As someone who would love to love their body this book was interesting. As women we frequently learn to hate our bodies because of the media's depiction of what we all apparently should look like. We worry about how others perceive us and spend hours on endless and impossible beauty and aesthetic treatments which fill the pockets of the multi billion dollar beauty and diet industry who thrive off people feeling bad about themselves.. The subtitle "Your body is an instrument, not an ornament" should be a daily affirmation for everyone not just women and especially young girls. My only negative is the very long chapters otherwise this book is one i woudl recommend.

I wish I would have had this book at sixteen. It is a lot of information to digest, but this sort of resource and guide would have likely saved me a lot of time spent learning some of these things through personal experience and provided a much-needed perception shift that would have saved me a lot of heartache. I think this is a great read for teenage girls, parents of teens, or for truly any woman needing some reminders for their self perception.

This book is a good place to start if you are wanting an introduction in body positivity. I wish there was a little more about raising girls to avoid these traps, but otherwise very well written.

Free ARC from the publisher via NetGalley, but the opinions are my own.

I got a free copy of this from NetGalley. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as good as I was expecting it to be, from reading the words of these authors in the past. It tries so hard to be 'inclusive' that it manages to define people by what they look like--and worse, to lecture certain people that they need to be aware of their 'privilege' when it comes to body image. If someone's reading this book, it's probably because they are struggling with what the authors call self-objectification and want to know how to fix it. If someone is struggling with a problem, it's incredibly condescending and unhelpful to immediately lecture them about how, because of *the body they have*, their struggle isn't as bad as others'. Their struggle is still real to them, so why are the authors instantly diminishing that struggle just because (giving them the benefit of the doubt that their claim is 100% true) other people struggle more. If a poor person in the US who's fighting every month to make ends meet goes to someone for help about their poverty, it would be incredibly insensitive for that person to tell them, "Well, first you have to realize that poor people in India or Africa have it WAY worse than you do." That would be so inappropriate, so how is it any more appropriate for this book to tell white or able-bodied people who struggle with self-objectification that their struggling isn't as bad as some others'? This book undermines its own reason for existing right off the bat. Which is unfortunate, because it has some good and helpful things to say otherwise.

We are all used to those self-help guides that proclaim 'New Year, New You' but most of them only address physical issues such as weight management or generic mental health issues, which is why I was excited to read this book as it uniquely focuses on the way we conceive our bodies. As women we are frequently objectified in everyday life and learn to hate our bodies because of the media's depiction of what we all apparently should look like which can lead to self-loathing and even eating disorders.

Twin sisters Lexie and Lindsay Kite PhD take us back to basics and ultimately help us learn to love our bodies regardless of their shape and size. Including many powerful real life case studies of women fighting to overcome their lack of self worth, this is potentially a life-changing read which alters the perception you have of yourself and encourages you to feel beautiful by simply being you. I highly recommend it to those who often struggle to think positively about their appearance.

Thank you to Lexie and Lindsay Kite and Houghlin Mifflin for the complimentary ARC of More Than a Body. We were lucky to read this book a little early. It comes out December 29th! It's hard to put into words have profound this book was for me! If you are a women, read it. If you are a mother, read it. If you have women in your life, read it. The authors have taken years of research and poured it into this book. We are more than a body. We are more than how our body looks. This book does a fantastic job of providing thought provoking conversations regarding women and our bodies.

This is a good book for anyone interested in learning about the objectification of women's bodies in the media and Western society. It is a primer on the subject, not for those who already have a background in feminist studies or feminist media studies.

I found the first two chapters of this book intriguing. The explanation of self-objectification, how it happens, and where it comes from, was fascinating. I’ve read plenty of positive body books, and this was the first time I had heard of this term. However, after the second chapter, things started to fall apart a bit.

While reading this, I was genuinely hoping for education a little deeper than the surface level. This book gave me a new concept to look into (self-objectification), but even then, it didn’t provide me much internal working to do besides take a break from Instagram and stop looking in mirrors for a bit.

Despite the redundancy of the information provided, I still enjoyed this book. I think this book would be a good start for someone who hasn’t had their hands on any of this information before. It provides resources and quotes from other body positivity books, and it’s a good jumping point. If this were my first rodeo, as it were, this would be a fantastic book.


Full review 12/28/2020