The Good Body

Botox, bulimia, breast implants: Eve Ensler, author of the international sensation The Vagina Monologues, is back, this time to rock our view of what it means to have a ?good body.? ?In the 1950s,? Eve writes, girls were ?pretty, perky. They had a blond Clairol wave in their hair. They wore girdles and waist-pinchers. . . . In recent years good girls join the army. They climb the corporate ladder. They go to the gym. . . . They wear painful pointy shoes. They don?t eat too much. They . . . don?t eat at all. They stay perfect. They stay thin. I could never be good.?

The Good Body starts with Eve?s tortured relationship with her own ?post-forties? stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the ?flabby badness? out. As Eve hungrily seeks self-acceptance, she is joined by the voices of women from L. A. to Kabul, whose obsessions are also laid bare: A young Latina candidly critiques her humiliating ?spread,? a stubborn layer of fat that she calls ?a second pair of thighs.? The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed?inch by inch?by her ?perfectionist? husband. An aging magazine executive, still haunted by her mother?s long-ago criticism, describes her desperate pursuit of youth as she relentlessly does sit-ups.

Along the way, Eve also introduces us to women who have found a hard-won peace with their bodies: an African mother who celebrates each individual body as signs of nature?s diversity; an Indian woman who transcends ?treadmill mania? and delights in her plump cheeks and curves; and a veiled Afghani woman who is willing to risk imprisonment for a taste of ice cream. These are just a few of the inspiring stories woven through Eve?s global journey from obsession to enlightenment. Ultimately, these monologues become a personal wake-up call from Eve to love the ?good bodies? we inhabit.


From the Hardcover edition.