, are intimately linked to how women feel about their bodies. Body Outlaws offers stories by those who have chosen to ignore, subvert, or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies. In a culture where plastic surgery has become nearly as routine as a root canal, this expanded and updated edition of fresh and incisive commentary challenges the media’s standard notions of beauty with honesty and humor. Included are several new essays outlining the latest trends in the beauty industry such as botox, plastic surgery, and exercise bulimia, as well as a fascinating analysis of how men are affected by these same rigors, a thorough resource section, and a curriculum guide.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The breezy, irreverent essays in Adios, Barbie are a welcome antidote to the narrow cultural consciousness the tiny doll has fostered for more than 40 years. While thousands of little girls worship Barbie's plasticine perfection, those who wind up dissatisfied with the message she sends--be white, be skinny, be stacked, be pretty, and then you'll be loved--can tell you how a toy skews body image in the real world. Among whites talking trash about blacks and upwardly mobile black folks, notes Erin J. Aubry, big butts are suspect--"low-class and ghettoish," the antithesis of Barbie's tightly tucked derriere. Yet on good days, Aubry applauds her ample proportions, for "unlike hair or skin, the butt is stubborn, immutable--it can't be hot-combed or straightened or bleached into submission. It does not assimilate; it never took a slave name."

In "Fishnets, Feather Boas, and Fat," Nomy Lam--a 250-pound, 22-year-old disabled woman--and friends elbow their way to the front of a determinedly different club, "dancing like fiends toward revolution." Lee Damsky tells us why her mother's model of scientific prowess took a dusty third-place to big-screen images of "beauty and femininity [that] seem to offer me absolute power rivaled only by a fascist dictatorship." Because the various writers gathered together here are young, their conceits and world-views are sometimes annoyingly unexamined; by the same token, though, their energy, heckling, and bone-deep assurance make large and pleasing dents in mainstream assumptions. --Francesca Coltrera --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Edut, founder and publisher of the magazine HUES (Hear Us Emerging Sisters), has assembled a collection of the freshest, hippest writers ever to slam Mattel's Barbie doll and speak up for the beauty of the un-blonde, the un-tall and the un-anorexic. Addressing everything you always wanted to know about body image, from leg hair to transsexuals and African American women's posteriors, the more than 25 contributors present a spectrum of attitudes toward the female body. Although a few of the essays are weak when compared to the book's best pieces, the volume as a whole is a step forward in the discussion of how feminine attractiveness is viewed in American society, concluding that women must seek their own definition of beauty in order to gain a sense of self-acceptance. Essays such as Susan Jane Gilman's "Klaus Barbie, and Other Dolls I'd Like to See" and Graciela Rodriguez's "Breaking the Model" provide insight into the challenges of young women who grew up feeling as if they had to compete with the pert and impossibly perfect Barbie. Other pieces, such as "My Jewish Nose" by Lisa Jervis and "My Brown Face" by Mira Jacob, illuminate the obstacles in trying to emulate a Caucasian appearance. Every writer in this splendid collection raises a different issue, yet the essays address the same theme and, cumulatively, make for compelling and important reading.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; 2nd edition (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580051081
• ISBN-13: 978-1580051088
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #400,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Experimental Psychology

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Empowering.... to a certain extent January 17, 2005

By J. A. Brown

Format:Paperback

I read a lot of "woman-centric" books, and, while this is certainly a worthy project as well as a generally interesting book, it doesn't quite measure up to essay collections such as The Bitch in the House or Old Wives' Tales. (I would like to be able to give it three and a half stars, but rounded it up to four.) The authors of these essays are extremely diverse racially, ethnically and in their backgrounds and lifestyles. For this reason alone, it is an important read, because it provides valuable cultural insight into the "beauty myths" surrounding demographics other than middle-class white women.

One of the essays I enjoyed most was "The Butt: Its Politics, Its Profanity, Its Power" by Erin J. Aubry, a funny and articulate examination of the important and often culturally-loaded role of the butt in African-American (and "white" American) culture. There are, however, a wealth of other essays, that, as another reviewer pointed out, seem to repeat themselves--women hating their bodies from childhood and the ensuing struggles. The variation of this theme becomes less powerful after reading it over and over again. This concept is one that is almost "played out", to a certain extent, in that it has already been discussed and dealt with, even in mainstream media. While undoubtedly a real problem with negative consequences, if you are familiar with these themes, it doesn't make for groundbreaking reading.

Additionally, while there are a few essays (such as the very interesting "Strip" by Diana Courvant) that allow for necessary complexity and, to a certain extent, uncertainty regarding the issue of body image, there are a few that I found a bit too judgmental in the opposite direction. That is, there isn't always an acceptance of *choice*--an admission that it's okay for women to want to wear make-up or high heels if they want to, just because they like the way it looks, not because it's dictated to them by society. In other words, whether a woman wears sweatpants or haute couture, her attitude towards herself could be reverent or ashamed, or an awkward space in between; a woman has a right to define her identity as she sees fit for herself, not as EITHER a painted, smooth, hairless Barbie OR a barefaced, unadorned, utilitarian womyn.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book. June 16, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This is a collection of articulate, very personal, first-person accounts of some (diverse!) young women and their bodies: their hair, their skin, their muscle, their fat, their immune systems...you get the idea. My favorites include a black woman on the suspicions her "healthy" diet raises, a nice mile-long trek in the shoes of a woman with severe allergies, and the "Klaus Barbie" essay, which may be worth the price of the whole thing. I thought all the contributions were enlightening, though some are funny, some angry, some sober, and some pretty devasting. Cheers to the girls, though: they always come out on top. Obviously not the sociological, serious stuff here, but we need the straight-up story-telling as well. You'll find something in here you relate to--and probably where you don't expect it.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Body Outlaws December 11, 2000

By Seal Press

Format:Paperback

"Ophira Edut is one of those renaissance kinda gals who causes you to wonder what you've been doing with all your spare time. The founding publisher of HUES (Hear Us Emerging Sisters) magazine, a web designer, illustrator, writer and lecturer, she has been creating public space for women and girls to raise their voices and be heard for years. All this, and she's still in her 20s. With Body Outlaws, Edut has brought together 26 different women's voices to collectively challenge unrealistic mainstream mythologies of beauty and body image. Body Outlaws is a republication of Edut's first book Adios Barbie, with the addition of two new chapters and a slightly revised introduction...

I don't think that I would be amiss in surmising that as women/girls, we each have body image issues. Obsessions that evolve out of our own human body's failure to measure up to unrealistic lifestyles and standards of beauty that surround us. The articles in Body Outlaws deal with all these insecurities and misgivings with a refreshingly honest approach. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the articles that Edut has collected, is the spectrum of body issues that they address. Not focusing on the traditional obsession with weight alone, Edut's contributors speak on skin, noses, hair, lips, butts and the like.

...The writers in Body Outlaws are unabashedly frank, willing to reveal their own complicated "-isms" in their privileging of qualities of "the other" over their own. The book is worth the investment for Nomy Lamm's piece alone. Her honest and witty style always charm the pants off me. Here she addresses the issue of actively engaging in beauty and enjoying and celebrating your own sense of style and artifice rather than pretending that looks don't matter. The two new articles -- one by Christy Damio on losing her eyesight at age 13, and the other on being a plus-sized model, by Kate Dillon - are excellent additions to the anthology.

Body Outlaws is up there on the list of books that I wish someone had given me when I was 13 years old to help me deconstruct all of the negativity that I was beginning to stockpile about my relationship to my body. To that end, it is a book I intend to pass on to every young woman I encounter. As a woman in her mid-twenties, its strength is not lost on me and it is a welcome addition to my library. So head to your favourite neighbourhood bookstore or online vendor and get yourself a copy. With the variety of voices and perspectives represented within this collection you will be sure to find something that resonates." --Emira Mears can be found at Soapbox Girls.