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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
A cult of thinness envelops us, says Hesse-Biber, and is evidenced by a growing number of eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia, that now affect 1 of every 250 women 13 to 22 years old. Hesse-Biber examines the socioeconomic forces affecting body perception, emphasizing the differences between men's and women's perceptions of their bodies. Most significantly, she explores the importance of body image as a major indicator to women of their worth and identity. Examining the role of the family in delivering society's messages about women as physical objects, she makes the politics of weight personal as she provides therapeutic options for those seeking to overcome weight obsessions, eating disorders, and the mind-body dichotomy that a culture that values minds more than bodies uses for social control and oppression. A good addition to collections concerned with eating disorders. Whitney Scott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A tendentious argument by a feminist sociologist that eating disorders are the product of patriarchal social and economic interests that regard women primarily as wives, mothers, and decorative objects. Hesse-Biber (Sociology/Boston Coll.) surveyed nearly 400 male and female students about their eating habits and attitudes and, over an eight-year period, conducted in-depth interviews of some 60 college-age women, primarly from white middle- and upper- middle-class families, to investigate why so many women see weight as defining their identity. She rejects the idea that eating disorders are a sign of psychopathology, finding instead that the fault lies not in the individual woman but in the messages society sends women. In her view, it is to the benefit of ruling patriarchal interests--the government, corporations, the media, and the traditional family--for women to be obsessed with their own bodies, for then they ``lose control over other important aspects of selfhood that might challenge the status quo.'' Today's cult of thinness, she argues, is comparable to the practice of foot binding in prerevolutionary China and to the wearing of tight corsets in the Victorian era, customs by which male-dominated societies effectively controlled not just the appearance but the behavior of women. Unless social activists change the institutions that have shaped our culture's view that women are defined by their bodies, Hesse-Biber asserts, the cult of thinness that now afflicts primarily upper-middle-class white women in wealthy Western societies will spread to people of color in these countries and to developing nations around the globe. She suggests ways in which women can initiate social change through personal gestures within their own circle of family, friends, and coworkers. Too academic to have wide appeal, but likely to stimulate lively discussion in classes devoted to women's studies. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
A cult of thinness envelops us, says Hesse-Biber, and is evidenced by a growing number of eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia, that now affect 1 of every 250 women 13 to 22 years old. Hesse-Biber examines the socioeconomic forces affecting body perception, emphasizing the differences between men's and women's perceptions of their bodies. Most significantly, she explores the importance of body image as a major indicator to women of their worth and identity. Examining the role of the family in delivering society's messages about women as physical objects, she makes the politics of weight personal as she provides therapeutic options for those seeking to overcome weight obsessions, eating disorders, and the mind-body dichotomy that a culture that values minds more than bodies uses for social control and oppression. A good addition to collections concerned with eating disorders. Whitney Scott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A tendentious argument by a feminist sociologist that eating disorders are the product of patriarchal social and economic interests that regard women primarily as wives, mothers, and decorative objects. Hesse-Biber (Sociology/Boston Coll.) surveyed nearly 400 male and female students about their eating habits and attitudes and, over an eight-year period, conducted in-depth interviews of some 60 college-age women, primarly from white middle- and upper- middle-class families, to investigate why so many women see weight as defining their identity. She rejects the idea that eating disorders are a sign of psychopathology, finding instead that the fault lies not in the individual woman but in the messages society sends women. In her view, it is to the benefit of ruling patriarchal interests--the government, corporations, the media, and the traditional family--for women to be obsessed with their own bodies, for then they ``lose control over other important aspects of selfhood that might challenge the status quo.'' Today's cult of thinness, she argues, is comparable to the practice of foot binding in prerevolutionary China and to the wearing of tight corsets in the Victorian era, customs by which male-dominated societies effectively controlled not just the appearance but the behavior of women. Unless social activists change the institutions that have shaped our culture's view that women are defined by their bodies, Hesse-Biber asserts, the cult of thinness that now afflicts primarily upper-middle-class white women in wealthy Western societies will spread to people of color in these countries and to developing nations around the globe. She suggests ways in which women can initiate social change through personal gestures within their own circle of family, friends, and coworkers. Too academic to have wide appeal, but likely to stimulate lively discussion in classes devoted to women's studies. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
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