Some thoughtful thinking

Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image
by Ophira Edut



This is a collection of essays by all sorts of people--thick, thin, brown, pale, female by birth and male by birth.  The male end of the spectrum is a little underrepresented, but I'm not sure if that's a problem, since the body image issues are overrepresented in the female end.  Women just got more to complain about.

Not that complaints are the purpose of the collection--there are a few complaints here and there, but in general, that's not the point.  The point is to tell about your body image problems honestly, with as much insight as you can muster, and if you happen to have found a way to deal with them that you want to share, let's hear it!

All that said, I must admit that a few of the essays don't seem to have anything to do with body image.  There are essays about being fat, thin, and hairy, of course, but also essays about being bisexual.  Is that really a "body" image problem?  There's an essay about a person's reasons for not having premarital sex--where does that fit in?

But they're all short and mostly well-written.  At least a few of them will make you nervous...am you one of the people who look and look away, sorting and discarding members of humanity on the basis of a shallow memory, an unadmitted prejudice, a shudder?

Great collection.