The Good Body
ABOUT THE GOOD BODY
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.
Why can’t we love ourselves for the way we are? Why is there always something about
ourselves that we wish to change? For Eve Ensler, the author of The Good Body, the one
aspect she finds herself hating is her stomach. This contempt with her stomach led her
to travel the world and speak with all different types of women about body image.
Looking back on her journey, Ensler concluded that “…The women I met loathed at least
one part of their body”, and this realization resulted in the creation of a beautifully
written, emotionally moving book (Ensler xiii). Eve Ensler’s The Good Body was
published in 2004 by Villard Books. This 92 page book, which sells for $19.95 in the
United States, is organized as a play, and it is a short, easy to read book full of unique
stories. Through stories shared by women all over the world, Eve Ensler communicates
the theme that the strive for “perfect” personal appearance can be found anywhere.
This unrealistic desire can drastically affect our lives, unless we learn to love our body.
The purpose of this book review is to summarize what Ensler learned from women all
around the world, as well as evaluate how successfully the theme was communicated to
the reader.
Ensler begins The Good Body with the powerful statement that when she was little, she
wanted to be “good” when she grew up. However, she describes that as we grow up, it
is impossible to achieve this when we inevitably have “…one particular part of our body
where the badness manifests itself…” (5). For Ensler, she believes she can’t be “good”
because she hates her stomach. She obsesses, denies herself of bread and ice cream
and crunches out sit-ups until she decides she can’t possibly be the only woman who
feels this way. After being kicked out of “fat camp” and enduring the anxiety of weight
checks in Weight Watchers meetings, Ensler decides to explore her feelings around the
world. Throughout her travels, Ensler listens to women’s stories to decide what it really
means to have a good body.
I enjoyed this book so much that I finished it in one sitting. The personal feel of the book
really kept me reading. Each character, or woman that Ensler met, had a uniquely real
story. This uniqueness makes the book feel personal because in reality, most women
face body image concerns, but in different ways. The stories range from An African
American woman attending “fat camp”, to a 35-year-old model who married her plastic
surgeon, to an elderly African Masai woman who stated, “I love my body. God made this
body” (72). Furthermore, Ensler included blurbs about her personal struggles, and what
her hatred toward her stomach has done to her. The use of unique stories in
combination with her own story makes The Good Body real.
I commend Ensler’s portrayal of negative and positive body image. Although majority of
the book focused on women who believe they need to change their body in order to be
“good”, such as Helen Gurley Brown who stated, “Another ten years, I’ll be down to
nothing. But even then I won’t feel beautiful”, the book also includes success stories
(12). My favorite was when Leah tries to teach Ensler to love the body she has, just as
we should love each uniquely beautiful tree. The introduction of women who love their
bodies, and can’t even understand why Ensler doesn’t, was uplifting and encouraging.
Without the inclusion of these women, I would not have understood the full story
because it would have been one-sided.
While I enjoyed Ensler’s work, the ending disappointed me. The closing ties the themes
and Ensler’s journey together, but it felt very rushed and short-lived. The book closes
with a story of when Ensler went to an ice cream place with a woman in Afghanistan, an
act that could have gotten them killed by the Taliban. To Ensler, this meant a lot. She
stated, “Finally, my being fat is clearly less important than being free”, and she ate the
ice cream (88-89). This was a powerful message, but I urged for more. Although this was
a beautiful story, Ensler didn’t conclude with any lasting remarks. I understand that she
learned a lot, but I would love to know what exactly she learned. In order for this book
to be truly powerful, Ensler should have ended with a summary of her journey and how
exactly it changed her perception of “good”.
This book was a perfect addition to this week’s unit on bodies. Of course, it is about
women’s bodies, but there is so much more underlying the perception of a “good body”.
The media negatively influenced many of these women, including Ensler, who stayed up
late watching infomercials on Ab Rollers and labeled the woman on
the Cosmo Magazine cover as “the American Dream” (9). In addition, majority of these
women want to change their body to fit a “feminine” mold. For women like Tiffany, this
desire leads to drastic measures like plastic surgery. This relates to the theme of
gendered bodies and politics surrounding body image. Even the idea that a “good body”
exists relates to the theme of society and media’s effect on body image. Overall, the
bodies unit taught us that body image issues and generalizations appear everywhere,
just as Ensler’s journey proved.
I highly recommend Eve Ensler’s The Good Body to anyone who loves learning from
other people. If you wish to feel moved by women around the world, this is a great book
to read. In addition, anybody who is intrigued by how body image affects people in
unique ways will learn a lot from this book. Last, I recommend this book to anyone who
appreciates diversity and culture, as not a single woman in this book could fit a certain
mold. The Good Body is a short, easy read filled with inspiring stories that will teach you
why all bodies are good.
PRAISE
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
SEE LESS
Eve Ensler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eve Ensler is an internationally bestselling author and Tony Award–winning playwright
whose theatrical works include the Obie Award–winning The Vagina Monologues, as
well as Necessary Targets, The Good Body, and Emotional Creature. She is the author
of the political memoir Insecure at Last, the New York Times bestseller I Am an
Emotional Creature, and a critically acclaimed memoir, In the Body of the World, which
she has adapted for the stage and will premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in January
2018. Ensler is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against
women and girls that has raised more than $100 million for local groups and activists.
She is also the founder of One Billion Rising, the biggest global mass action campaign
to end violence against women in human history, which is active in more than two
hundred countries, and the co-founder of the City of Joy, the revolutionary leadership
center for survivors of gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Good Body
by Eve Ensler
Excerpted from The Good Body by Eve Ensler Copyright © 2004 by Eve
Ensler. Excerpted by permission of Villard, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Preface
In the midst of a war in Iraq, in a time of escalatingglobal terrorism, when civil liberties are
disappearingas fast as the ozone layer, when one out of threewomen in the world will be
beaten or raped in herlifetime, why write a play about my stomach?
Maybe because my stomach is one thing I feel Ihave control over, or maybe because I have
hopedthat my stomach is something I could get controlover. Maybe because I see how my
stomach has cometo occupy my attention, I see how other women’sstomachs or butts or
thighs or hair or skin have cometo occupy their attention, so that we have very littleleft for
the war in Iraq—or much else, for that matter.When a group of ethnically diverse,
economicallydisadvantaged women in the United States wasrecently asked about the one
thing they wouldchange in their lives if they could, the majority ofthese women said they
would lose weight. Maybe Iidentify with these women because I have boughtinto the idea
that if my stomach were flat, then Iwould be good, and I would be safe. I would be
protected.I would be accepted, admired, important,loved. Maybe because for most of my
life I have feltwrong, dirty, guilty, and bad, and my stomach isthe carrier, the pouch for all
that self-hatred. Maybebecause my stomach has become the repository formy sorrow, my
childhood scars, my unfulfilled ambition,my unexpressed rage. Like a toxic dump, it iswhere
the explosive trajectories collide—the Judeo-Christian imperative to be good; the patriarchal
mandate that women be quiet, be less; the consumer-stateimperative to be better, which is
based on the assumptionthat you are born wrong and bad, and thatbeing better always
involves spending money, lots ofmoney. Maybe because, as the world rapidly dividesinto
fundamentalist camps, reductive sound bites, andpolarizing platitudes, an exploration of my
stomachand the life therein has the potential to shatter thesedangerous constraints.
This journey has been different from the one Iundertook in The Vagina Monologues. I was
worriedabout vaginas when I began that play. I was worriedabout the shame associated
with vaginas and I wasworried about what was happening to vaginas, in thedark. As I talked
about vaginas and to vaginas, I becameeven more worried about the onslaught of
violencedone to women and their vaginas around theworld.
There was, of course, the great celebration of vaginasas well. Pleasure, discovery, sex,
moans, power.I suppose I had this fantasy that after finally cominghome into my vagina, I
could relax, get on with life.This was not the case. The deadly self-hatred simplymoved into
another part of my body.
The Good Body began with me and my particularobsession with my “imperfect” stomach.
Ihave charted this self-hatred, recorded it, tried tofollow it back to its source. Here, unlike
the womenin The Vagina Monologues, I am my own victim,my own perpetrator. Of course,
the tools of my selfvictimizationhave been made readily available. Thepattern of the perfect
body has been programmedinto me since birth. But whatever the cultural influences and
pressures, my preoccupation with myflab, my constant dieting, exercising, worrying, is
selfimposed.I pick up the magazines. I buy into theideal. I believe that blond, flat girls have
the secret.What is far more frightening than narcissism is thezeal for self-mutilation that is
spreading, infectingthe world.
I have been to more than forty countries in thelast six years. I have seen the rampant and
insidiouspoisoning: skin-lightening creams sell as fast as toothpaste in Africa and Asia; the
mothers of eight-year-oldsin America remove their daughters’ ribs so theywill not have to
worry about dieting; five-year-olds inManhattan do strict asanas so they won’t
embarrasstheir parents in public by being chubby; girls vomitand starve themselves in
China and Fiji and everywhere;Korean women remove Asia from their eyelids. . . the list
goes on and on.
I have been in a dialogue with my stomach forthe past three years. I have entered my
belly—thedark wet underworld—to get at the secrets there. Ihave talked with women in
surgical centers in BeverlyHills; on the sensual beaches of Rio de Janeiro;in the gyms of
Mumbai, New York, Moscow; in thehectic and crowded beauty salons of Istanbul,
SouthAfrica, and Rome. Except for a rare few, the womenI met loathed at least one part of
their body. Therewas almost always one part that they longed tochange, that they had a
medicine cabinet full ofproducts devoted to transforming or hiding or reducingor
straightening or lightening. Just about everywoman believed that if she could just get that
partright, everything else would work out. Of course, it isan endless heartbreaking
campaign.
Some of the monologues in The Good Body arebased on well-known women like Helen
GurleyBrown and Isabella Rossellini. Those monologues,which grew out of a series of
conversations with eachof these fascinating women, are not recorded interviews,but
interpretations of the lives they offeredme. Some of the other characters are based on
reallives, real stories. Many are invented.
This play is my prayer, my attempt to analyze themechanisms of our imprisonment, to
break free sothat we may spend more time running the worldthan running away from it; so
that we may be consumedby the sorrow of the world rather than consumingto avoid that
sorrow and suffering. This playis an expression of my hope, my desire, that we willall refuse
to be Barbie, that we will say no to the lossof the particular, whether it be to a voluptuous
womanin a silk sari, or a woman with defining lines of characterin her face, or a
distinguishing nose, or olivetonedskin, or wild curly hair.
I am stepping off the capitalist treadmill. I amgoing to take a deep breath and find a way to
survivenot being flat or perfect. I am inviting you to join me,to stop trying to be anything,
anyone other than whoyou are. I was moved by women in Africa who livedclose to the earth
and didn’t understand what it meantto not love their body. I was lifted by older women
inIndia who celebrated their roundness. I was inspiredby Marion Woodman, a great Jungian
analyst, whogave me confidence to trust what I know. She hassaid that “instead of
transcending ourselves, we mustmove into ourselves.”Tell the image makers and magazine
sellers andthe plastic surgeons that you are not afraid. Thatwhat you fear the most is the
death of imaginationand originality and metaphor and passion. Then bebold and LOVE YOUR
BODY. STOP FIXING IT. Itwas never broken.
***
Excerpted from The Good Body by Eve Ensler Copyright © 2004 by Eve Ensler. Excerpted
by permission of Villard, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this
excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
***
EVE ENSLER is an internationally acclaimed playwright whose previous
works for the stage include Floating Rhonda and the Glue
Man, Lemonade, Necessary Targets, and The Vagina Monologues, for which
she received an Obie Award. Ensler is the founder and artistic director of V-
Day (www.vday.org), the global movement to end violence against women
and girls that was inspired by The Vagina Monologues. In seven years V-
Day has raised more than $25 million for grassroots groups around the
world. Eve Ensler lives in New York City.
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.
