Womansize: Tyranny of Slenderness

by Kim Chernin

In this challenging book, Kim Chernin argues that our society’s increasing demand that women should be thin is no accident of fashion, but has a political meaning. It is, she insists, an unrecognised aspect of male violence against women; it has to do with the male-imposed image of the child-woman, and the threat to male culture that a mature woman, and a mature woman’s body, represent.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism

Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Kim Chernin (born May 7, 1940, Bronx, New York) is an American fiction and nonfiction writer, feminist, poet, and memoirist. She has published fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[didi · Rating 4 out of 5]

But in a place where our bodies seem to fill everyone with dislike, where their knowledge and wisdom are denied, women must bitterly regret the fact that we are bearing an entire culture's negative burden of fleshly m existence. For the fact remains that Adam and "Depressed," although they do not confront this issue directly, are also creatures of bone and tissue and muscle and glandular secretion. And here we must become aware that the male denial of fleshly existence has a long tradition. We must understand that this psychological maneuver, by which an object inspiring jealousy is converted into an object arousing disgust, has even further twistings and turnings within the psyche. For when the body has come to be considered a vile and repugnant thing, it is inevitable that men will wish to deny the fact that they possess a body at all. There was, for instance, a rabbi in the Middle Ages who asked: "Why must a woman use perfume, when a man does not need it?" And then he answered: "Dust of the ground remains the same no matter how long it is kept, while flesh putrifies without salting.” In our more enlightened psychological times we can recognize the irrationality in this insistence that only the body of a woman putrifies while the dust-originated body of a man merely returns to its original condition. But the irrationality has been forced upon the rabbi, and all those who reason like him, by the fact that no man would wish to possess a body that masculine tradition has come to regard with disgust. Indeed, how fortunate it would be for a man if it were true that only woman had a corruptible body; through this distinction he could escape all experience of illness and age, the growing feebleness of the body that affects the mind, threatens the continued existence of the soul, and afflicts the spiritual self with the stench of corruption. How comforting it would be for a man if this happened only to his wife, and if our common knowledge of this common fate could be successfully covered over with perfume. Unfortunately, for women and men both, the situation is not so simple. We all, members of both sexes, have been consigned our membership in the human race to live out our lives within a body, with all the glories and limitations this imposes upon us. But men have managed to locate in the body of a woman all the difficulties of life within the body. Apparently, whatever the original childhood experience of the body for both women and men, the men of our time have managed to distance themselves from a direct knowledge, in their own flesh, of all the disadvantages of fleshly existence. And women, for reasons we must investigate further, have accepted this burden of the scapegoat. Indeed, for the man in this culture, abundance of flesh does not invariably signify that there is something wrong with him and that he has become, for those who love and cherish him, a source of shame. Even when he gains a great deal of weight, becomes what we regard as fat and therefore asserts the undeniable fact of fleshly existence, we do not shrink away from him and find him an object worthy of scorn. There is, for instance, the fat man, most familiar in this culture as the millionaire, whose vest bulges and whose gold watch pokes out from his straining pocket, a figure of prestige and influence, whose size reflects his power.

[lucy black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two and half stars. Quite a strange and dated book about the way society regards woman's bodies. Chernin still seems to see 'fat' as a slightly 'bad' word and the ways anorexia/ fashion/ health fads affect us have subtly changed since the book was published. I think I was hoping for something more like Fat?So! by Marilynne Webb, but this is a more academic, psychological, philosophical type of text.

Chernin explores the ideas of eating and sensuality and how woman deny themselves the joy of food and how this relates the way woman feel about their bodies. She asks quastions about where our hatred for our bodies comes from. The idea that stood out for me, and I will be pondering for a while, is that we are taught to hate woman's bodies. Infants are in love with the curves and folds of Mummy but as we grow, turning into a woman is seen as a disgusting act. To spread in our hips, our breasts, the curve of our stomachs and the bloom of our thighs. These things are shocking and revolting for many young girls because fat is not beloved in our society. The fat, sweat and hair that comes with turning into a woman are rejected and suppressed. We expect girls to try and stay girls, to aspire to flatness, taughtness, smallness. Maybe a big, fat life giving woman is just too fucking powerful for our society and this is why we do everything to oppress her?

I would love to read a more recent book that explores these ideas if anyone has any recommendations?