Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with women from various socio-economic backgrounds, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters lays bare a stark new world culture of eating disorders, food and body issues that affect virtually all of today’s women. Though eating disorders first came to be recognised about 25 years ago, Martin’s book shows how the issues surrounding body image have only become more complex, more dangerous and more difficult to treat. The current ‘epidemic’ of obesity is simply the flip side of the same coin. Drawing from interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, and other experts, Courtney Martin’s book reveals a whole new generation of ‘perfect girls’ who have been conditioned from a young age to over-achieve, self-sacrifice, and hate their own bodies – this, despite being raised by a generation of mothers well-versed in the lessons of feminism. Filled with vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters is both a shocking expos and call to arms, offering hope for a new beginning, one young girl at a time.