"My body was never the problem; my perception of my body was the problem."
"You are a 'human being' not a 'human being looked at'"
"My body was never the problem; my perception of my body was the problem." "You are a 'human being' not a 'human being looked at'"
5/5 stars
I kept my notes app open the entire time I read More Than a Body by Lindsay and Lexie Kite. Few books have articulated so clearly the lived experience of women navigating the impossible tension between caring for our bodies and being conditioned to care most about how they look.
The Kites have an extraordinary ability to give language to what many of us have felt but struggled to name—the way our culture trains us to view our bodies as ornaments rather than instruments of strength, vitality, and power. Their words challenged and expanded my understanding of what it means to live at home in one’s body.
This book also held up several difficult but necessary mirrors, prompting me to confront not only how I see myself but also the subtle ways I’ve internalized appearance-based values in how I perceive others. It’s difficult to distill all that I learned from this book, so instead, here are a few quotes that resonated most deeply:
Favorite Quotes
“Positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks.”
“Girls learn the most important thing about them is how they look. Boys learn the most important thing about girls is how they look. Girls look at themselves. Boys look at girls. Girls are held responsible for boys looking at them. Girls change how they look. Boys keep looking. The problem isn’t how girls look. The problem is how everyone looks at girls.”
“When we stop giving beauty the power to make us we stop giving it the power to break us”
““We will always advocate for more diverse representations of all women in media, but we’ll know progress is happening when those same women aren’t required to take off their clothes in order to be included. We need substantial, regular roles and representation for women of all shapes, sizes, colors and ability levels that do not revolve around how they look, their weight loss journies, or how sexually appealing they can be. We want inclusion and representation not equal opportunity objectification.””