Body Traps: Breaking the Binds That Keep You from Feeling Good about Your Body by Judith Rodin

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Appearance, good looks, and fitness are now the measure of one's social worth, and one cupcake may spell the difference between confidence and despair. The founder of the Eating Disorders Clinic at Yale University examines why we fall into self-defeating, health-damaging obsessions, and how to escape them.

Publishers Weekly

This illuminating social ?since she's a psychologist? analysis of vanity may reduce readers' trips to the mirror or aerobics classes. Rodin, dean of the Graduate School at Yale and a psychologist specializing in eating disorders, does not discount the mounting pressures that drive women and, increasingly, men to be perfectionists about their looks. She concludes that physical appearance has become the social yardstick by which we measure a person's value and offers practical antidotes to this fixation: mental ? not physical exercises, right? exercises that help people better accept themselves, deal with eating disorders and develop more meaningful standards that enhance self-esteem. The author might have given more thought to communal as well as individual measures to counter empty, appearance-oriented values. Still, for those who want to throw off the tyranny of the mirror, this is the book. Illustrations not seen by PW. (June)