I picked up Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body mostly because I had the pleasure of meeting the author, Courtney E. Martin, and found her to be a wonderful spokesperson for Generation Y. But, also because despite the fact that I have a son, I’m very aware of how this is affecting young girls. I have a friend whose truly amazing 12 year old daughter is suddenly refusing to eat and has in the past year dropped 10 lbs off her already under 100-lb frame. So I expected to be intrigued, but not necessarily engaged. Until I read it. And I include it here because this is something affecting the brightest young girls and women in our country. The very same young women we want to be our future leaders. But, how can they lead or launch companies if they won’t eat????
“I’ve never had food issues,” I thought as I picked up the book, mentally noting that I’ve been blessed with skinny genes that help me fit into my skinny jeans, and that I have a fairly active lifestyle as a single mom constantly chasing after a young son. I also credited my weight non-issues with the fact that I never eat or crave candy or junk food, etc. and that when stressed I tend to exercise.
Although come to think of it, I don’t eat candy or junk food because the guilt related to the empty calories I would be inhaling so far outweighs the pleasure of chocolate or a really good potato chip, so that it’s never made it worth it. Huh? I’m letting guilt over food ruin the opportunity to savor a Godiva chocolate?! That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? On the times when I do indulge, I confess, I hear the tape running through my head (”it’s o.k., I’ll just add a mile onto my run tomorrow”).
Speaking of exercise: when things get bad, I run. Literally. I put on my running shoes and can pound out five miles everyday for a week, or to the point where my knees hurt and I have on a few occasions dropped enough weight to miss my monthly visitor. (o.k. one of the times I was pregnant, but what does it say about me when I didn’t think missing my period for 3 months was odd enough to take a pregnancy test?)
So, maybe I do have a few issues – although clearly not in the category that Courtney outlines in her book. However, she does mention that there is a rise in over-40 anorexia and bulimia. (although she points out that she is not covering that in her book). This wouldn’t surprise me when I look at my Generation X and Boomer peers racing between meetings and pilates classes with only a salad/no dressing to get them through the day.
I bring my personal issues up, not to worry my mother (who almost everytime she sees me frets if she thinks I’ve lost a pound or two), but to show how I thought I had no issues with food. Yet, it’s so ingrained in our culture that even those of us who supposedly know better and have healthy body images STILL have internalized the issues. And that’s why I think anyone with daughters or who have flirted (or in fact battled) with food issues should pick up this book.
So, here are some quick bullet point thoughts as to why I found this book so engaging:
- The author is a fabulous writer. I read and review hundreds of books in a year, and while I may like a topic and therefore give it a good review, the writing is generally mediocre. Courtney’s writing style surpasses any topic.
- This was not a scientific/medical text about eating disorders. It’s a personal story of her exposure to the diseases some of the younger people interviewed in the book refer to as their friends “Ana” and “Bul.” While the author does not herself suffer from an eating disorder, she admits her own issues but details a startingly huge number of friends who struggled with it, as well as focus groups of high school girls from different classes and cultures. This makes it flow more like a story, rather than a chronicle of a disease.
- She delves into the bigger topics like feminism and how her generation’s rejection of their parent’s view of feminism may also play into eating disorders with her generation. She writes “The second the word feminism escaped my mother’s lips, I had a built-in reason to avoid it like the plague.” Very interesting. Would love to hear more on this topic from Courtney in the future.
- While much of the blame has been heaped on mothers, and some of it well-deserved as we often tend to pass along our own eating issues, she also looks at the roles father’s can play in affecting their daughters’ body image.
The Bottom Line: A good book for young women to read about the issue. And, for those of you who are a bit older than the book’s demographics, the next time you meet with an intern or a young woman, set a good example by actually taking her to lunch and enjoying the meal yourself!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters”
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August 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
A young woman’s body image is so closely tied to her self-esteem that eating disorders are almost inevitable at some point during high school or college. Even when it doesn’t
go to the extreme of anorexia or bulimia, we should still be concerned with serial yo-yo dieters and all the fad diets that liter woman’s magazines. Its not just parents that need to worry about influencing a girl’s body image, its just about everyone. We will not be able to eradicate eating disorders until we make it socially unacceptable to constantly comment on a woman’s weight. While we know it is rude to tell an obsese person that she is fat, many people comment when someone is underweight. Unfortuantely, for many size 0 types the minute they gain two pounds, someone is there to point it out, is only escalates the problem. Young women draw their self – image from what they are told about themselves, as well as cultural images. Anorexia and bulima have only been talked about openly for 30 years, yet these issues have been around a lot longer. I’ve heard of very chic woman who continued to go untreated for bulima until they were past 70 years old. These eating disorders have to been presented as preventable diseases for people to take the issue seriously. By the way, eating disorders are reportedly on rise for the 40+ population and young boys
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Thanks for the insightful comment. I’m so much more aware of these issues and their prevalence since reading the book. And, I do hope there will be more focus on this issue for all ages.