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Loading... Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating…by Courtney E. Martin
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Martin brings an intelligent, spot-on, and completely fresh analysis to the issues of eating disorders/disordered eating, body image, and self-esteem in young women. She seamlessly weaves true stories of women and girls she personally knows and/or met and interviewed for the purpose of writing the book with facts, statistics, and quotes from tons of other sources. Her research is meticulous, and the personal stories are interesting and compelling. Martin’s writing is also fantastic. I tore through this nonfiction book faster than I can read a lot of fiction - her writing flowed so well and the content was incredibly fascinating.I absolutely, 100% cannot recommend this book enough. If you are female, and/or if you have a daughter, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters is a MUST-read. Truly. This was one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in a long time. (  )Heatherlee1229 | Feb 10, 2009 |   One of my favorite books of all time. This book speaks for generation X and Y, Martin articulates body image and eating disorder issues from a unique, real perspective that leaves the reader thinking. mamaVISION | Jan 31, 2009 | An interesting look into the lives of young women within our society, from the perspective of a "healthy" (i.e., non-eating-disordered) journalist. Martin speaks of food obsession and the need for perfection. She paints a picture of the all-too-familiar super woman. The book contains thorough interviews with those suffering from eating disorders, and those who have dodged these illnesses but are still deeply affected by self hatred. The feeling of never being "good enough" seems to be universal. I can't say that I agree with everything she had to say. For example, her conclusions about the development of eating disorders were overly simplified ... it didn't seem as though she understood the complexity of the illnesses. I also found that the quality of her writing diminished significantly as the book progressed. I was so annoyed with the chapter on spiritual hunger that I had the urge to tear out the pages and shred them into tiny pieces. The final chapter, which seemed to resemble fantasy more than reality, made me want to scream. Still, the well-written portions of this book are definitely worth reading. (  )solitude1984 | Nov 5, 2007 | This is one of the first few fiction books I read cover to cover. At Warped Tour (a summer concert) it was on a recommended reading list for one of the women's rights/feminist booths. It sounded good, and I borrowed it from the library. It was full of facts, statistics, and explorations of the body image (mostly female) in the modern world. It opened my eyes to my own bad habits, and made me feel a little more normal. (  )RosesAreRed | Sep 16, 2007 | About: The obsession girls have with being thin Pros: Moving, sad, nice use of both interviews and statistics, wonderful resources section. Cons: Last chapter reads like a stream of consciousness laundry list Grade: A- ( )charlierb3 | Jul 12, 2007 | 0.127 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0743287967, Hardcover)"Why does every one of my friends have an eating disorder, or, at the very least, a screwed-up approach to food and fitness?" writes journalist Courtney E. Martin. The new world culture of eating disorders and food and body issues affects virtually all -- not just a rare few -- of today's young women. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues -- a generation told that they could "be anything," who instead heard that they had to "be everything." Driven by a relentless quest for perfection, they are on the verge of a breakdown, exhausted from overexercising, binging, purging, and depriving themselves to attain an unhealthy ideal.An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics:
In Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her exposé reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple -- and often dangerous -- new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness." With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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