Body Traps : How to Unlock the Cage of Body Obsessions

Answering why so many people crave slimmer hips, curlier hair, and perfect teeth, a guide to identifying the causes of, and defeating, obsessive attitudes about appearance offers new solutions to this old problem. 50,000 first printing. Tour.

This illuminating social ?since she's a psychologist? analysis of vanity may reduce readers' trips to the mirror or aerobics classes. Rodin, dean of the Graduate School at Yale and a psychologist specializing in eating disorders, does not discount the mounting pressures that drive women and, increasingly, men to be perfectionists about their looks. She concludes that physical appearance has become the social yardstick by which we measure a person's value and offers practical antidotes to this fixation: mental ? not physical exercises, right? exercises that help people better accept themselves, deal with eating disorders and develop more meaningful standards that enhance self-esteem. The author might have given more thought to communal as well as individual measures to counter empty, appearance-oriented values. Still, for those who want to throw off the tyranny of the mirror, this is the book. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rodin (Dean of Yale's Graduate School and head of a eating- disorder clinic at Yale) anatomizes women's obsessions with their bodies (with a nod to the occasional male fixation) and offers strategies for breaking these ``body traps.'' Women's concern with their appearance has never been more burdensome than now, Rodin says. This is partly because of the images of perfection incessantly imposed by the media; partly because of the seeming attainability of that perfection through new technology and rigid diet and health regimens; and partly because the new economic opportunities open to women have proved so unsettling to women and men alike that women feel compelled to be even more beautiful to compensate for their increased power. Rodin identifies several ``traps,'' or common forms of obsession--among them, shame at caring so much about ``trivial'' and ``superficial'' matters in the face of more serious global concerns; competition with and belittling of other women; overexercising; and food obsessions, diet mania, and eating disorders. Finally, there is ``The Success Trap,'' in which the woman who has succeeded in attaining a semblance of the ideal of culturally defined beauty dreads that her dramatic weight-loss can't be sustained, or feels bitter that a physical improvement can make such a difference in the way people treat her, or suffers from a sense that she's an imposter. Quizzes aid in targeting one's particular trap, and exercises suggest ways to break out of it. But personal transformation can only go so far, Rodin says; what's needed is for society to reshape its attitudes toward women's beauty. Less brilliant, perhaps, than Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1991), which covered similar territory--but more generally accessible and helpful. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.