So I’ve been working on my personal body image issues, and I’m trying to find inspiration/motivation. Does anyone have any book recs that will get me into the mindset of wanting to challenge/reject beauty standards? I’m open to anything.
by bluebonnet-baby
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My body by em rata, natural beauty by ling ling huang, rouge by Mona awad
*The Anti-Diet* by Christy Harrison. It goes over the history of diet culture and it’s nefarious origins and then outlines Intuitive Eating, which is essentially how to re-train your brain to listen to your body instead of all of the rules that we’ve been told to make our bodies adhere to. The history bit is really helpful for firing up that feminist rage. I’m a mental health therapist and this is the book I most often recommend to my clients who are working on the same things that you outlined.
Can you elaborate on what type of book you want. Like do you want a book on fitness or a book that is against fitness or is like a body positivity type of book.
If you would like a novel about a very intelligent, but not particularly attractive woman, I recommend The Signature of all Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Shrill by Lindy West. She has a quote in that book that I am going to paraphrase that literally changed my life;
“if aliens came down to Earth and saw me standing next to Cindy Crawford they wouldn’t decide that her body was better than mine. They would just see that it’s different.”
It really changed the way I always compared myself to others and felt less than.
Any of Aubrey Gordon’s writing, including her books “What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat” and “You just need to lose weight and 19 other myths about fat people”
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
[Easy Beauty](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58438546) by Chloé Cooper Jones is a stunner of a memoir from the perspective of someone who didn’t grow up in a “typical” body and is full of a lot of great discussion on this topic.
Not as hugely about body image specifically, but I would also very much recommend [Cassandra Speaks](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49397876) by Elizabeth Lesser is great for sparking inspiration on what a world that was not defined by the male gaze would look like.