The Good Body cover art

The Good Body

Preview

Try for $0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Good Body

Written by: Eve Ensler
Narrated by: Eve Ensler
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $11.63

Buy Now for $11.63

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Botox, bulimia, breast implants: Eve Ensler, author of the international sensation The Vagina Monologues, is back, this time to rock our view of what it means to have a "good body".

"In the 1950s," Eve writes, girls were "pretty, perky. They had a blond Clairol wave in their hair. They wore girdles and waist-pinchers....In recent years good girls join the army. They climb the corporate ladder. They go to the gym....They wear painful pointy shoes. They don't eat too much. They....don't eat at all. They stay perfect. They stay thin. I could never be good."

The Good Body starts with Eve's tortured relationship with her own "post-forties" stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the "flabby badness" out. As Eve hungrily seeks self-acceptance, she is joined by the voices of women from L.A. to Kabul, whose obsessions are also laid bare: A young Latina candidly critiques her humiliating "spread", a stubborn layer of fat that she calls "a second pair of thighs". The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed, inch by inch, by her "perfectionist" husband. An aging magazine executive, still haunted by her mother's long-ago criticism, describes her desperate pursuit of youth as she relentlessly does sit-ups.

Along the way, Eve also introduces us to women who have found a hard-won peace with their bodies: an African mother who celebrates each individual body as signs of nature's diversity; an Indian woman who transcends "treadmill mania" and delights in her plump cheeks and curves; and a veiled Afghani woman who is willing to risk imprisonment for a taste of ice cream. These are just a few of the inspiring stories woven through Eve's global journey from obsession to enlightenment. Ultimately, these monologues become a personal wake-up call from Eve to love the "good bodies" we inhabit.

©2004 Eve Ensler (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Drama & Plays Gender Studies Personal Success Marriage Physical Exercise
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What the critics say

"The Good Body is more forthrightly funny than the often somber Vagina Monologues." (The New York Times)

What listeners say about The Good Body

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.