Unbearable Weight

Susan Bordo is Singletary Chair in the Humanities and Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (1999), and Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (California, 1997).

• Foreword: Reading Bordo, by Leslie HeywoodIn the Empire of Images: Preface to theTenth Anniversary EditionAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Feminism, Western Culture, andthe BodyPART ONE DISCOURSES AND CONCEPTIONS OF THE BODYWhose Body Is This? Feminism, Medicine, and theConceptualization of Eating DisordersAre Mothers Persons? Reproductive Rights and thePolitics of Subject-ivityHunger as IdeologyPART TWO THE SLENDER BODY AND OTHER CULTURAL FORMSAnorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as theCrystallization of CultureThe Body and the Reproduction of FemininityReading the Slender BodyPART THREE POSTMODERN BODIESFeminism, Postmodernism, and Gender Skepticism"Material Girl": The Effacements of PostmodernCulturePostmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies,Postmodern ResistanceNotesIndex

"This excellent study links the fear of women’s fat with a fear of women’s power and shows that as opportunities for women increase, their bodies dwindle."