Books

Well, I didn't go to school so I couldn't do the survey. But here's a list of books that I've read and enjoyed relating to body image, eating disorders, etc.

This is Steven Levenkron's novel The Best Little Girl in the World. It's about a girl named Katie Roskova, a teenage girl training to be an ice skater, and her struggle with anorexia. At one point she weighs less than 80 pounds and her mother doesn't even take note. I read it over and over. It has a message about how certain hobbies (or jobs, or dreams, or families, or mindsets) can set girls up for body image issues. She has to maintain her weight to continue skating, and the pressure eventually mounts to too much for her. Levenkron is a psychologist himself, and said he based Katie on all the anorexics he had treated. He has another book called The Luckiest Girl in the World, which is centered around depression and cutting.

This novel, Perfect by Natasha Friend, is a somewhat better book than the above because it's written by a real author rather than a psychologist. The girl in it suffers from bulimia, and is ushered to a support group by her mother only to discover that the most popular girl in her school also suffers from an eating disorder. It explores not only the eating disorder itself, but the way it affects her family, friends, lifestyle, and life as a whole.

This book, Skinny by Ibi Kasik, explores body image a different perspective. The narrator's sister, away at college, returns home twenty pounds lighter and her appearance turns into a family crisis. The novel explores how one family member's issues can tear the whole family apart.

Carmen, 14, is distressed when her mother, Maria, insists that she join her on endless diets and incessant exercise--until Carmen succumbs. Bell does a good job of describing what anorexia looks like from the outside: irrational, bewildering, compulsive. She lures readers into thinking that the illness will be observed from a distance, until Carmen almost mindlessly becomes bulimic. Some adult characters try to help--mostly ineffectually--but at book's conclusion, nothing is really solved.






Here are some more books that I haven't read personally, but might relate to the ones above:
Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer, Thom Rutledge

Hunger Point: A Novel by Jillian Medoff

Second Star to the Right by Deborah Hautzig

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.) by Marya Hornbacher
Unwell: a novel by Leslie Lipton