Over one half of teenage girls and nearly one third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviours. But while body expectations for young people can easily end up spiralling out of control, several YA books are trying to help teens see that healthy is the new happyA few days ago, I stumbled across a documentary on TV called Teens. The series of programmes followed a group of English teenagers (who were all from the same school), around their daily lives. One of the girls said something that really shocked me to the core, and it kept coming back into my mind every day. It went along the lines of this:I’m really worried about my friend, she is really thin. I mean she is really, really
Tag: books
New Hesperian Book Focuses on Improving Health Through Community Organizing
In the early 1970s, Hesperian Health Guides developed “Where There Is No Doctor,” a health care manual used by health workers and others involved in delivering primary care and promoting health programs. Hesperian now offers a dozen books and health materials in more than 80 languages. Its latest resource, “Health Actions for Women: Practical Strategies to Mobilize for Change,” released this month, is drawing kudos — from the likes of Cecile Richards, Judy Norsigian and Paul Farmer, among others — for its approach to helping women (and men) create change in their communities to improve the health of women and girls. Health Actions for Women: Practical Strategies to Mobilize for Change Concrete steps for community organizing and problem-solving are woven throughout the book,
Curvology by David Bainbridge review – the female body, dissected and confused
A study that sets out to identify the factors that influence eating disorders, body image and clothing choices collapses in a welter of contradictions“Being fat isolates and invalidates a woman,” wrote Susie Orbach in 1978’s Fat Is a Feminist Issue. “What is it about the social position of women that leads them to respond to it by getting fat?”It is an intriguing question, as is the reverse – what drives women to starve themselves into unhealthiness? In one chapter of Curvology, David Bainbridge mulls this point: “The most confusing aspect of eating disorders is why they occur at all – how humans evolved into creatures who could suffer them… no animal evolves specifically to suffer bouts of starvation, bingeing, emaciation, infertility and death.” Continue