Love Thyself

In a book on eating disorders, Courtney E. Martin exposes the self-hatred behind young women’s quests for perfection.

By Liz Funk, Pace University
Thursday, May 31, 2007

Despite the increased consciousness of eating disorders in American culture, rates of teen plastic surgery are rising, anorexia seems to be afflicting an increasing number of young celebrities, and this year’s Victoria’s Secret models looked like they were craving food more than sex. Luckily, a new book by 27-year-old journalist Courtney E. Martin, titled Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: the Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, is shaping up to be a force that can push young women in the right direction—toward a healthy body image.

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters is a treatise on the destructive force of body image disorders, but it is also Martin’s memoir of growing up female and encountering unrealistic media representations of women. As a teenager, Martin disdained feminism. But watching friends and family suffer from eating disorders incited her to consider women’s ingrained self-loathing and embrace feminism as the catalyst for women’s political and personal empowerment.

In addition to her personal reflections, Martin includes interviews with numerous women and girls and the results of her “informal survey of over 100 young women” regarding eating disorders, food, and fitness. What is most striking about their confessions is the sacrifices many women make for thinness: Martin writes about low-income women who spend their precious pennies on tummy tucks, teens who go a day without eating to atone for snacking on junk food, and women who traded study and fun during their college years for obsession over food.

What makes the book so significant is fairly simple: Unlike the countless purveyors of diet and work-out tomes targeted at self-loathing young women, Martin actually asserts that hating your body is not okay. Some of Martin’s most poignant and convincing arguments lie in the way she exposes what young people have accepted as normal. A Barnard College dining hall named Hewitt, for example, is unofficially called “Spewitt” by students casually alluding to the tendency of some young women to purge after meals.

Martin examines how negative body image is an issue for men as well. She discusses corporate beauty myths as an issue affecting all Americans. “Making one narrow standard of beauty is the aim of corporate culture; if we acknowledged a variety of beauties, women would spend far less money on diet books and miracle pills and men wouldn’t be shelling out for designer labels and Rogaine,” Martin writes. “A huge business is built on making us feel unattractive. The marketing of inadequacy also undermines our view of ourselves and how we understand our worth in the world. Instead of relying on our own perception, we look outside ourselves for constant affirmation.”

As a survivor of a slew of eating disorders, from anorexia to exercise addiction to overeating, I felt alarmingly close to Martin as I read her book. Her discussion of her own struggle with body image issues is candid and honest, and her description of her interactions with eating disorders sufferers is almost gritty. I found myself tearing up during the chapter discussing the correlation between eating disorders and fathers. And I could practically taste cottonmouth, reminded of my former eight-mile daily runs, at the end of the chapter on exercise addiction.

Martin’s analysis of the factors that created the eating disorder epidemic is varied; she includes intriguing chapters on the role of parents, sex, men’s desires, and exercise. Most controversially, Martin passionately argues that women’s sports—although Title IX is heralded as a feminist watershed—may actually be at the root of some women’s obsessive approach to fitness.

Martin’s most intriguing argument, however, is on “feminism’s unintended legacy.” A recent feature in The New York Times, titled “For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too,” focused on the overwhelming pressure for young women—especially high school students—to be perfect without going insane in the process. Martin elaborates extensively on the overachiever phenomenon in her book, discussing how the same young women who hate mediocrity and want to be perfect also hate their bodies. The core of Martin’s argument is that social pressure on young women is inevitably taken out on their bodies. This book is the reassuring hug that Generation Y young women need. Martin is a loving big sister, telling young women to breathe, relax, and be satisfied with themselves.

My sole criticism of Martin’s work is that her deep analysis and sophisticated word choice might confuse some younger readers who would benefit from her message. However, if the book appeals to educators and high school counselors, its message will hopefully filter down to young women.

Liz Funk is writing a book about young women and anxiety.

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