Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

Well, I have to say, I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would, plus Martin writes for feministing, my fave feminist blog of all time. (And, since this is going to be wordy, I would recommend it to any female friend, just because the subject matter is SO important and Martin writes well.). I first read an excerpt of it in an issue of Bitch from last summer, and got extremely annoyed when Martin lumped in “hot yoga” as one of the things this new generation of crazily perfectionist girls do as manifestations of their not-quite-full-blown-but-certainly-borderline-disordered-eating. Being a hot yoga teacher, I know from my own experience and those from other women I practice with that, if the owners of the studio and the teachers in it are committed to the authentic practice of yoga (accepting all things, your body included, as they are), then yoga works against the culture of thinness achieved at any cost.

That specific example aside, overall the book was an interesting analysis of body-loathing as our generation (meaning slightly younger than Generation X and Y, I suppose) experiences it. There are some tangents I think she should have skipped; for example, race is not adequately explored in her musings on hip-hop culture, although it is in her discussions of socioeconomic status. On the other hand, I think her exploration of what it meant to have a generation of supermoms raising us who STILL had to do a majority of the housework is incisive and fresh. The father chapter is particularly interesting.

God, this is a long-ass review. My final point, I guess, is not really a criticism per se, because although I wish the book had gone into this in more depth, that it didn't gave me more of a chance to think about my own ideas...maybe it's the yoga, but Martin introduces the idea very early that this drive for perfectionism leaves many talented, smart, motivated young women with emptiness at their core. I immediately thought, “That's because we're lacking in spiritual experiences!”, but Martin didn't address that until near the end of the book. I think a lot of what yoga has to offer, as does much of Eastern thinking, practice, and philosophy, is what we lack. At one point Martin talks about a therapist telling her weight-obsessed friend that “you are not your body,” but that misses the entire point. Women are a multiplicity of things, certainly, many of which are not visible in the mirror. To say, “I feel fat,” however, with the obvious implication that fat = bad, is in fact tantamount to saying, “I feel bad about myself,” an ugly sentiment indeed. The parsing and disassociation (“It's not me, it's just my body”) makes it even easier for women to mentally segregate, loathe, surgically alter, abuse, and occasionally starve the bodies upon which our earthly existence depends. Instead of denying our critical need to unify mind and body (tellingly, yoga means union in Sanskrit–specifically between the body and mind), the solution lies in compassion, starting first with ourselves. We ARE our bodies, as much as we our brilliant minds, and we need to love our bodies and minds as that–our own precious, impermanent resources in this lonely world.

I'll get off my soapbox now. Read the book.