Women's Bodies/Women's Lives

In the introduction to Women's Bodies/Women's Lives, the editors concur that women's bodies and women's lives are inseparable. Each can only be understood within the context of the other. To this end, the contributors have addressed several areas of importance and interest with the goal of encouraging others to further consideration of these meaningful issues.

Women's Bodies/Women's Lives explores issues surrounding disability, sexuality, self perception and body image. Women from a variety of backgrounds offer us insights into their struggle for self-acceptance, while other chapters explore alternatives that may release us from our dependence upon the established criteria of 'normalcy.' Thus, women negotiating these situations may be called upon to allow themselves greater value in a holistic (spiritual and psychological) sense. Roxana Ng's essay offers a fascinating overview of the potential of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to instill a sense of individual empowerment.

The personal becomes political as one of the editors, Vivienne Anderson, recounts her experience as a member of a subgroup described as the 'chronically ill.' Afflicted with the autoimmune disease of scleroderma, she recounts her illness as an experience of challenge and negotiation certainly, but with a perspective that can yet be instilled with meaning.

She admonishes feminist and social theorists to incorporate this important, but overlooked, subgroup into their research.

Women's Bodies/Women's Lives recognizes the importance of establishing a psychology of wellness, especially in the presence of challenging personal situations. Several of these essays convey an ongoing need to instill meaning in the presence of difficult circumstances: a sense of transcending situations by imposing one's will and recognizing the value of the experience through intricate patterns of meaning. These deeper undercurrents demand our attention in this book.

...a powerful and inspirational text ... useful, interesting, informative and provocative.

This collection of work aims to contribute to increased recognition of the need to develop knowledge about women's lived experiences that is based in an understanding of the interconnections between women's bodies and women's lives (2000: 24). The collection is based on papers presented at the 1997 conference of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. The result is a powerful and inspirational text that takes seriously women's bodily concerns, and addresses the materiality of women's bodies within a perspective that acknowledges social and discursive constraints.

As a woman involved in research on women's body image, and as someone teaching a course on Body Image and Health to MSc Health Psychology students, I have found this text useful, interesting, informative and provocative. The text certainly fulfils its main aim. All chapters are grounded in women's accounts of health, illness and body image. The book follows an approach that the authors describe as 'material-discursive' a perspective which allows a woman's lived experience to be understood as being rooted in, and arising from, a reality that includes how she lives, where she lives, and the kind of body she lives in' (2000:18). This perspective allows the authors to consider not only how society and culture construct the female body, but also how our bodily experiences are affected by the physical realities of living in a female body. This includes how embodied experiences such as ageing, body size, serious illness and disability shape our lives in positive and negative ways.

One of the most impressive and enjoyable aspects of this text is the focus throughout on women's accounts of embodied experiences. The text as a whole covers a variety of areas relating to women's bodies, health and lived experience: and a strong link is provided by the focus in all chapters on women's accounts of the impact of body image on the rest of their lives. ... All chapters are written in such a way that they are accessible to students (for those who want to incorporate it into undergraduate and postgraduate teaching). All chapters challenge traditional biomedical perspectives on women's health. This book should be recommended reading for anyone who is intending to be (or is already) involved in research or practice relating to women's health and body image.