Books and Movies About Body Image

The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye is the story of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl who is inundated with Hollywood's images of beauty. Pecola becomes convinced that being beautiful will solve the many problems in her life, and she begins to wish for the impossible — to become the White beauty standard. She longs for blue eyes. Morrison heartbreakingly describes how young girls often become the victims of idealized, impossible notions of perfection.

She's Come Undone
by Wally Lamb
She's Come Undone follows Delores Price through a lifelong struggle with weight. Lamb describes the hardships of being an obese adolescent and young woman in a fat-phobic world. When Delores eventually loses weight and finds love, she thinks she has found herself. But she realizes that being skinny does not make life perfect.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins
This book describes the difficulty of becoming comfortable with one's body. Sissy Hankshaw is born with gigantic thumbs, and she spends her life trying to decide if this "deformity" is a blessing or a curse. Sissy finds freedom with her thumbs as she hitchhikes across the country. But when she begins a modeling career, Sissy learns that beauty is a tough business. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues explores the disjuncture between natural beauty and socially acceptable bodies.

Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century
by The Boston Women's Health Book Collective
This book has long been the number one reference book for women's health issues. The first section of the revised edition is entitled "Body Image," and asks the reader to reflect on what forces make women feel unhappy with their bodies and what women think they will get out of changing themselves. Why do women hate their bodies when it is society that has betrayed them? The chapter examines body image issues in regard to race, physical disability, weight, size, and aging.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
by Marya Hornbacher
This book is Marya Hornbacher's hard-hitting account of her decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia. Hornbacher's fight with food begins at age nine. In a dreamlike state, she decides to force herself to vomit up her after school snack. Ten years later, Hornbacher is barely alive; she weighs fifty-two pounds and doesn't have the strength to get out of bed. Throughout the book, it seems that Hornbacher lives two lives. She appears to be hardworking, brilliant student with a lot of friends, but her main preoccupation is food — how to eat it, where to eat it, and how to get rid of it once it's been eaten. Hornbacher swings from a top arts high school to an eating disorders hospital, from a prestigious university to a mental institution. The memoir works to dispel myths about eating disorders and shows how difficult the journey toward self acceptance can be.

The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
by Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Brumberg's history of the American female body is based on girls' diaries from the 1800s to the 1990s. Brumberg has two projects: to build a history of the female body, and to show how these bodies are ongoing projects. For decades, American women have been unhappy with their looks. In chapter four, the book deals with issues of body image. Brumberg shows that the female body has always been highly stylized (and tortured), from corsets in the Victorian era, to boyish thinness of the flappers in the 1920s, from obsession with breast size in the 1950s, to the thin-yet-toned ideal of today. The book shows that although fashion is external, American girls have internalized fashion. To American girls, looking fashionable is being the right size and shape.

Movies

Lovely and Amazing
This movie, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, is a bittersweet criticism of the way women view themselves and how insecurities can be passed on to the next generation. Jane Marks is a single white woman who is trying to provide a great life for her adopted African American daughter, Annie. When Jane decides to get liposuction, Annie starts to question her own beauty. Annie wants to improve herself like she sees her mother doing. Elizabeth, one of Jane's other daughters, is floundering as an actress because she is chronically critical and insecure about her looks.

Killing Us Softly series
Killing Us Softly, Still Killing Us Softly, and Killing Us Softly 3 are documentaries about the media's treatment of the body. Professor Jean Kilborn critically examines the messages advertising provides about how bodies are supposed to look.

History of American Women and Body Image

Body Image Help and Resources

"No Weigh" Story: Being Comfortable in My Body

"No Weigh" Story: A New Appreciation for Food

UHS Healthy Eating Services

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