"Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body--weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more--in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape--finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"--Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bordo explores women's obsessions with appearance, their struggles to control food and hunger, and the pressures brought on by a society that worships the ideal female figure.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
In dense, challenging, subtly argued philosophical essays, Bordo (Philosophy/LeMoyne College; The Flight to Objectivity, 1987- -not reviewed) offers a postmodern, poststructuralist feminist interpretation of the female body as a cultural construction in Western society, emphasizing eating disorders, reproductive issues, and the philosophical background. Many of the problems and ideas of contemporary Western society, says Bordo, derive from the ineluctable mind/body dualism of Plato, restated by Descartes. From the viewpoint of feminist theory (of which the author offers a useful history and critique), women have been identified with the body, which itself has been characterized as an alien, instinctual, threatening, passive, and false self in which the true self--the active and manly mind/soul- -is confined. In occasionally repetitive pieces--some a decade old, some revised from lectures--carrying titles like ``Are Mothers Persons?,'' ``Reading the Slender Body,'' and ``Material Girl,'' Bordo demonstrates how this identification is deployed in law, medicine, literature, art, popular culture, and, especially, advertising, which she perceptively decodes by showing how the most trivial detail (men eating hearty meals, women consuming bite-size candies) reveal cultural values and even pathologies. Following Foucault's archaeological technique, Bordo shows how the female body has migrated from nature to culture, where it can be controlled through dieting and altered through surgery--and where women are perpetually at war with it. A cerebral introduction to liberal feminist thinking that's humanized by the author's anecdotes of her own experience as a female body (e.g., confessing to the delights of making stuffed cabbage) and that demonstrates what it advocates: ``What the body does is immaterial, so long as the imagination is free.'' (Fifty- five b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Unbearable Weight is a scholarly yet accessible look at the historical and current representation of women in history and in popular culture. It is an excellent look at society's objectification of the female body and the problems that can arise for women because of this objectification.
This book shines not so much as a linear collection of essays but as a reference for people who wish to study the marriage between feminism, western society, and its concentration on the female body. It has helped me to understand the media's role in my relationship with my body and in the amount of control that I have over it. "Unbearable Weight" has also been a great help in my research on this subject.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand Western Cultures objectification of women's bodies through a feminist filter.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body -- weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia and much more -- in a way that makes our current social landscape make sense -- finally! This is a great book not just for academics but for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as "sinful" and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Susan Bordo doesn't miss a beat in this work. Every sentence has a purpose and every paragraph is filled with valuable insight into the world of contemporary female bodies. This is a practical book for the curious consumer and the student of feminism alike. Her ideas about post-modernism are challenging and abstract, but reading Bordo will most likely open up a new world for you. It did for me and this masterpiece has become one of my all-time favorites. Best Wishes...
Most Recent Customer Reviews
highly recommended-life changing!
This is my absolute favorite book on weight. It really opens your eyes and is so worth the read. I want to give it to everyone I know! Read more
Published 3 months ago by shopaholic_online
gender roles opress female more, since she is encouraged to be a...
It is the current gender roles that contribute to women being rape out of entertainment and control, domestic violence and pressure in media for women be submissive housewives, or... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Truth sayer
I feels as though apathy is setting in. (oxymoron?)
I would say that this book is written from an academic perspective. I could see it being read in an Intro. to Femnist Theory course. That being said I did like this book. Read more
Published on April 25, 2008 by Flannery
This book was earthshattering!
The first time I read Ms. Bordo's book, I was so into it that I didn't get enough sleep that night. This book tells us the brainwashing media and society use to control women as... Read more
Published on April 24, 2005 by La Reyna
Convincing
The one thing you want to keep in mind when purchasing this book: it's not a light read and it ain't supposed to be. If three syllable words throw you for a loop, stay away. Read more
Published on February 17, 2003 by John M. Herron
Brilliant, relevant, a must-read for feminists
Although a challenging read for me at times, this book was full of "aha!" moments. I think Bordo nails it when it comes to how the issues women's size and appearance are... Read more
Published on August 29, 2002
Brutally honest, insightful, and most challenging read.
Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight" presents a thoroughly researched, well-balanced, detailed and illustrative account of the female postmodern "body politic. Read more
Published on July 27, 2002 by Billy Anthony Moore
Brutally honest, insightful, and most challenging read.
Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight" presents a thoroughly researched, well-balanced, detailed and illustrative account of the female postmodern "body politic. Read more
Published on July 27, 2002 by Billy Anthony Moore
OVERWEIGHT, INTELLECTUALLY THAT IS.
Seemingly a random collection of personally motivated opinion, quotation, and "I don't know whut all!" (Shades of Herb Schriner. Read more
Published on June 25, 2002 by "lalo"
See my review of "Twilight Zones," also by Susan Bordo
Summary:
2/3 good (on body images, eating disorders)
1/3 bad (a terrible, god-awful essay on the purported debate in feminist philosophy)
Published on February 9, 2000 by "tksc"
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
By the 1983 meetings of the New York Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia, palpable dissatisfaction was evident-largely among female clinicians-over the absence of any theoretical focus on gender issues. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
forced medical treatment, female hunger, gender skepticism, fasting girls, binary frame, female appetite, obstetrical intervention, postmodern bodies, hungry self, postmodern subjects, reproductive control Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African American, Supreme Court, Open Your Heart, Anita Hill, Betty Crocker, Kim Chernin, New York, Are Mothers Persons, Virginia Slims, Aimee Liu, Central Park, Donna Haraway, Material Girl, Susie Orbach, United States, Angela Carder, Ellen West, Hilde Bruch, Jane Flax, Reading the Slender Body, Desiree Washington, Hillary Clinton, James Bopp, Jean Grimshaw, John Fiske New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
By the 1983 meetings of the New York Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia, palpable dissatisfaction was evident-largely among female clinicians-over the absence of any theoretical focus on gender issues. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
forced medical treatment, female hunger, gender skepticism, fasting girls, binary frame, female appetite, obstetrical intervention, postmodern bodies, hungry self, postmodern subjects, reproductive control Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African American, Supreme Court, Open Your Heart, Anita Hill, Betty Crocker, Kim Chernin, New York, Are Mothers Persons, Virginia Slims, Aimee Liu, Central Park, Donna Haraway, Material Girl, Susie Orbach, United States, Angela Carder, Ellen West, Hilde Bruch, Jane Flax, Reading the Slender Body, Desiree Washington, Hillary Clinton, James Bopp, Jean Grimshaw, John Fiske New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
See all 100 books this book cites
100
books
cite this book:
See all 100 books citing this book
- The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness by Kim Chernin on 6 pages
- Mermaid and the Minotaur by Dorothy Dinnerstein on 4 pages
- Female Malady by Elaine Showalter on 4 pages
- Treating and Overcoming Anorexia Nervosa by Steven Levenkron on 4 pages
- The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity by Kim Chernin on 4 pages
See all 100 books this book cites
- Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality by Gail Weiss on 4 pages
- Revealing Male Bodies by Nancy Tuana on 4 pages
- The Diet Myth: Why America's Obsessions with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health by Paul Campos in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health by Paul Campos in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted by Polly Young-Eisendrath in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 100 books citing this book
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