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Summary: This woman has not recovered
Review: Although this book has some nominal entertainment and educational value, it left me irritated and insulted. Ms. Gottlieb was an eleven year old crying out for affection and attention, but instead conveys her "former self" through her over-achievement as an eleven year old and her mother's inadequacies. Her tone comes across as arrogant and less than believable. This coupled with the seductively posed author photo on the book jacket leaves me wondering if Ms. Gottlieb 'gets it' when it comes to the fact that a woman/girls self-worth should not be wrapped up so closely with Sex-appeal.
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Summary: A book I actually finished
Review: Eventhough I have sons and am well past 11 years old, I really enjoyed this brisk and witty take of growing up,mother-daughter relationships and self image. I like the quick pacing but the ending was really abrupt and I don't know if overcomimg anorexia is really so simple.
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Summary: Amazing look into how anorexia developed in an 11 year old
Review: I loved the way this book was written---not as if an adult was looking back, but as if a child of eleven was actually writing. I felt that I could see very clearly from her perspective how she became anorexic, and how her thinking became so distorted without her realizing it. I did wonder, as I often do when reading books that depict the author's parents so negatively, what the family reaction to this book's publication was! In addition to getting a look at the development of a disease, I was able to see what it must have been like growing up in Beverly Hills, and I am certainly glad I didn't!
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Summary: Rings a bell
Review: I think I've met Lori Gottlieb before. In fact, I think I know her. Actually, she reminds me of how I used to be. I, too, was Anorexic. I was a twelve-year-old straight-A student dealing with the same issues that Lori dealt with. The only difference, of course, is that I was not raised in Beverly Hills -- better known as the body-conscious capital of the world. I enjoyed reading this memoir. Lori was a very funny and clever eleven-year-old girl and I laughed and marveled at her wit. But I also marveled at her keen observation. Yes, women are obsessed with their appearance; I do believe that Anorexia is the manifestation of society's obsession with thinness. Everyone around Lori -- including her neurotic mother -- was constantly dieting and obsessing with make-up and clothes. She kept asking why her mother and other women were allowed to starve themselves and she wasn't. And that was how Lori was able to notice women's preoccupation with beauty and the fact that she was considered "unique" because of her intellect and lack of interest in fashion. I have read tons of books about Anorexia Nervosa, but this memoir was able to provide me with an insight about the illness that I have indeed noticed before, but never thought of it as perhaps one of the most important aspects of the illness. I couldn't help but notice that Lori Gottlieb could be a great sociologist. She is very bright and conscious of the things surrounding her. I strongly suggest that you read this book. It unravels many aspects of Anorexia Nervosa -- aspects that we often take for granted.
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Summary: thought provoking, compelling
Review: I admire this author's willingness to bare her truths, no matter how stark, and her unflinching honesty. I found myself nodding in agreement at our society's obsession with weight and it is easy to see how so many young girls and women buy into the idea that weight is everything. I read in it two sittings and was duly impressed. great first effort.....
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Summary: Excellent Book: Great Story and Read
Review: I was preparing to post a glowing review for Lori Gottlieb's outstanding book when I began reading the previous reviews. I saw that the 24 February 2000 review from the reader in Los Angeles was so accurate and well written that I scrapped mine; no need to say many of the same things twice. I will say, however, that from a man's perspective I found Lori Gottlieb's thoughts as a girl extremely enlightening. At times her thoughts and pressures during adolescence were so different than mine were as a boy, that for me her book is an excellent look into what amounts to another world. The excerpts from the author's diary are analogous to fossilized thoughts and feelings preserved in amber and, as such, offer very important insights for fathers or for others who deal with children. Thank you Lori for giving us a poignant, resonating look into the pressures of being a girl, and for delivering a good share of laughs along the way.
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Summary: Parents of girls - READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Wow, as a former anorexic, I have been hard pressed to find a book that truly captures, in subtle yet profound ways, the pressures that lead to obsessive dieting -- and the hypocrisy of our culture and it's view of women. But this book has accomplished all that and more. At 16 and anorexic, (nine years ago) I felt many of the same feelings and dealt with the same issues as Lori. This book is not only good for girls who have and have not experienced eating disorders, but it's also highly beneficial for parents. While you can't protect your children from society's pressures, you can counterbalance them rather than reinforce them. Let your kids be themselves, and remember that your example sets the stage for their self esteem and the way they love (or hate) their own bodies. Don't make the same mistake that so many others have unknowingly and unwittingly made -- don't bring the outside world's phobias and dysfunctions about weight into your home. Read this book and you'll see why.
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Summary: A MUST-READ for parents of young girls!
Review: A startling look at the progression from complete body-innocence to complete body-consciousness. This book is comprised of Lori's diaries from when she was about 11 years old. When it starts out, she's a pretty normal kid: goofing around, worrying about being liked, and just, basically, being 11. However, Lori was surrounded by women who were constantly telling her they were fat or she was fat or they/she would BECOME fat if they did this or that. As the result of this constant brainwashing (really, that's what it is, you guys), she slowly begins to think real women just don't eat. So, she quits eating too. It was horrifying to watch her mind go through the changes -- one minute she's a happy kid munching on a cookie after school and the next minute, she's in the hospital weighing less than 50 pounds and thinking her thighs are fat. She even believes breathing in air that SMELLS like food is enough to gain weight and her desperation to avoid gaining a single ounce is just gut-wrenching. I have felt that fear and I felt it again when I read this (a sign of good writing, incidentally). But when people tell her to stop dieting, she doesn't understand why since everyone around her is dieting too. Her friends throw away their lunches, her mom eats a few bites of salad for dinner and then sneaks down to the kitchen for cookies later, etc. etc. etc. The only people eating normally are her brother and father, and they're both too oblivious to really see what's going on. One of the scariest parts of this book for me was realizing how many things Lori did when in the throes of anorexia that I do or have done. It's a real wake-up call. I mean, how can I yell at Lori to EAT THE DAMN COOKIE! when I pick all the cheese off my pizza, keep a constant mental tally of the calories I've consumed today, and wouldn't eat a real bowl of ice cream if you paid me? The book really made me aware of the fact my own habits have the potential for really screwing up my kids (when I have some) and that kinda shook me up a bit. Because, in fact, her parents are the ones who really turned Lori into the anorexic she became and they didn't even realize they were doing it. Her mother is not only a terrible influence on Lori's eating habits (Lori picked up a lot of her behaviors FROM her mother), but she's also self-centered and childish. She doesn't give a damn about her daughter -- she's just concerned that having a skeletal child will reflect poorly on her. I wanted to smack her. And her father, though obviously caring, didn't put two-and-two together and tell her the obvious -- YOU ARE THIN and YOUR MOTHER IS JUST CRAZY, IGNORE HER. I went on my first diet in the third grade and it took me about 20 years to realize I look great the way I am. People, we have GOT to do better than that. I wish all parents of little girls would read this book. Incidentally, one reviewer here said the book was totally unbelieveable because at the end Lori looks at herself in the mirror and suddenly recovers. I don't think that's actually what happens. The book ENDS there, but it doesn't say "and that's when I was cured of my anorexia." Of course it's not that simple. And I bet you Lori would probably be the last person ever to say it was. Read this book!
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Summary: A view of anorexia through eleven-year old eyes
Review: Before reading Stick Figure, I didn't kow much about it - I wasn't sure whether this was an actual journal, whether the entries were recreated in order to tell the story or whether it was even a fictionalized account of a real event. Having approached it with some skepticism, therefore, I was tremendously impressed by this view into the thought patterns of an eleven-year old dieter who insists - despite the fact that she weighs less than 60 lbs - that she's fat. And if Gottlieb embellished, edited or fabricated any sections of the diary, I really don't think it detracts from the gripping and important story. A precocious, intelligent girl offered the chance to skip ahead grades - which she does not, preferring instead to establish a social life and friendshiips - the reader gets a clear sense of what affects Lori's thinking about her weight: constant peer pressure, her own mother's eating habits, magazines, diet books and an almost oppressive, surrounding diet culture and so forth. The promise then - as now - was that being thin would make all of your problems go away and you would then become popular and beloved. Already feeling ostracized by being 'unique' - something Lori interprets as pejorative - makes her an ideal candidate for distorted body perception and eating disorders. Despite the fact that this is told by a girl of eleven, there was much in this book that resonates not only in our current times (vs. 1978) but also in my own life. Lori simply cannot see herself through any eyes other than her own - and her self-image is firmly embedded on her psyche even though it has little grounding in reality. I think many people can relate to that type of disconnect, whatever aspect of one's life it may relate to. Some readers here have expressed concern that Lori falls too quickly in and out of anorexia for her story to be believable and that her claim she 'forgot' about these diaries undermines her legitimacy, but I felt quite differently about this book. I found it to be completely understandable that Lori would begin recovery as suddenly as she fell into dieting and that she would, just as suddenly, be able to see herself as others did. I also thought her critiques of her family and Beverly Hils environment to be very insightful and helpful in rounding out her story. I highly recommend this book as an interesting, disturbing protrayal of anorexia, but it is also a story of an individual feeling like a 'stranger in a strange land,' lonely within and without her family and the damage - some of it irreparable - that can be done by such experiences.
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Summary: Alice in Dietland
Review: As a guy reader, I was shocked to learn about the particular rites of passage women have to go through in order to convince themselves and the society around them of their beauty. Growing up, you take it for granted - women must be thin, thin equals desirable, desirable equals thin. Lori made me stop to think about these notions and where they come from, how they get ingrained in our heads. Knowing beforehand the main subject of the book, I was glad to discover that there was more to little Lori than her obsession with calories. Her outlook on life is fresh, often unintentionally ironic and sometimes naively immoral, or to be correct, pre-moral, as children usually are. Like Alice and Holden Caulfield, Lori has a sharp, clear eye for seeing the phoniness and the pretense of the adult world. In that context, I found her complex relations with her straight out of "Dynasty" mother and the slow, painful gravitation away from her particularly well portrayed. Lori made me shudder watching how in her uncompromising quest for the ultimate figure, she starts to dehumanize people, first herself, then her family, than the entire world around her. I was especially moved by the part where she comments on a starving girl she sees on a charity poster, complimenting her on her thinness. It made me feel sorry for her, lost in her mission, oblivious to the world. As the book progresses, Lori fights an increasingly uphill battle with the world of adults in order to pursue her derailed dream and when she loses, it's a good loss. I recommend this book to everyone, it's a thrilling story of an unconventional little girl who dissects the hypocrisy of the world as easily as she calculates the calories of her breakfast.
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