"Something is wrong here, and it’s not anything as simple as Low Self-Esteem, that great pathologising scrap heap onto which so many female behaviors (our obsessions with weight and appearance, our apparent proclivity for self-destruction) tend to get tossed. That’s always felt like very thin gruel to me, about fifteen ingredients missing from the soup. A woman who is actively hurting her body or beating it into submission, a woman who is clinging to a relationship that hurts her or who’s shopping her way into stupor and debt is suffering from a good deal more than a poor self-image. The phrase captures none of the sorrow and emptiness that leaches up alongside a thwarted appetite, and little of the agony that accompanies a displaced need, the anguish of truly not knowing why desires get channeled in so many wrong directions, of not knowing how to live - and feel - a different way."
- Appetites: Why Women Want (Caroline Knapp)
It's most likely just that time of the month, but I've just spent the day reading Caroline Knapp's "Appetites: Why Women Want" and crying my eyes out.
It's an amazing book, and it's so much more than just a memoir about eating disorders. Caroline Knapp is a brilliant, intelligent, and articulate writer who laid out so many issues about the woman's self-image in modern society. Appetite is hunger not only for food, but also the hunger and longings and needs for all the pleasures in life that many constantly deny themselves just to reach that ideal of the acceptable woman in society. She explores the nature of self-loathing and the value of the female body, posing the question about the hateful disdain we impose upon ourselves day after day when we look into the mirror. The one central question is: What do women want?
What particularly resonated with me about this book was that Caroline Knapp didn't blame the common cause like the media or culture for her problem, but rather her issues stemmed from the need to control, restrain, and deny in order to fill a void within her psyche. Hers was a by-product of depression and intense longing. Something about her story really struck a note in me.
The talk about eating disorders is a long talk for another day, and I don't want to write an essay on the book here, but I just want to say: if you've ever looked into a mirror and thought "I shouldn't look like this," this is a book for you. It's a heartbreaking read, but it's worth it. You can even just read a few chapters on
Amazon.
...Imma go back to reading random books instead of reading for my projects now.