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 €œgood body.€ €œIn the 1950s,€ Eve writes, girls were €œpretty, 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 €œpost-forties€ stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the €œflabby 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 €œspread,€ a stubborn layer of fat that she calls €œa second pair of thighs.€ The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed€“inch by inch€“by her €œperfectionist€ 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 €œtreadmill 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 €œgood bodies€ we inhabit.


From the Hardcover edition.