Prologue
Like a great many women, I am a product of a culture that says thin is better, blond is beautiful and buxom is best.
From as early as I can remember, my mother, her friends, my grandmother, governesses, my sister—all the women who surrounded me— talked anxiously about the pros and cons of their physiques. Hefty thighs, small breasts, a biggish bottom—there was always some perceived imperfection to focus anxieties on. None of them seemed happy the way they were, which bewildered me because the way they were seemed fine to my young eyes.
In pursuit of the "feminine ideal"—exemplified by voluptuous film stars and skinny fashion models—women, it seemed, were even prepared to do violence to themselves. My mother, for example, who was a rather slender, beautiful woman, was terrified of getting fat. She once said that if she ever gained weight she'd have the excess flesh cut off! I remember a friend of hers talking about being injected with the urine of pregnant cows, which was reputed to make fat dissolve. %
Maybe I simply wasn't privy to their more intimate conversations, but I don't remember the men in my life being as concerned about how they looked. Not with the same angst at any rate. If anything, they seemed more interested in performance: making the team, doing the job, being brave. The message that came across was clear: men were judged by their accomplishments, women by their looks.
Like many young girls, I internalized this message and, in an effort to conform to the sought-after female image, I abused my health, starved my body, and ingested heaven-knows-what chemical drugs. I understood very little about how my body functioned, and what it needed to be healthy and strong. I depended on doctors to cure me, but never relied on myself to stay well.
It wasn't until I was thirty, and pregnant for the first time, that I began to change the way I treated myself. As the baby grew inside me, I began to realize my body needed to be listened to and strengthened, not ignored and weakened. I discovered that with common sense, a bit of studying and a good deal of commitment, I could create for myself a new approach to health and beauty: an approach which would not only make me look better, but would enable me to handle the intense, multi-faceted life I live with more clarity and balance, to say nothing of more energy and endurance.
I decided to write this book, not because I consider myself an expert in the pedigreed sense, but because I want to share what I've had to learn the hard way with other women. I only wish someone had shared these things with me earlier in my life. That's why I've dedicated this book to my daughter.
JANE FONDA