Bodies

(, Main)

Publishing Details

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Description

In the past decades, the pressure to perfect and design our bodies has been unprecedented. Men are encouraged to surgically pump up their pecs, breast enhancement is a sweet sixteen birthday present in the suburbs of America, and eating problems - from bulimia to obesity - are growing daily, affecting children as young as six. In China, women are having their legs broken and extended by 5cms. In Iran, behind the Hijab there are 35,000 cosmetic nose reconstructions a year. The body is no longer a given and to possess a flawless one has become the ambition of millions. In her years of practice as a psychoanalyst, Susie Orbach has come to realise that the way we view our bodies is the mirror of how we view ourselves: our body becomes the measure of our worth. In this book, she raises the fundamental questions about how we arrived here and proposes a new theory on how we became embodied.

Reviews

A smart and rich compendium of what is going on within and without our bodies today ... in this brave and significant book, Orbach does battle with a full quiver of her own fire-tipped arrows, her blazing firebrand levelled at self-hatred in all its forms. * The Times *
This is a serious book - and one of the saddest I've read in a long time. It is grounded in compassion, righteous anger and practical good sense ... I came away having learnt something. We are at war with our own bodies, and both sides are losing. * Daily Mail *
A terrifying, terrific read * Scotland on Sunday *
Could make you rethink starting that post-Christmas diet. A 2010 must-have if you want to understand your body issues. * Now *
Original in her diagnoses and sympathetic in her treatment, she comes across as the intellectual lovechild of Freud and Trisha. How could this not be compulsive reading -- Laura Silverman * Daily Mail *
Combining heartfelt polemic with heartbreaking case studies, Bodies unpicks the tangle of influences that conspire against a "stable body" -- Victoria Segal * Guardian *
[A] superb analysis of the range of ways one can change one's body and the number of images of the body one encounters. -- Lesley McDowell * Herald [Glasgow] *

Author Bio

Professor Susie Orbach co-founded The Women's Therapy Centre in London. A former Guardian columnist, she was visiting professor for ten years at the London School of Economics and is the convener of the website any-body.org. She is consultant and co-originator of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The author of a number of books including On Eating, The Impossibility of Sex and the perennial bestseller Fat is a Feminist Issue, she lectures extensively worldwide.