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"An authoritative, generous, and persuasive debut that I wish I could go back in time and gift to my teenage self.”—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
“Electric with insight, and suffused with a strange, stubborn tenderness—a deep regard for what intimacy, hope, and resistance might look like in a world where women are taught to devote their lives to destroying themselves.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering
In Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein recounts her struggle with disordered eating alongside the stories of other women: historical figures, pop culture celebrities, and the girls she’s known and loved. Through the story of her own sickness, the raw recollections of interview subjects, and dispatches from social media rabbit holes, Clein challenges stereotypes and renders statistics and science deeply personal and urgent. From her first encounters with icons of the thin ideal to her years ricocheting between hunger and bingeing, from the pro-anorexia blog that unexpectedly saved someone’s life to the residential treatment centers that make so many people sicker, from a wrenching elegy for those who didn’t survive to a manifesto for sisterhood, solidarity, and recovery, Clein uncovers girlhood’s appetites and injuries to reveal the economic, cultural, and political history of an epidemic.
Dead Weight makes the case that we are faced with a culture of suppression, self-denial, and self-harm, an insidious, pervasive, and dangerous American cult of femininity rooted in racism and misogyny. Tracing the medical and cultural histories of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder and investigating the recent rise of orthorexia, Clein reveals the economic conditions underpinning diet culture, and grapples with the ways today’s feminism can be complicit in propping up the fetish of self-shrinking.
Drawing on a kaleidoscopic array of sources—from cult classic films like Jennifer’s Body to the aughts-era Tumblrverse, the writing of Simone Weil, Chris Kraus, and Anne Boyer to the medieval canon of anorexic saints—Clein calls for a feminism that doesn’t compel women to shrink their bodies to increase their value, urging radical acceptance of all our appetites instead: for food, connection, and love. A sharp, perceptive, and revelatory polemic about the external forces that shape our lives, Dead Weight is electrifying, unapologetically bold, and fiercely compassionate.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 27, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593825372
- File size: 329705 KB
- Duration: 11:26:53
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from January 8, 2024
Essayist Clein’s stellar debut collection probes the inciting factors and effects of eating disorders in young women. “Autobiography in It Girls” recounts how Clein imbibed damaging body standards from such tabloid stars as Kim Kardashian, whose Skims Solutionwear line “implies the customer’s natural form is a problem to be solved,” and Tyra Banks, whom Clein remembers watching on the reality show America’s Next Top Model (“As a viewer in the fourth grade, I saw a direct line between extreme slenderness and attention, admiration”). In “On Our Knees,” Clein meditates on how bulimia affects friendships between girls, discussing how Jane Fonda and her childhood friend used to binge and purge together, how the 2009 film Jennifer’s Body allegorized the disease as demonic possession, and how Clein herself found community in online eating disorder forums. Throughout, Clein envisions sisterhood as an antidote to sexist social expectations and imagines “a feminism of attention” in which women bear witness to each other’s stories. Clein skillfully weaves together pop culture anecdotes, personal reflections, and analysis of social media posts (“Starving in the Cyberverse” surveys the complicated motives behind pro–eating disorder content on TikTok and Instagram), in prose that’s vivid and sharp (“I learned to find something sacred in skeletons and something profane in the way my skin folded”). This announces Clein as a talent to watch. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House Literary. -
Starred review from September 13, 2024
Clein's debut collection of essays, some of which have previously appeared in print, brim with the wry self-awareness she calls disassociation feminism, but for all their wit, she shows unironic compassion for "her sisters"--the folks, regardless of gender, who've experienced girlhood like hers, yearning for a body "that looks as hungry as your heart is." Candid accounts of the author's experience with bulimia become midnight confessions in narrator Karissa Vacker's tone, balancing her clear professional enunciation with youthful urgency. When Clein was struggling with OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder, a diagnostic category that covers people with eating disorders who do not meet the criteria for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating), the anonymity of the internet was a haven for her and other sisters comparing notes; these quotations from mid-aughts Tumblr blogs and "pro-ana" forums appear in italics in the print text. Listeners can still pick up on their sourcing through the empathetic delivery and may even find themselves worrying when someone stops posting. Firsthand quotes emphasize the humanity behind the statistics, which Clein cites in droves alongside pop culture references to draw damning conclusions about the causes and (lack of) medical support for her underdiagnosed, unheard sisterhood. VERDICT The history and cultural perpetuation of disordered eating, especially in women, are deeply, compellingly explored. A must-buy.--Lauren Kage
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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