Read this for my therapist book club after a therapist recommended it to me many years ago. It was…okay. I think there is a lot of wisdom here, and I deeply resonated with having been someone who saw the truth of the toxicity around her and had to shove that truth away in order to survive. I resonated with a lot of it actually, and actually have implemented a few of the suggestions into my ED recovery. 

However, the gendered language around “the feminine” and “the masculine,” as though these are universal archetypes with concrete, even scientific, meaning drove. me. insane. There is no such thing as “THE FEMININE.” The differences in biological men's brains and biological women's brains have nothing to do with personality characteristics. The just as easily could have gotten her point across by saying “so-called masculine traits like brashness are often exiled by women in society in order to fit in.” Not to mention, cisgender women are not the only people who get eating disorders! Eating disorders are, unfortunately, deeply prevalent in the trans community - where do they fit in in Johnston’s construct of eating disorder recovery? 

And finally…the weight stigma. I will scream this from the rooftops: You cannot be an ethical ED therapist if you stigmatize fatness. You just can’t. 

I think this book is great for cisgender women who are fine with stereotyped views on gender, who want to be thin, and just want to reclaim some power in those very limited viewpoints. Otherwise, I recommend The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, and Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.