This review is spoiler free.
“Hating out bodies is something that we can learn, and it sure as hell is something that we can unlearn.”
Published: 2018, by Random House Audiobooks.
Length: 10hrs 16mins (Narrated by Megan Jayne Crabbe)
Format: Audio-book
Genre: Nonfiction, Feminism, Self Help, Health, Mental Health
Contains: Body Image, Calorie Counting, Eating Disorders, Anorexia, Bulimia, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Psychiatric Hospitals
‘Body Positive Power: How to stop dieting, make peace with your body and live’ is a self help guide written by Instagram Influencer @bodyposipanda, to help those struggling with body image to embrace the Body Positivity movement. Convinced that our bodies aren’t the problem, Megan Jayne Crabbe leads you through the facts and figures to find happiness with who you are.
As someone who struggles with my Body Image, and as a follower of Megan Jayne Crabbe, I thought it was about time I delved into this audio-book and try my best to discover the secrets of Body Positivity. However, I was a little underwhelmed.
I love Megan Jayne Crabbe, having followed her on Instagram for a while now and I always perk up when I see her posts on my feed. The Body Positivity movement is amazing, and very much so needed, and it’s great to finally see so much representation being recognised nowadays. However, there was a few issues with this book that I simply couldn’t skim across and ignore.
The majority of this guide is focused more on the media, and exactly why we hate our bodies so much. There’s a huge focus on the development of eating disorders due to this, yet the other causes of them get shadowed away from. Yes, I can understand that our culture encourages us to hate ourselves for profit, and it’s definitely something that we should be focusing on limiting for future generations, however, that is not the sole reason for these problems within society. Eating disorders are developed for a vast number of reasons, and only speaking of them as due to the media is an incredibly uneducated response; we need to give as much knowledge as possible to those who have no experience of them, and blaming it solely on the media will do more damage than good. I’m not stating that beauty culture has no reasoning behind it, that’s far from the truth, but I feel as if it’s much more complicated than Crabbe was making it seem in this guide.
The shortest chapter of this novel focusing on how to finally make peace with your body, which I believe is arguably the most important chapter within this self help guide; it’s the title after all. However, there wasn’t much focus on that being the case, merely reciting the statistics from previous chapters, leaving me left thinking “Now what?” rather than enlightened on exactly how to achieve body positivity.
Overall, I was left feeling a little disappointed in this read. It was inspiring at times, but I feel as if the title is a little misleading, and there was way to much concentration on the media being the cause when there is so much more that goes into the creation of body image issues.
3/5
A Little Fool Reads 