Dietland

The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

Amanda Filipacchi · 334 pages

"Meet the Knights of Creation, a group of artistic friends struggling with society's standards of beauty. Barb, a stunningly beautiful costume designer, chooses to don a fat suit in hopes that it will help her meet the man of her dreams--a man who can see beyond her looks. Lily, Barb's brilliantly talented, unfortunate-looking musician friend, goes to fantastic lengths to attract the shallow man s

The Life and Loves of a She Devil

Fay Weldon · 256 pages

Fay Weldon takes every mistreated wife's fantasies of revenge on every spoiled, philandering husband, and explodes them into a wild, fast-moving, and outrageously funny perverse fable of the battle between women and women.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

Carolyn Mackler · 288 pages

Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant, and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to deal with her self-image, her first physical relationship, and her disillusionment with some of the people closest to her.

The Edible Woman

Margaret Atwood · 281 pages

A determined young lady who losses her focus along the line while trying to balance her life and relationship

The Beauty Myth

Naomi Wolf · 348 pages

In the struggle for womenʼs equality, there is one hurdle that has yet to be fully cleared-the myth of female beauty. It challenges every woman, every day, by seeking to undermine psychologically and covertly the material freedoms that feminism has achieved for women. And, fueled by new technology in media and medicine, its ravages are reaching epidemic proportions. The Beauty Myth cuts to the roo

The Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Edition

Eve Ensler · 224 pages

"I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them. . . . So I decided to talk to women about their vaginas, to do vagina interviews, which became vagina monologues. I talked with over two hundred women. I talked to old women, young women, married women, single women, lesbians, college professors, actors, corporate pr

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay · 360 pages

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Lindy West · 272 pages

Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible--like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you--writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but. From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jo

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body

Courtney E. Martin · 330 pages

Draws on original research and more than one hundred interviews with patients, psychologists, and nutritionists to analyze the pervasiveness of eating disorders and body-image-related emotional challenges in today's generation of young women.

Bet Me

Jennifer Crusie · 363 pages

From the back cover: Minerva Dobbs knows that happily-ever-after is a fairy tale, especially with a man who asked her to dinner to win a bet. Even if he is gorgeous and successful Calvin Morrisey. Cal knows commitment is impossible, especially with a woman as cranky as Min Dobbs. Even if she does wear great shoes and keeps him on his toes. When they say good-bye at the end of their evening, they

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body

Susan Bordo · 361 pages

The Body Project:: An Intimate History of American Girls

Joan Jacobs Brumberg · 267 pages

Girls today are in crisis - and this book shows why. Drawing on a vast array of lively historical sources, unpublished diaries by adolescent girls, and photographs that conjure up memories of the past, The Body Project chronicles how growing up in a female body has changed over the past century and why that experience is more difficult today than ever before. Girls' bodies have certainly changed

How to Be a Woman

Caitlin Moran · 313 pages

Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven't been burned as witches since 1727, life isn't exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by uncertainties and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant talk about babies? And do men secretly hate them? Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women's lives with l

Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight--and What We Can Do about It

Harriet Brown · 288 pages

"Over the last 25 years, our longing for thinness has morphed into a relentless cultural obsession with weight and body image. You can't be a woman or girl (or, increasingly, a man or boy) in America today and not grapple with the size and shape of your body, your daughter's body, other women's bodies. Even the most confident people have to find a way through a daily gauntlet of voices and images

Body

Harry Crews · 240 pages

Female bodybuilding competition is the background for a tale of ambition, success, and failure. Shereel Dupont, a leading contender, has been trained to a fine-tuned perfection by Russell Morgan. At the Ms. Cosmos contest Shereel is confronted by her past as Dorothy Turnipseed--mother, father, sister, two brothers, and a former lover from the backwoods of Georgia. Bawdy humor is generated by the T

Good in Bed

Jennifer Weiner · 376 pages

For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She's even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body. But the day she opens up a n

Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body

Lesley Kinzel · 169 pages

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 258 pages

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior

It Was Me All Along

Andie Mitchell · 248 pages

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living

Jes Baker · 232 pages

"Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls is a manifesto and call to arms for women of all sizes and ages. With smart and sassy eloquence, veteran blogger Jes Baker calls on women to be proud of their bodies, fight against fat-shaming, and embrace a body-positive worldview to change public perceptions and help women maintain mental health. With the same straightforward tone that catapulted her to nationa

Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch of It

Brittany Gibbons · 240 pages

"I hope you buy 'Fat Girl Walking' because I want to start a conversation. Or continue a conversation, one I inadvertently started a while ago when I took my clothes off on a stage in front of 700 people. A lot of people thought I was awesome for doing that. A lot of others thought a size 18 woman had absolutely no business showing off her body. Unfortunately for them, I've made it my personal mis

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

Irvine Welsh · 480 pages

"When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms an apparently crazed gunman chasing two frightened homeless men along a deserted causeway at night, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind. Within hours, Lucy becomes a hero. Her celebrity is short-lived, though: the 'crazed gunman,' turns out to be a victim of child sexual abuse and the two men are serial ped

She's Come Undone

Wally Lamb · 465 pages

In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato

Huge

Sasha Paley · 272 pages

When Wilhelmina and April find themselves roommates at a fat camp, both with very different goals, they find they have very little in common until they are both humiliated by the same person. April and Wil couldn't be more different, but both of them are spending the summer at Wellness Canyon -- otherwise known as a weight-loss camp. April knows that if she could just drop a little weight, she wou