Mrs Egeland’s Latest Read Vol.II

It’s been a while since I last posted anything of this series, mostly because I haven’t read any book that I felt would be of interest to you all.

However, my mother was kind enough to send me a book that I think you will all be interested in. This might get deep and insightful, be warned.

HUNGRY by Crystal Renn

A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves.

What the Blurb Says: Hungry charts the rise, fall and rise of Crystal Renn, offering a behind the scenes peek into the modelling industry, as well as a trenchant look at our weight obsessed culture. In this testament to the power of authenticity, Renn illustrates the ways in which the fashion industry is slowly changing and exposes the cold truths about size and sizeism. An inspiring and cautionary tale, Hungry will resonate with anyone who has battled society’s small-minded definitions of beauty.

I live in a country where I feel overweight, judged by others for not conforming to their national identity and surrounded by obsessive exercisers. That is my personal feelings on the matter! Part of that is my own feelings of insecurity, and nothing to do with the place I live.

This book is also about a woman’s insecurity, that rightly or wrongly, intentionally or not was exploited so that she became an anorexic, exercise bulimic. She was told that she was beautiful but too fat, she had to lose weight and that coupled with her own obsessive personality sent her down a road of starvation and unhappiness. Thankfully she found the strength to eat, to learn to love her natural shape and to stop caring about thigh gap or no thigh gap. 

Its a tale of success, of the perils of the fashion industry and Crystal Renn’s journey from emaciated anorexic to a healthy and successful plus-sized model.

Lessons I Took From It

I think it teaches what we’ve really always known that natural is beautiful and if you are naturally thin then good for you and if you are naturally curvy then good for you too. No one should be forced to being something they’re not even if its themselves doing the forcing. Sometimes we forget that.

It also shows that the beauty industry can be ruthless and extremist.

I can identify with her story because although I have never been anorexic, I am not naturally thin and I have been pressured into thinking that that was wrong, that I should look like everyone else, that I should strive to have tiny thighs with a gap between them. That somehow, because I wasn’t skinny, because I enjoy eating and I don’t go on punishing workouts five days a week I was bad, unhealthy, unattractive. This world is full of judgements and that can get inside your head, even when you have been raised to love yourself and your body, and without diligent hard work to get those extreme ideals out of your head its hard to feel good about who you are, and what you look like.

Everyone should love who they are and what they look like! Its not a privilege of the beautiful, its a right of all mankind!

Well that’s my two pence worth.

Until next time,

Don’t forget to follow and subscribe.

Davita