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A review by sidodevilleduval
You Are Not a Before Picture: How to Finally Make Peace with Your Body, for Good by Alex Light
fast-paced
2.0
The bits about history didn't really sit right with me because it just perpetuated myths, over-generalised, and didn't cite their sources. It was really reminiscent of a Tiktok historian. There are quite a few examples of this but one is on page 32 where Light says diet culture picked up traction "around the same time that women won the right to vote in many countries" and that it was created to subdue women because "it's hard to smash the patriarchy on an empty stomach" (Harrison). And then cites Christy Harrison and Naomi Wolf who came up with this theory. However, neither Harrison or Wolf are historians. Both are journalists, and Wolf is a known conspiracy theorist with proven examples of spreading misinformation. (The example of "death recorded" should be enough evidence that Naomi Wolf shouldn't be taken as an historical researcher). And there's no actual evidence cited to support this theory. It's all a very circumstantial string of occurances that ignores cultural events and context beyond that of feminism and diet culture.
It was much better when it came to the modern stuff. The author cited verified statistics and published studies and it paid off, it was really interesting. But all of it coming after the history stuff in the first chapter just created a cloud for the rest of the book because I was always aware that misinformation had already made it past the editors so wasn't sure how much I could trust from the rest.
One other criticism is that it says a lot of what's wrong but doesn't really offer enough solutions to balance it. I like it in theory but it just felt surface-level for what it was trying to achieve. It all just felt a bit rushed, like with more research and deeper exploration of the topics I think it would have been a lot better.
The message was great and some parts of the book made really good points. And I will say it had a positive effect as I've now unfollowed Instagram models. But I feel like overall it could have been executed so much better.
It was much better when it came to the modern stuff. The author cited verified statistics and published studies and it paid off, it was really interesting. But all of it coming after the history stuff in the first chapter just created a cloud for the rest of the book because I was always aware that misinformation had already made it past the editors so wasn't sure how much I could trust from the rest.
One other criticism is that it says a lot of what's wrong but doesn't really offer enough solutions to balance it. I like it in theory but it just felt surface-level for what it was trying to achieve. It all just felt a bit rushed, like with more research and deeper exploration of the topics I think it would have been a lot better.
The message was great and some parts of the book made really good points. And I will say it had a positive effect as I've now unfollowed Instagram models. But I feel like overall it could have been executed so much better.