Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - My Body

Honestly I think the book isn’t bad but I just personally didn’t like it. I agree with some of her opinions (Some!!) but I just sadly couldn’t sympathise with her at all. She repeated herself a lot which I did not like to this extent. The only chapter/ essay that I truly loved was ‘K-Spa’.
I longed for a pointe at the end and I think I kindaaa got it. I liked her on the last few pages better because it showed kinda why she wanted to write the book and like the moral of the story but I’m not really fulfilled. I don’t like how ‘not eating-being thin and tiny- smoking cigarettes to stay thin and everything” was just simply put like this in the book without a disclaimer or a “this is not healthy” or sth but maybe that’s the gen z in me talking. I know that the model world is/can be like this but I just wish that she would’ve said sth in the end about it somehow. She is not a role model for me. I also found that I don’t sympathies with her which makes me not like her.
Also I don’t like her mother.

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doodeedoda's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

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nicolecier's review

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emotional inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

4.0

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ejsreads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

very thoughtful and interesting commentary on complicated topics. while the memoir’s contents may look like a contradiction given the nature of the author’s career, it serves as a reminder that two things can be true at once

it was scarily relatable to thoughts most, if not all, women have likely had even though, for most of us, it is rare to live a life adjacent to a wildly famous model like Emrata

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nebraskanwriter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.0

Speechless. I’ll let the quotes speak for themselves….

“I want to calculate my beauty to protect myself, to understand exactly how much power and lovability I have.”

“I liked to tell friends that the French word for model is mannequin. “So,” I’d say, shrugging, “I’m a mannequin for a living.”

“As the number on my scale went down, the number on my checks had been going up. The agency had taken notice.”

“In my early twenties, it had never occurred to me that the women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place. Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over. Facing the reality of dynamics at play would have meant admitting how limited my power really was—how limited any woman’s power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at.”

“The stylist, their assistant, the client or the editor, the other models, and sometimes the photographer will stand right in front of you and wait as you strip. You understand that your body is a means for them to accomplish what they’re here to accomplish: to make an image to sell whatever it is they’re selling. They’re in charge of it now, not you. Now hand it over, they seem to say. Your body is why you’re here and we need it. Now.”

“I look down at my body and it doesn’t feel like my own. It feels like something, but not me. They can look at me all they want, because they’re right; my body is just a tool.”

“The world celebrates and rewards women who are chosen by powerful men.”

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