Size Zero: My Life as a Disappearing Model
Written by Victoire Dauxerre
Narrated by Emily Lucienne
4/5
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About this audiobook
Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre’s story started like a teenager’s fantasy: within months she was strutting down the catwalks of New York’s major fashion shows. But when fashion executives and photographers forced her to become ever thinner, Victoire’s dream became a nightmare.
In Size Zero Victoire unflinchingly exposes the ugly face of fashion and details her personal battle with anorexia nervosa and bulimia with painful honesty. A shocking indictment of the pressures our society puts on young women, her story will give strength to anyone trying to overcome or understand the increasingly prevalent problem of eating disorders.
‘Unique and persuasive … bravely, Dauxerre names names – even the big ones’ Sunday Times
‘It is rare for someone to blow the whistle so spectacularly as Dauxerre. Hopefully her book will be a force for good’ Evening Standard
Written with Valérie Péronnet.
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Reviews for Size Zero
19 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5First up: this book is triggering, specifically by including extensive discussion of weight and by describing (at length) eating disorder behaviors. This does not affect my rating of the book, but I do want to put that out there. The author also states that taking laxatives controls her weight due to blocking calorie absorption, and that is not true. Those are two caveats for anyone who is concerned with eating disorder triggers.I don't have a copy of the original French, but the translation appears to be at fault for what would otherwise be extremely bad writing. There are numerous typos and expressions that are incomprehensible. I get the sense that a lot of idiomatic expressions were translated literally.Though fashion modeling and anorexia are often linked together in the media, there's not a lot of autobiographical detail to supplement the connection. Dauxerre provides some insight, but not much. There is not much new information here: models eat very little, and people in the industry encourage that. Most of the book drags out this conceit. Toward the end, the narrative improves a great deal when Dauxerre describes how the "bastard voice" takes over not only her behavior but also her personality: "I had become the little voice. Now I was the bitch" (p. 219). The way she details the lowest point of her disorder is eloquent: "It was as if I were no longer me, and in fact I wasn't me any more. I wasn't even that bastard voice-- I wasn't anybody at all anymore, and it was somehow so very soothing . . ." (p. 221).Overall, though, the author lacks insight into herself or her behaviors. As I stated above, she admits to using laxatives for weight loss, which she attributes to keeping calories from being absorbed. That's a good example of lack of insight, as the weight lost is fluid, not "actual weight." It's an extremely dangerous behavior, but she does not clarify that. She illustrates fairly well how the disorder affects her thoughts, behavior, and physical self, but there's not much beyond just recounting that X happened, Y happened, Z happened. She complains often that other models are unpleasant, but there's no reflection on how their attitudes might be shaped by something similar to what she's experiencing.She's quite vocal about how she was a positive, kind person in a world that's largely narcissistic and callous. That very well may be true, but she drives that point home a few too many times. She conveys a very black and white view of the high fashion world: it's populated by devils and angels. The book as a whole lacks exploration of nuances.I found it off-putting that "the Russian girls" are always a target of her rage and descriptions of nasty behavior. I'm not clear if she's using "Russian" to describe Eastern European women in general, though I suspect that's the case. There's enough of this to suggest xenophobia.Eating disorders do tend to exhibit as extremes and black-and-white thinking, but insightful writing involves neither of these. Recommended only for people extremely interested in high-fashion gossip or in reading absolutely every eating disorder book out there.