Rosanne Olson

A beautiful and inspiring collection of fifty-four photographic portraits, each paired with a brief response about self-image and the body from the woman depicted. This Is Who I Am presents a diverse group, with women of African, Asian, and Euro-American backgrounds, and autobiographical comments ranging from positive confidence to insecure unhappiness. Many different kinds of bodies are represented, from very thin to very fat, young to old, healthy to ill.

I found much here to identify with, much to admire, and am grateful to the friend who pointed it out to me. Many of the stories were very moving, from Gretchen, a breast-cancer survivor who always liked the strength of her body and chose not to have reconstructive surgery; to Reachel, a two-time rape victim who is determined not to "live timidly, to be afraid or ashamed." Some of the responses were quite humorous, as when eighty-year-old Constance confessed that she dealt with some of her more insufferable male colleagues over the years by imagining them pregnant; or seventy-four-year-old Dee, who wondered how much she'd weigh if she still had her tonsils, adenoids, appendix, uterus, one ovary, and the two inches of height she lost to osteoporosis.

Loti, one of the African-American women surveyed, said she thought that body-image problems were part of a more Eurocentric world-view; but many of the Asian woman in the collection reported that American ideals of feminine beauty were not as stringent as those from their mother cultures. Whatever its cultural origin(s) however, the unhappiness caused by unattainable ideals of feminine beauty quickly becomes clear to the reader, as almost every woman surveyed was in some fashion dissatisfied with her body, even the very thin ones. This is an effective and timely reminder that an image-based sense of self is NEVER a secure one, because the ideal to which we are all meant to aspire is an illusion.… (més)