An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics:

• Ten million Americans suffer from eating disorders.
• Seventy million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders.
• More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would pre fer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat.
• More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid.
• Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disease.

In Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her exposé reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple — and often dangerous — new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness."

With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed.

-- Jessica Weiner, advice columnist and author of Life Doesn't Begin 5 Pounds from Now

-- Jessica Weiner, advice columnist and author of Life Doesn't Begin 5 Pounds from Now

-- Brad Sachs, PhD, psychologist and author of When No One Understands, The Good Enough Teen, and The Good Enough Child

-- Wendy Shanker, author of The Fat Girl's Guide to Life

-- Sharron Dalton, Professor of Nutrition and Registered Dietitian, New York University and author of Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do About the Fatness Epidemic

-- Susie Orbach, author of Fat Is a Feminist Issue

-- Sharron Dalton, Professor of Nutrition and Registered Dietitian, New York University and author of Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do About the Fatness Epidemic

-- Adrienne Maree Brown, Executive Director, The Ruckus Society

Preface

Introduction

1. Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

2. From Good to Perfect: Feminism's Unintended Legacy

3. The Male Mirror: Her Father's Eyes

4. (Perfect) Girl Talk: Inside Today's Teenagers' Minds and Stomachs

5. Sex as a Cookie: Growing Up Hungry

6. The Revolution Still Will Not Be Televised: Pop, Hip-hop, Race, and the Media

7. What Men Want: The Truth About Attraction, Porn, and the Pursuit

8. All-or-Nothing Nation: Diets, Extreme Makeovers, and the Obesity Epidemic

9. Past the Dedication Is Disease: Athletic Obsession

10. The College Years: Body Obsession Boot Camp

11. The Real World Ain't No MTV: How the Body Becomes the Punching Bag for Post-College Disappointment

12. Spiritual Hunger

13. Stepping Through the Looking Glass: Our New Stories

Resource Guide

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Reader's Guide