The Good Body

by Eve Ensler Narrated by Eve Ensler

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

In her solo show The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler explored women's relationships with the most tabooed part of their anatomy. In The Good Body, she delves into the wider implications of female body image, reminding us how women change and mutilate themselves to conform to societal expectations. Whether by submitting to Botox or concealing themselves under burkhas, women of all cultures feel compelled to gain acceptance. Drawing on narratives overheard in locker rooms, boardrooms, and cell blocks, Ensler's monologues expose our most repressed selves.

Library Journal

With The Vagina Monologues, Ensler helped women get comfortable with one (very private) part of their bodies; now she's aiming for the body as a whole. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

From the Publisher

Praise for Eve Ensler:
“Eve Ensler can soar to Rabelaisian heights or move us with quiet compassion. . . . She may not save the world, but what other playwrights even think of trying?”
–Time

Acclaim for The Vagina Monologues

“Spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving . . . It is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction.”
–Variety

“The monologues are part of Eve Ensler’s crusade to wipe out the shame and embarrassment that many women still associate with their bodies or their sexuality. [They] are both a celebration of women’s sexuality and a condemnation of its violation.”
–The New York Times

“Women have entrusted Eve with their most intimate experiences. . . . I think readers, men as well as women, will emerge from these pages feeling more free within themselves–and about each other.”
–GLORIA STEINEM

APR/MAY 05 - AudioFile

The last time we heard from Ensler, she was sharing her dramaturgic ramblings on the vagaries of vaginas (THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES). Her fixation and attention have moved north to her stomach, and, as usual, Eve leaves no crone unturned, no lass unlabored, no stereotype untouched as she delves into the seriocomic depths of the estrogen-fueled abdomen. Her vocal caricatures are often hilarious, even as they evolve to touching truths about women accepting their bodies as they are--beautiful, flexible, amazing near-miracles. Ensler’s quality of performance waxes and wanes, but just as her self-examination begins to lag, up pops a memorable woman she has met somewhere in the world, expanding the stage and honing the spotlight on that beautiful, if rounded and full, belly. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169146578
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/09/2004
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

When I was a little girl people used to ask me, What do you want to be when you grow up? Good, I would say. I want to be good. Becoming good was harder than becoming a doctor or an astronaut or a lifeguard. There are tests to pass to become those things–you have to learn dissection or conquer gravity or practice treading water.

Becoming good was not like that. It was abstract. It felt completely out of reach. It became the only thing that mattered to me. If I could be good, everything would be all right. I would fit in. I would be popular. I would skip death and go straight to heaven. If you asked me now what this means, to be good, I still don’t know exactly.

When I was growing up in the fifties, “good” was simply what girls were supposed to be. They were good. They were pretty, perky. They had a blond Clairol wave in their hair. They wore girdles and waist cinchers and pumps. They got married. They looked married.
They waited to be given permission. They kept their legs together, even during sex.

In recent years, good girls join the Army. They climb the corporate ladder. They go to the gym. They accessorize. They wear pointy, painful shoes. They wear lipstick if they’re lesbians; they wear lipstick if they’re not. They don’t eat too much. They don’t eat at all. They stay perfect. They stay thin. I could never be good.

This feeling of badness lives in every part of my being. Call it anxiety or despair. Call it guilt or shame. It occupies me everywhere. The older, seemingly clearer and wiser I get, the more devious, globalized, and terrorist the badness becomes. I think for many of us–well, for most of us–well, maybe for all of us–there is one particular part of our body where the badness manifests itself, our thighs, our butt, our breasts, our hair, our nose, our little toe. You know what I’m talking about?

It doesn’t matter where I’ve been in the world, whether it’s Tehran where women are–smashing and remodeling their noses to looks less Iranian, or in Beijing where they are breaking their legs and adding bone to be taller, or in Dallas where they are surgically whittling their feet in order to fit into Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos.

Everywhere, the women I meet generally hate one particular part of their bodies. They spend most of their lives fixing it, shrinking it. They have medicine cabinets with products devoted to transforming it. They have closets full of clothes that cover or enhance it. It’s as if they’ve been given their own little country called their body, which they get to tyrannize, clean up, or control while they lose all sight of the world.

What I can’t believe is that someone like me, a radical feminist for nearly thirty years, could spend this much time thinking about my stomach. It has become my tormentor, my distracter; it’s my most serious committed relationship. It has protruded through my clothes, my confidence, and my ability to work. I’ve tried to sedate it, educate it, embrace it, and most of all, erase it.

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