The Good Body

[Excerpt]
By Eve Ensler
(USA)

My body will be mine when I’m thin. I will eat a little, small bite. I will vanquish Ice Cream. I
will purge with green juice. I will see chocolates as poison and pasta as a form of self- punishment. I will
work not to feel full again. Always moving ride into a holy zones. Let me be hungry. Let me starve.
Please.
Bread is Satan. I stop eating bread. This is the same as not eating food. Four days in, a scrawny
actress friend tells me, “Eve, your stomach has nothing to do with diet” What? “It’s the change of life”
she says. “All you need is some testosterone.” I try to imagine what I would be like, totally bread
deprived and shot up with testosterone. “Serial killer” comes to mind.
I’m walking down a New York City street, and I catch a glimpse of this blond, pointy- breasted,
raisin-a-day stomached smiling girl on the cover of Cosmo magazine. She is there every minute,
somewhere in the world, smiling down on me, on all of us. She’s omnipresent. She’s the American
Dream, my personal nightmare. Pumped straight from the publishing power plant into the bloodstream of
our culture and neurosis. She is multiplying on every corner. She was passed through my mother’s milk
and so I don’t even know that I’m contaminated. Don’t get me wrong. I pick up the magazine. No, no, no.
It’s the possibility of being skinny good that keeps me buying. I discover a Starbucks maple walnut scone
expanding in me, creeping out. Flabby age leaking through the cracks. Big Macs, French fries, Pizza
Land, four helpings, can’t stop. My stomach is America. I want to drown in the cement. Obviously I’m
missing something. Maybe if I go find the woman who thought this up, she’ll reveal the secret.

GUIDE QUESTIONS:

1. Can you relate to the narrator? Why or why not?

2. How does the narrator feel about her body?
3. Why does the narrator feel that way about her body?
4. What is Cosmo? Why does she feel haunted by it?
5. What does Cosmo symbolize?
6. Explain the line, “She’s the American dream, my personal nightmare.”
7. What does she mean when she says, “My stomach is America”
8. Why is it ironic when we juxtapose her perception of “the American Dream” and that her
stomach is “America”?
9. Do you think that this body shaming is only applicable to women? Is it also applicable to men
10. Are her concerns similar to yours? Is this a problem in the Philippines, too?