Catch up with my latest column for The Daily Beast: women, ageing and the Botox insanity...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/25/nicole-kidman-botox-insanity-why-all-women-lose-out-when-we-obsess-over-stars-faces.html

...how do we learn to love our bodies for what they do, rather than how they look? How can we value ourselves more, not less, as we age? I don’t have the answer (but I’m pretty sure it’s not cosmetic surgery). We need to challenge the external messages and the internal voice which tells us we’re ugly, old or fat. In the words of Naomi Wolf: “She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.”

off to la belle France...

This week's column for The Daily Beast!

Psychologists View Both Divorce and Marriage as Major Life Stresses At the top of psychology’s gold standard scale of stressful life events: falling in love…and falling out.

 

What have been the most traumatic events of your life—and how do you cope?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/psychologists-view-both-divorce-and-marriage-as-major-life-stresses.html

I enjoyed giving the keynote speech at Newcastle University's Mind the Gap Mental Health Conference this weekend. a few photographic snippets...

 

 

Ahead of the US publication of The Ministry of Thin we just received this beautiful review from the prestigious Booklist/American Library Association...

The Ministry of Thin: How the Pursuit of Perfection Got Out of Control.
Woolf, Emma (Author)
Jun 2014. 304 p. Soft Skull, paperback,  $15.95 

Woolf (An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia, 2013), a British newspaper columnist and the great-niece of Virginia Woolf,  continues her chronicle of anorexia, moving from the personal to the societal. Her chapter headings here include “The Ministry of Fashion and Beauty” (“fabric hangs well on frames which are straight up-and-down”), “The Ministry of Detox” (“surely irrigation is for fields, not human beings!”), “The Ministry of Sex” (one survey found that 51-percent of women would give up sex for a year if it meant they could be skinny), and “The Ministry of Surgery” (worldwide, more than 17-million cosmetic surgery procedures take place every year). Much of the information she shares is disheartening. One study reported that one in six women would choose to be blind rather than obese. Yet Woolf uses her distinctively conversational voice and nimble sense of humor to keep her arresting insights into our obsession with thinness as well as modern-day feminism and fertility from getting too downbeat. Candid, revealing, and invaluable. 

— Karen Springen

This Summer, Get Thee To London For The RSC’s Henry IV... a double-dose of culture this week, via Matisse and Shakespeare and Radio 4's Saturday Review. My latest column for The Daily Beast.



http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/28/this-summer-get-thee-to-london-for-the-rsc-s-henry-iv.html

THE MINISTRY OF THIN: US EDITION

KIRKUS REVIEW

 A thorough analysis of our weight-obsessed culture.

“Disliking one’s body and wanting to be thinner is the new normal,” writes British newspaper columnist and BBC TV presenter Woolf (An Apple A Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia, 2013) in her colloquial scrutiny of contemporary society’s fixation on weight, appearance and the desire for outward perfection. She knows this slippery terrain well: Her bracing memoir chronicling a decadelong physical and psychological preoccupation with food is well-referenced here in chapters tackling the many facets of mild to major body dysmorphia.

As her great niece, the author quotes Virginia Woolf casually throughout well-researched sections (“ministries”) exploring the social connotations and demonizations of food, tedious diets (“the triumph of hope over experience”), fitness, sex and the concept of aging gracefully without the trendiest plastic surgeries. Along the way, she shares her personal indulgences (baked beans and frozen yogurt) and a marked disenchantment with increasing societal (and media) pressures placed on women to look, act, eat and feel a way that is often at odds with their goal of happiness and healthfulness. Less appealing are mildly catty approaches to celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Kate Middleton, Liz Hurley and others; Woolf’s angle may prove nettlesome to readers eager for less judgment and more confidence boosting.

Of particular interest is the author’s presentation of a ground-breaking 1940s food deprivation study, the findings of which offered dramatic insights as to how starvation alters the body and the mind simultaneously. Vividly rendered and creatively explored, Woolf’s text encourages nonconformity and individuality on many fronts, even as her burning query remains, “if being thin is the answer, what’s the question?”

Relevant, engrossing and sure to help liberate those in the throes of a weight battle or lifestyle crisis.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-woolf/the-ministry-of-thin/