Jennifer Lee Johnson

Thinandbeautiful.com

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I was very eager to dig into Thinandbeautiful.com. This young adult book was written by Liane Shaw, a teacher who once struggled with anorexia. The story follows Maddie, an anorexic teenage girl who finds herself sucked into the "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) website thinandbeautiful.com. Thinking no one understands how she feels about her weight and her body, Maddie pushes her friends and family away, finding her only comfort in the virtual arms of her online friends.

The story finds Maddie in a sort of rehab facility for eating disorders where she is told to keep a journal chronicling her descent into anorexia. The action shifts back and forth between the journal entries describing how Maddie fell into anorexic thinking (it all began when a doctor during a routine examination warns her to be careful about gaining "unwanted pounds") to the present day, her time in the rehab facility and her feelings that no one understands her "need" to be thinner. It's only when Maddie gets tragic news about one of her online friends that she begins to come to terms with the idea that she might have a problem.

Thinandbeautiful.com starts slowly. The journal format is difficult to get into, partially because it didn't really feel like the words of a seventeen-year-old girl. It read like the words of an adult trying to write as if she were a seventeen-year-old girl. In fact, it is reminiscent of the after school specials you might have watched in the late eighties.

Describing the descent into anorexia is difficult; the early parts of the book are slow and convoluted and don't really help to explain why someone would decide that their weight it isn't good enough, no matter how thin they may be. In fact, as much as the early pages of this book talk about Maddie's desire to be "thin and healthy," there is little mention of what her actual weight currently is or what she thinks it should be. Her goal is simply to be thinner, but there is little behind that desire. Her desire to be thin is fueled only by a vague notion that "thinner is better," not any idea about how her life will be different when she reaches her undefined magic goal weight.

I’m not saying there has to be a rational reason behind an irrational way of thinking, but I do think eating disorders are usually fueled by more than just a desire to be thin. It’s a perception that something else is lacking or that the thinness will help the sufferer achieve something, such as control. That’s why I found Maddie’s struggle difficult to identify with and understand.

About halfway through the book, once the journal entries reach their apex and Maddie really starts to confront her feelings about her family and her online friends, the story starts to resonate. You may not understand why Maddie has an eating disorder, but you do understand she’s hurting and that she’s struggling to find a way to conquer her illness. It is in the last third of the book that you feel the author's connection to the material; the words finally start to ring true and the book becomes genuine, just when it matters most.

However, Thinandbeautiful.com is a case of too little, too late. Those final glimpses aren't enough to recommend the book. Someone struggling with the same thoughts as Maddie may find Thinandbeautiful.com comforting, but those trying to understand why someone would starve themselves will find this novel lacking.

Written by: Jennifer Lee Johnson, January 19th 2010

Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:14:00 +0000

By Tiantian Zheng

University Of Minnesota Press

It’s easy to disregard sex workers, to relegate them to the margins of society and pretend that they don’t exist in the perfect little world that is uncomfortable with the idea that there are members of our population who have sex for money. Often considered an untouchable part of society (no matter what culture we’re talking about), sex workers are often overlooked in anthropological or sociological studies with many researchers content to look at the more accepted members of society rather than delve into the seedy underbelly of urban life. Luckily, the sex workers of Dalian, a bustling metropolis in Northern China, had their voices heard by Tiantian Zheng who writes a beautiful study of the realities facing these women.

Red Lights shows that not only are these women a vital part of society, their work is inextricably entwined with China’s rapidly changing economy. The hostesses that Zheng follows are not the stereotypical submissive Asian sex goddesses that are so often a fixture of the porn industry. Nor are they unwilling sexual slaves, sold into a world they don’t understand. Many of the women enter the trade willingly, seeing hostessing as the only way to make enough money to support their families back in the rural villages that they call home. But, this is not a female empowerment story either.

Zheng does an excellent job of showing the reader all sides of the story. The struggle to stay safe in an incredibly unsafe profession. The violence and fear that are often a daily part of life for the hostesses. The conflict between their new lives in the city and their rural pasts and the difficulty of “going home again” when the city has hardened the hostesses view of life and the way the world works. The thrill of making their money versus the shame of a profession that isn’t looked kindly upon by family—even though for some of these families, it’s often the only source of income.

Like so many decisions in life, the decision of these women to become hostesses and to willingly serve men isn’t an easy one and it isn’t easily understood. This book adequately portrays these women as real people. We learn how they feel about their jobs, how they relate to their families and how they survive in the dangerous world of sex work. Unsurprisingly, the real world is quite a bit more complex than the stereotypes let on.

Given the serious nature of the subject, one would expect Red Lights to be a tough read. However, Zheng handles her subjects with a delicate touch, showing readers the hostesses’ pain, as well as their happiness. While the lengthy breakdowns of the Chinese economy and the effect of decades of socialist beliefs on the Chinese citizen may be a little too long and too in-depth for a casual reader, overall I found the book engrossing. The hostesses’ stories scattered throughout added a human element to what could have easily been an overly academic tome. Those interested in the social ramifications of sex work or the effect the post-Socialist economy has on Chinese women should pick up this book.

Written by: Jennifer Lee Johnson, August 31st 2009

The Last Secret

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:50:00 +0000

By Mary McGarry Morris

Shay Areheart Books

Secrets and lies. Can you ever really escape your past? Or do the mistakes you make when you’re young haunt you forever?

Those are the questions haunting Nora Hammond, the protagonist of The Last Secret. Nora is the stereotypical rich, suburban socialite, the woman who has everything; basically, she's the prototypical victim for a literary thriller. Nora's picture-perfect life begins to crack into pieces when she learns that her husband has been having an affair for years with one of her closest friends. As Nora struggles to hold the pieces of her life together—attempting to save her marriage and protect her children from the pain of a broken family—she is confronted head on by a visitor from her past, one who holds a deadly secret that threatens to tear Nora's life apart.

While this may sound like a cookie-cutter plot from nearly any thriller, it is elevated by Mary McGarry Morris' writing. She approaches her characters with a deft, careful pen, never allowing the unusual situations or emotional tension to be anything but heartfelt and realistic. A lesser writer would fall into melodramatic traps, but Morris keeps the feelings of love and betrayal raw and honest. Be prepared: if you’ve ever experienced the heartbreak of unfaithfulness from a loved one, this story will bring back those feelings of bitterness and delusion.

Nora Hammond is a character you can believe in, stymied by the turns her life has taken and, like many of us would be, unsure of how to save things that may not be capable of being saved. I found myself rooting for her, hoping she'd find a way to fix her perfect life, but ultimately knowing that things can't always be perfect and maybe there’s a reason that perfection only happens in lighter fiction.

In this story, perfection fades into reality with a shocking series of twists and turns you can’t help but devour quickly.

Written by: Jennifer Lee Johnson, April 5th 2009