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Catherine's Reviews > My Body
My Body
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“There was no color—just white light. It was morning, the city was waking up. I thought about the coffee being consumed, the hot showers, the lover saying their goodbyes from a night spent together. Millions of people went about the rituals as they prepared their bodies for another day of life. Birth is as unremarkable as any of those small events: at all times, there is a woman’s body in labor. It is both so extraordinary and so common, the way our bodies take us through our lives.� (232)
The writing is good. So good that I was consumed in this world of the narrator—the one where she as a young child who doesn’t even know if she believes in god prays only for Beauty, and she gets it. How does she know she has it? Because of the attention she gets from boys, from men. She is obsessed with feeling special (the word appears in every essay), and she knows that it’s better to get unwanted attention than it is to be invisible.
And that’s the actual problem with this book: unattractive women do not exist. She grapples with these questions of how women—beautiful women—get power, a conundrum that she can only solve with fellow beautiful women: a former bikini model dyes her hair brown and wears turtlenecks to be taken seriously as an actor, a Victoria’s Secret model flirts and dances with a billionaire (before eventually marrying one in tech) while the narrator is bored and counting down the minutes until she can leave, the other model type at her high school takes her under wing but never actually builds a friendship—a power struggle between them regarding who gets the most attention from their guy friends. The only power that exists to Emily is the kind that makes you famous. Ironically, she knows that talking about politics makes her sound more interesting to male company, but she never acknowledges that there are actual women in politics who hold the kind of power that all men wanted at some point. To hell with women in the C-suite.
She mentioned in an interview that she hopes young girls read this. I imagine she thinks it will help them feel less alone in their beauty� please do not let the young girls in your life read this book. Please have them read Chanel Miller’s book instead.
“Model or influencer or actor or not, all women know what it’s like to use their sexuality for security in some capacity, I thought.� (90)
It was fascinating to be in this world of the narrator, a look on the other side of an influencer’s Instagram. To hear her thoughts, which are both introspective and shallow. To hear the insecurities she has when she judges other beautiful women. I love me some shade!
The writing is beautiful, yet she is not able to see outside this world where beauty is everything. She can’t even allow herself to feel or release anger, because let’s just say it out loud: she believes anger will make her ugly. So by the end of it, as difficult as it was to put the book down, I was glad to go back to my world where women are well-rounded, angry, complex, and always real.
“I think of her and the other naked women who lined the walls and filled the halls of museums, some so ancient the color has washed from their bodies and their marble heads have fallen off. It would be easy to mistake these displays for symbols of respect, for an honor. But what were their lives? And what were their names? No one remembers.� (212)
The writing is good. So good that I was consumed in this world of the narrator—the one where she as a young child who doesn’t even know if she believes in god prays only for Beauty, and she gets it. How does she know she has it? Because of the attention she gets from boys, from men. She is obsessed with feeling special (the word appears in every essay), and she knows that it’s better to get unwanted attention than it is to be invisible.
And that’s the actual problem with this book: unattractive women do not exist. She grapples with these questions of how women—beautiful women—get power, a conundrum that she can only solve with fellow beautiful women: a former bikini model dyes her hair brown and wears turtlenecks to be taken seriously as an actor, a Victoria’s Secret model flirts and dances with a billionaire (before eventually marrying one in tech) while the narrator is bored and counting down the minutes until she can leave, the other model type at her high school takes her under wing but never actually builds a friendship—a power struggle between them regarding who gets the most attention from their guy friends. The only power that exists to Emily is the kind that makes you famous. Ironically, she knows that talking about politics makes her sound more interesting to male company, but she never acknowledges that there are actual women in politics who hold the kind of power that all men wanted at some point. To hell with women in the C-suite.
She mentioned in an interview that she hopes young girls read this. I imagine she thinks it will help them feel less alone in their beauty� please do not let the young girls in your life read this book. Please have them read Chanel Miller’s book instead.
“Model or influencer or actor or not, all women know what it’s like to use their sexuality for security in some capacity, I thought.� (90)
It was fascinating to be in this world of the narrator, a look on the other side of an influencer’s Instagram. To hear her thoughts, which are both introspective and shallow. To hear the insecurities she has when she judges other beautiful women. I love me some shade!
The writing is beautiful, yet she is not able to see outside this world where beauty is everything. She can’t even allow herself to feel or release anger, because let’s just say it out loud: she believes anger will make her ugly. So by the end of it, as difficult as it was to put the book down, I was glad to go back to my world where women are well-rounded, angry, complex, and always real.
“I think of her and the other naked women who lined the walls and filled the halls of museums, some so ancient the color has washed from their bodies and their marble heads have fallen off. It would be easy to mistake these displays for symbols of respect, for an honor. But what were their lives? And what were their names? No one remembers.� (212)
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