Customer Reviews

The Good Body

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wow! I had never read Eve Ensler before. This book is a little gem of a look at women and how we view our bodies. The author starts off by saying "while there is a war in Iraq, I am worried about my tummy".

For women who do not have image issues (all 3 of you) this book will seem silly, but for the rest of us who are oh-so conscious of our bodies and especially their faults, this book will hit home.

A series of vignettes from various women, interwoven with Eve Ensler's comments and own views, this book is loaded with insight into how women think.

My only negative. It is way too short.

Eve Ensler is brilliant. Just as I was leaving the library I happened to see her name on a bright red book and immediately picked it up. I think I had half of the book read by the time I got home. (It's not a long book, by any means)
Whether undergoing Botox or living under burkhas, women of all cultures and backgrounds feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in with their particular culture. In The Good Body, Ensler explores Bombay to Beverly Hills. Delivering narratives collected in locker rooms, cell blocks, boardrooms, and bedrooms, Ensler frames their stories with her own personal journey from a self-loathing teenager to a (sometimes) self-accepting adult.
Some of the monologues in The Good Body are based on well-known women like Helen Gurley Brown who, at the age of 80, still does two hundred situps a day. Those monologues, which grew out of a series of conversations with each of these fascinating women, are not recorded interviews, but interpretations of the lives they offered me. Some of the other characters are based on real lives, real stories. Many are invented.
By the end of the book I feel empowered. I feel as if I don't need to continue this way of living where I constantly feel fat. Then I remember I'm living in the real world and unfortunately, size matters.

...you can identify with the theme. A good read if you can't.
Like the Vagina Monologues, the author, through compelling, candid and touching "skits", urges the readers to release the phantasms of shame, guilt, obsession around their body images.
Ensler identifies distorted self-images as more than a trend or epidemic, but as a common attitude among many women, one that often leads to self-hatred and in many cases, self-mutilation.
The Good Body is a cry against the insanity of the perfect ideals to which women compare themselves, a plea to stop the rampant capitalism associated with weight and beauty, and an appeal to women to love themselves.

I suppose 'The Good Body' should stand alone and independent from 'The Vagina Monologues', yet the subjects are intrinsically linked and difficult to seperate.

And this work just isn't as good. Isn't nearly as good. The monologues are a lot more forced and do not form a coherent and textualised whole. It doesn't have the same blend of humour, wit and poignancy of her earlier piece.

I also feel that it needed more diverse experiences of body image across the entirity of the world, considering Ensler opens by saying that she traveled to forty countries to actually obtain information. The monologues of perhaps three non-American women are considered in this work, and as a non-American, it makes it that little bit more inaccessible and insular.

I can't help but want to give anything that actually considers the subject of female body image raving reviews. And this has its moments, particularly with the Indian treadmill lady and the ice cream eating Afghani women. But it is undoubtedly missing something, that little ingredient that could make a work like this incredibly powerful.

Not long ago, on a beautiful fall evening in 2005 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida, we experienced The Good Body, by Eve Ensler. The performance on November 12th was one that will live with us forever. Ensler was superb both in delivery and performance of her masterfully written script.

We had expected the play to be funny and clever, but what we didn't expect was the depth of human emotion and the profundity of Ensler's words. It was like watching literature live. Ensler grabbed every woman in the audience immediately...we all felt the bond of sisterhood as she revealed the nexus of her self-loathing--her stomach. As any woman knows, there is or has been a body part that should be changed, one that is less than our perceived image of perfection. That body part is something that we have focused on, a little while, or maybe all of our lives.

After Ensler's immediate connectivity with the women in the audience she then built a window that revealed much of the joy as well as the suffering that we women have experienced. All of the stories that Ensler constructed were based on the commonality that women share, our bodies.

Ensler had masterfully woven her personal obsession with her stomach into encounters with wise, humorous, and sometimes tragic women from around the globe. The characters that she introduced us to were as famous as Helen Gurley Brown or as unique as Carol whom Ensler meets in a vulva esteem group, or as comforting as Priya from India. Although most of the characters were delightfully funny and allowed us all to laugh at the part of us that is undeniably connected to the struggle for the good body, there was astonishingly dark dialogue, too.

When a few of the deep and wonderful characters reveal a painful core experience, like being rapped by their father or unloved by their critical mother, as a member of the audience you are taken on a journey into the dark recesses of womankind's ugly and painful realities. As a fellow sister my heart ached and I found myself in the place these women had been. When the theatre fell dark at the end of one of these powerful scenes, I felt that the place I was in couldn't be dark enough. There was not enough dark to cover the pain of these women...women just like me.

The play and the book are as funny as they are poignant. If you have a chance to spend an evening with Eve, don't hesitate; it will be an evening that you won't soon forget.

Moxxy2.com

Please visit:[...]

Last week, I listened to the audiobook of Vagina Monologues. I was left feeling, well, scattered. They were all on the same topic but it's hard for me to think about female genital mutilation and then immediately hear an orgasm. It was still great. But this week, I listened to The Good Body on audiobook. I loved it. It did not focus on my vagina, which was great because I'm more than just a vagina. I'm a whole body. And Eve Ensler perfectly depicts stories of bodies. It is told through a personal narrative that makes it more pleasing to listen to. At the end, you've been told a good story, not bits and pieces of many stories.

A long-time fan of the Vagina Monologues, I just HAD to get The Good Body when it came out. Everyone has issues with body image, but no one addresses it quite like Eve Ensler. I just hope that I can see this on stage someday.

Most reviews are quite descriptive, so my comment will be as brief as the book is in itself, but do not be fooled: it contains everything you need to know in order to appreciate what you have been blessed with, even if it includes a few extra pounds here and there or the inevitable wrinkles (of life or otherwise). It is okay to take care of our bodies, trying to live as healthily as possible, as long as nothing becomes an obsession, true path to an unbalanced, unhappy life.

"The Good Body" is a crude, soulful "cri-de-coeur" from a woman mourning the theft of her body by the forces of Western capitalist culture. Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues" turns her attention to her belly, playing various characters who have loathed themselves because of the imperfection of their bellies, breasts and other body parts. She plays heroines - some well-known such as Helen Gurley Brown and Isabella Rosellini - who have internalized the messages of mothers and lovers -- and have in one way or another run from the bodies nature gave them. Other characters - a Hispanic woman worried about her "spread," a woman undergoing yet another liposuctions and tuck at the hands of her plastic surgeon husband - give voice to the inner panic that is (Ensler suggests) the inner core of many women in our society.

The audio CD is well worth hearing to hear Ensler's voice - alternately strident, pleading, shrinking and booming her message. Throughout the book, Ensler weaves her own story of body hatred, striving ever toward the love of body that she portrays as natural in Asian and African cultures.

I found the performance fascinating. I'd like to know more about the real women Ensler plays. Are the details she relates - like breast removals - real, or are they Ensler's own fantasy? It would diminish her story if she invented facts about actual people. It would also help if she spent a little less time in hyper-feministic anti-patriarchal ranting, as through the blame for her self-perception was entirely "out there," in culture's twisted view of bodily perfection. Yet her story, with or without embellishments - is a stark view inside the prison that body image can be for many women.

Came to me in good shape, and so far, so good. Helpful. But then again, I love Eve Ensler. Not as good as The Vagina Monologues, in my opinion, but still clever and insightful.