"Am I Thin Enough Yet?"
By Sharlene Hesse-Biber,
Oxford, 256 pp
By STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
In the world of "Am I Thin Enough Yet?", Sharlene Hesse-Biber's study of what she calls the "Cult of Thinness," a goofy hairbrush ad becomes the enemy of women's sense of self-worth and ambition; food ads take control of the featherbrained women who do the family grocery shopping, forcing them to load their shopping carts with equal quantities of Ho-hos and UltraSlimfast; and therapy for children of parents obsessed with their offspring's weight and appearance isn't likely to do much good, because society's evil messages will still be whipping around us all like an ill wind. In the world of "Am I Thin Enough Yet?," if you're born with a vagina, you may as well just throw in the towel: you can't resist advertising, you're culturally predisposed to have a serious Twinkie problem, and not even therapy can help you. You've come a long way, baby, and you still don't know diddley-squat.
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