The Good Body

By: Eve Ensler

Narrated by: Eve Ensler

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 "good body".

"In the 1950s," Eve writes, girls were "pretty, 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 "post-forties" stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the "flabby 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 "spread", a stubborn layer of fat that she calls "a second pair of thighs". The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed, inch by inch, by her "perfectionist" 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 "treadmill 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 "good bodies" we inhabit.

©2004 Eve Ensler (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The Good Body is more forthrightly funny than the often somber Vagina Monologues." (The New York Times)

Get Into It

I first got this book because a friend and I were talking about the vagina monologues and saw this thinking "humm, this sounds interesting". Well it is!! i loved it, i read it all the way through, i couldnt put it down!Im at a younger age and though its elaberations are a little wowing, i learned so much and it was funny and toughing at the same time. If your a brave mom and beleive your teen is ready to read something a little deep on the private side of your body, give this book to them, they will forever remember the importance of their body, healthy body weight or carrying for your sexualness, all in one, its fantasticly insightful!!

super great message and story telling

i feel comfortable for the first timein a while. very cathartic. i loved the story telling very dramatic.

love your body

loved it accept how you are made, the message

is why trying to change your body comes from outside