Troubles with body image are not just about white women. It's not just about weight. It's about everything that pulls people down and makes them feel like less than worthy beings. It's about skin color, hair, ethnicity, (dis)ability, fashion, class. And yes, weight. Everyone should read this book just as everyone should love themselves for who they are, not what they're not.

A.k.a. Adios Barbie (1st edition, before Mattel threatened to sue, IIRC), Body Outlaws was one of my favorite nonfiction books in college during my adult-teenage years - when I was learning to love my body and figuring out my own identity in terms of gender expression, sexual orientation and sexuality in gender. It helped, and it was funny as hell at times.

3.5/5

I am currently reading this book for my Body Politics class. It's an amazing collection of essays from women and (2) men about how they feel about their bodies. At this point I would highly recommend it, it has helped me a lot to think about my own body image and how far I have to go before I actually feel good about what I have.

essays,women's studies

Definitely one of my more enjoyable feminist/body image reads. This is a collection of essays written by women of color, lesbians, strippers, and academics. To name a few. All of these are women resisting the societal expectations of the perfect woman. There were several essays that made me face my own unreasonable expectations, and recognize the limits I place on myself and others.

Like any book of essays from a variety of authors, some were stronger than others. And with any group of essays on such a personal topic there were certainly some that I couldn't relate to and others that hit me head on. But all of them were a pleasure to read, and challenged me without beating concepts like a dead horse.

Great book!

While I enjoyed getting a primary account perspective on the late-90's/early 00's body positivity and health at every size movement, I found a great deal of the advice and wisdom offered in this collection to be incredibly troubling given a 2018 body positivity perspective. The obsession of many authors with a somewhat-disguised-but-still-a-diet diet as the answer to their disordered eating troubles screams improper and incomplete treatment. Additionally, one of the male authors included (Chris Godsey) spends the entirety of his 12 page article mansplaining his poor self-esteem and then semi-covertly insulting his wife. The first several articles I read made me hopeful, but the last third of the book generally took me much longer to get through because the authors included simply did not provide decent advice. I would love to see a similar collection filled with writings from contemporary Health At Every Size activists to see how it compares.

Overall: A pretty mixed bag of great, good, decent, bad, and horrible. I thought it was valuable for the perspective, but I won't feel the need to read most of the articles again.