Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, relevant, a must-read for feminists
Review: Although a challenging read for me at times, this book was full of "aha!" moments. I think Bordo nails it when it comes to how the issues women's size and appearance are portrayed in the media. I recommend this book highly to other feminists and those interested in media literacy.

Rating:
Summary: Brutally honest, insightful, and most challenging read.
Review: Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight" presents a thoroughly researched, well-balanced, detailed and illustrative account of the female postmodern "body politic." Bordo explores myriad concepts of the body juxtaposed against cultural norms and expectations. For Bordo, the body has both natural and cultural meanings, and gender is a social construct defined by men. Anorexia nervosa is simply a "logical" protest reaction against male dominance and the constraints of female sex-role conditioning. No doubt, while women were not chained in the dark shadows of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," they were, indeed, shackled outside it but silenced. I, too, like these women, was manacled and confined inside the cave of male social conditioning and what it meant to be a man. And I did not find kindred spirits there. What finally emerged outside the cave was a man with eyes without a face with his very own protest and autobiographical "Sisyphus and the Struggle Within" written inside the heart on stone. While the body is, indeed, a heavy "unbearable weight," it can be made light and bearable through conscious self-definition and identity, mental and intellectual transcendence. Though it poses great danger, it takes Sisyphean strength and courage to break free from, and revolt against the barriers of dominant social control and gender inequality.

Rating:
Summary: Convincing
Review: The one thing you want to keep in mind when purchasing this book: it's not a light read and it ain't supposed to be. If three syllable words throw you for a loop, stay away. If you feel every fat acceptance book you've read recently has insulted the depth of your intelligence, then read up! At the very least, you can't walk away from this book failing to be convinced that the world at large is at war with our bodies.
Warning: not a feel-good book! You'll be angry and start snapping at your husband, but righteous fury is where change begins.