Customer Reviews

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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!

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...

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 portrayed in the media. I recommend this book highly to other feminists and those interested in media literacy.

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. If you feel every fat acceptance book you've read recently has insulted the depth of your intelligence, then read up! At the very least, you can't walk away from this book failing to be convinced that the world at large is at war with our bodies.
Warning: not a feel-good book! You'll be angry and start snapping at your husband, but righteous fury is where change begins.

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 well as to maintain the power elite. If the elite, media or otherwise, didn't use impossibly thin, beautiful, made up blonde women to keep them divided and in control, the whole structure would have collapsed long time ago.

Thanks Ms. Bordo for informing me about this, for I've been in darkness for many years.

Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight" presents a thoroughly researched, well-balanced, detailed and illustrative account of the female postmodern "body politic." Bordo explores myriad concepts of the body juxtaposed against cultural norms and expectations. For Bordo, the body has both natural and cultural meanings, and gender is a social construct defined by men. Anorexia nervosa is simply a "logical" protest reaction against male dominance and the constraints of female sex-role conditioning. No doubt, while women were not chained in the dark shadows of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," they were, indeed, shackled outside it but silenced. I, too, like these women, was manacled and confined inside the cave of male social conditioning and what it meant to be a man. And I did not find kindred spirits there. What finally emerged outside the cave was a man with eyes without a face with his very own protest and autobiographical "Sisyphus and the Struggle Within" written inside the heart on stone. While the body is, indeed, a heavy "unbearable weight," it can be made light and bearable through conscious self-definition and identity, mental and intellectual transcendence. Though it poses great danger, it takes Sisyphean strength and courage to break free from, and revolt against the barriers of dominant social control and gender inequality.

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! It's theoretical but easy to understand and applicable to EVERYONE. Very much worth the read.

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 sex dolls. Women who even chose toeedploit themselves know that playing any fraqgmented especially when mindless one dimensional role keeps one from developing and living fully. women who are not pleasing to males , are punishable by males acording to our culture. I wish i could send a comment to the author her self.yes, ask Thomas keith, dividing human qualities into masculine and femine hurt us both. but the feminine is devalueds, sadly things that get mislabled masculine or femine is the problem, this could create one dimensional guys. what if a woman tries and fails to behave male in a way that a tomboy doesnt cover?, by her actions and males feminity is gone, and human wholeness subdued in both. This woman is a female right? is she overlly intelectual with flawed rationality is that why she missed the above fact in her spot in the film "teen sexuality in a culture of confusion"?
What of this and other books that so well describe the male point of view, and only that..a A guy undercover trying to excuse with rhetoric his behavior could not sound much diferent. The point abot the tempress was that the narcistic male externaalizes and or uses violence as a means of control. so obcourse, one would blame the rapist for his choice of actions. I know that a piece of choclate cake is not communicating to me. nor, is a woman liken to cake despite the flawed nonesense excuse she uses in her book. It is the entiled attitude that does make the potential rapist and this is thriving in american culture, still he knows he has a choice based on reward punishment and intrest in the culture.

I think this may be a faux feminist, or someone using her to nuturalize authenic feminism and hamper any progress, and distract for real probles effecting the well being of both boys and girls.

Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight" presents a thoroughly researched, well-balanced, detailed and illustrative account of the female postmodern "body politic." Bordo explores myriad concepts of the body juxtaposed against cultural norms and expectations. For Bordo, the body has both natural and cultural meanings, and gender is a social construct defined by men. Anorexia nervosa is simply a "logical" protest reaction against male dominance and the constraints of female sex-role conditioning. No doubt, while women were not chained in the dark shadows of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," they were, indeed, shackled outside it but silenced. I, too, like these women, was manacled and confined inside the cave of male social conditioning and what it meant to be a man. And I did not find kindred spirits there. What finally emerged outside the cave was a man with eyes without a face with his very own protest and autobiographical "Sisyphus and the Struggle Within" written inside the heart on stone. While the body is, indeed, a heavy "unbearable weight," it can be made light and bearable through conscious self-definition and identity, mental and intellectual transcendence. Though it poses great danger, it takes Sisyphean strength and courage to break free from, and revolt against the barriers of dominant social control and gender inequality.