Taegan Lion
From the Contributor: I can’t stress enough how important it is to understand the political forces of patriarchy that are at play while we as women are trying to recover from substance use, eating disorders and systemic oppression. There are too many excellent quotes from this book to list them all, but the following excerpt will give you a great taste of the book: Whatever is deeply, essentially female–the life in a woman’s expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin–is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power.
At least a third of a woman’s life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition–so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an ideal be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not exist on the woman’s body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?
Want to read more reviews of this book or buy it? Check out the links below:
Contributor: Annina Schmid from SubstanceuseCounselling
