Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - My Body

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

jraspatella's review

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book of essays really resonated with me. I felt myself thinking about past experiences with a more observant lens. To be honest it took me a long time to read this book. I was always interested in its premise, but that niggling of internalized misogyny kept me from pursuing buying my own copy. How could someone as beautiful, who seems to relish in commodifying their own body have anything to say about the female experience when they’ve benefited so strongly from the patriarchy. A women’s worth is so often based on commodifying the parts of herself most palatable to the outside world. We are taught at such a young age that people expect women to be polite, interesting, “lady-like”, but just sexy enough to keep a man interested enough to either give them the opportunity to succeed, or marry them. This felt like a mirror. It doesn’t matter what walk of life we come from, how famous, or how pretty we are; we as women are all united in a world built to take from us.

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themeanfrench's review

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emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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olivialambert97's review

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.5

Rounding up from 3.5 - thanks to Sarah Koppelkam for including this quote in her review because well over a year after she also listened to Ratajkowski read this memoir to her on audiobook, as I did yesterday, I found it helpful in deciphering my thoughts after its finish: Sophie Gilbert in her review in the Atlantic writes, "Ratajkowski doesn’t say much in the book about how women and girls might respond to images of her. That myopia is frustrating, because she’s so astute on the subject of how her body is interpreted by men."

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lettylam's review

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emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.5

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a_love's review

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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morgancleaver's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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geesammy's review against another edition

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reflective sad medium-paced

2.25

I was told this was inspiringly self aware, but I feel it was depressingly self indulgent. Perhaps it’s the difference in generation, in ethnic background or in sense of privilege, but I found many of these stories disturbing in their depiction of a shallow girl with no common sense. How can someone be so self absorbed and have such little self awareness or self worth? It’s baffling and sad; I feel like she wrote this to convince herself and the world that she is a “real person” and not just an image, and yet the only thing she seems to value is her image…

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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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