"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 sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book 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!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)
Unbearable Weight Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Tenth Anniversary Edition
About the Book
Reviews
"This excellent study links the fear of women’s fat with a fear of women’s power and shows that as opportunities for women increase, their bodies dwindle."—New York Times
"Original, stimulating, and witty."—San Francisco Chronicle"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 sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book 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!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
"This is a terrific book!"—Nancy J. Chodorow, author of The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (2001) and The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (UC Press, 1999)
"Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight is a masterpiece of complex and nuanced thinking not only about a significant problem that faces women but about our culture. A very valuable book."—Susan Griffin, author of The Book of Courtesans: A Catalogue of their Virtues
Table of Contents
Foreword: Reading Bordo, by Leslie Heywood
In the Empire of Images: Preface to the
Tenth Anniversary Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Feminism, Western Culture, and
the Body
PART ONE DISCOURSES AND CONCEPTIONS OF THE BODY
Whose Body Is This? Feminism, Medicine, and the
Conceptualization of Eating Disorders
Are Mothers Persons? Reproductive Rights and the
Politics of Subject-ivity
Hunger as Ideology
PART TWO THE SLENDER BODY AND OTHER CULTURAL FORMS
Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the
Crystallization of Culture
The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity
Reading the Slender Body
PART THREE POSTMODERN BODIES
Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender Skepticism
"Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern
Culture
Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies,
Postmodern Resistance
Notes
Index