How do our families influence our relationship with our own bodies? How do American pop culture's standards of beauty get inside our hearts and heads? In what ways can sport and the drive for fitness actually make us sick rather than healthy?
Diane Israel explores American culture's unhealthy preoccupation with thinness, beauty, and physical perfection. Israel, a Boulder-based psychotherapist and former champion triathlete, recounts how she grew up feeling intense pressure to be beautiful and successful -- and how, as a result, she raced headlong into a devastating and near-fatal spiral of disordered eating and obsessive exercising. Along the way, Beauty Mark provides crucial insights into the relationship between media culture, gender norms, and girls' and women's health.
Featuring commentary from Eve Ensler, Paul Campos, and Naomi Wolf, and insights from athletes, bodybuilders, fashion models, and inner-city teens.
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