I had this in my other post on the June issue of Oprah, but there was just so much good stuff in it, I decided to make it a separate post.

There’s a great article by Eve Ensler on her new play, The Good Body. Here are some highlights:

[The Good Body] is an examination of what we women do to our bodies: the sucking, scrubbing, … flattening, and starving we do in order to be good, to be loved, to be accepted.

I have stood on stages in the center of this country, in the center of hundreds of women and men. In the center of a pulsing, malignant self-hatred that runs through America–a deep current in the psyche and body of the country that tells us we are not good enough, thin enough, rich enough, … pretty enough. A current that has poisoned and isolated Americans, kept us locked up in our homes and minds, robbed us of voice, of power, of connection. …

Body hatred has been defined as a personal problem. But it is a social problem, a political problem, a cultural problem. It is not accidental or incidental. It is induced, injected, and programmed. We Americans like to tell ourselves we are free, but we are imprisoned. We are controlled by a corporate media that decrees what we should look like and then determines what we have to buy in order to get and keep that look. …

The antidote to body hatred is social activism and community. None of us alone is strong enough to stand up to the daily onslaught of propaganda, imagery, programming, seduction, and mind control. … It requires a movement.

I love this. It’s very much in line with what I like about fat acceptance. And I appreciate the link to media and corporate America. As an aside, I also have Hostile Takeover sitting on my coffee table right now. it has nothing to do with body image, but everything to do with how the best interests of corporations and the general populace are now at odds. (Who knew Big Brother would turn out to be corporations?)

But what I really like in what Ensler said is that it’s essentially FA without the guilt:

I am not suggesting we abandon care for our bodies. On the contrary, I believe in honoring our bodies, caring for them deeply. But caring is very different from obsessing, fixing, and mutilating. I think we all know the difference in our beings. …

Love your body. Take back the world.

I like the implicit responsibility in knowing “the difference in our beings.” In other words, maybe one person’s caring may look like another person’s fixing. Hmmm.

Now that her tour is over, I’m betting that Oprah will have her on a future show. Or at least I hope she will! But it turns out that there is also book, The Good Body, available at Amazon (just $13…such a deal :).

You can also read a note from Eve on the Good Body site.