Unbearable Weight

Have you found that all the books you read on eating disorders and body image advance theories that don’t mesh with your own experience? Do the authors of said books make statements that make you feel like they live in an alternate universe? Meet Susan Bordo. She has written a book that finally (oh joy) articulates the theoretical complexity of eating disorders while simultaneously speaking to lived experience. She goes beyond the simplistic it’s-because-we-look-at-too-many-fashion-magazines theory and the overachieving-girl-acts-out theory to get at the ways in which the elements of these theories interact. From psychology to statistics, medical journals to traditional philosophy, art history to Jell-o ads, she gets it all.