Before reading, I had seen complaints on review sites about how the book could have been more polished. Thing is, I liked the open brutalness of Unbearable Lightness. For me this bio read like it had been written by Portia De Rossi instead of a ghost writter. She doesn't hold back, even including some pictures of herself whilst at her thinnest, detailing all the health problems she had accumulated from her restricted diet and excessive ammounts of exercise.
What scared me most when reading was the thought, 'This is the way that my mind works'. The part that resonated the most was about her thighs being too fat and no matter how emaciated she got, whenever she looked down, to her, her thighs were always too big. That's the voice inside my head. A couple of years ago I had lost some weight, at the time I didn't notice and still felt that I needed to drop half a stone so that my thighs would finally be skinny. Now looking back on photo's I see that my thighs were considerably skinnier than they are today, and I realise that maybe I'll never be happy with my body.
What I've learnt from reading Unbearable Lightness is that I'm lucky that I'm lazy. I could never commit to that harsh regieme of depriving mysef of food as I love it too much. Yet this is a reality for so many girls who push their bodies to the limits thinking that if they're thin then all their problems would dissapear; or that they are finally in control. This was an eye-opening read and I'm glad that DeRossi goes into detail about her recovery, highlighting that there is no quick-fix for this disease, and shows that only you can save yourself.
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