It’s very true that men as well as
women nowadays feel pressured to attain the ‘perfect’ body, doubtlessly
egged on by countless airbrushed images of models. Indeed, I have
sometimes perhaps overdone it in the gym in my desire to improve my
physical well being. However, there is a health aspect to gym going
which Susie Orbach seems to rather overlook in Bodies, since a ‘healthy
body makes a healthy mind’ doesn’t seem to be one of her mantras. As a
psychotherapist, Susan Orbach is more interested in the ‘talking cure’,
and would appear to think it is the norm for the humanity to be quite
inactive. While it may be part the culture of the day for people to be
physically unfit, this wasn’t so in the past, when there was a
preponderance of manual labour. In some ways, I think Bodies could be
quite a dangerous book, in that it downplays the fears of a developing
‘obesity epidemic’. While the levels of obesity may not reach the
levels predicted in this current moral panic, there surely can’t be any
harm in ensuring that the youth of today are more active. Indeed, it’s
only by having informed discussions about nutrition that we may finally
be able to escape the vicious circle of a daughter being overly
influenced in her eating by a mother’s constant dieting. Susie Orbach
does provide some fascinating case studies of individuals who have taken
to sculpting their bodies to extremes (such as the former soldier who
was convinced that life would be far better if his legs were removed
below the knees, a case that could not be cured by talking). Yet she
doesn’t always provide the whole story, so we are left wandering what
happened to many of the individuals in such circumstances. Much of
Bodies is quite repetitive, and I felt that it would have been a lot
more concise and powerful if Orbach’s main points had been restricted to
a long article rather than a book, as its current format did not
sufficiently engage me.
It’s very true that men as well as women nowadays feel pressured to
attain the ‘perfect’ body, doubtlessly egged on by countless airbrushed
images of models. Indeed, I have sometimes perhaps overdone it in the
gym in my desire to improve my physical well being. However, there is a
health aspect to gym going which Susie Orbach seems to rather overlook
in Bodies, since a ‘healthy body makes a healthy mind’ doesn’t seem to
be one of her mantras. As a psychotherapist, Susan Orbach is more
interested in the ‘talking cure’, and would appear to think it is the
norm for the humanity to be quite inactive. While it may be part the
culture of the day for people to be physically unfit, this wasn’t so in
the past, when there was a preponderance of manual labour. In some
ways, I think Bodies could be quite a dangerous book, in that it
downplays the fears of a developing ‘obesity epidemic’. While the
levels of obesity may not reach the levels predicted in this current
moral panic, there surely can’t be any harm in ensuring that the youth
of today are more active. Indeed, it’s only by having informed
discussions about nutrition that we may finally be able to escape the
vicious circle of a daughter being overly influenced in her eating by a
mother’s constant dieting. Susie Orbach does provide some fascinating
case studies of individuals who have taken to sculpting their bodies to
extremes (such as the former soldier who was convinced that life would
be far better if his legs were removed below the knees, a case that
could not be cured by talking). Yet she doesn’t always provide the
whole story, so we are left wandering what happened to many of the
individuals in such circumstances. Much of Bodies is quite repetitive,
and I felt that it would have been a lot more concise and powerful if
Orbach’s main points had been restricted to a long article rather than a
book, as its current format did not sufficiently engage me.