About a week and a half ago, I reviewed the book, Love Ellen (post) by Betty DeGeneres, mother of TV talk show host and lesbian icon, Ellen DeGeneres. In the interest of granting equal print, today I’m reviewing the book, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
The book was published in November of 2010, after her well publicized marriage to the superstar that is Ellen. It chronicles her life from her early Hollywood career up through her marriage to Ellen, but it’s focus is both her long battle with anorexia and her internal struggle with the knowledge that she was gay. In fact, the two struggles are somewhat intertwined.
Her account of her battle with anorexia is truly a remarkable, horrifying and cautionary tale. She walks the reader in depth into the throes of her disease. Her book puts a very real spin on the Hollywood ideal of what a woman “should” look like and how far some women go to achieve that ideal to keep working. Portia is a skilled writer and she conveys everything she was doing and feeling very well. Too well, some would say.
Portia’s struggle with anorexia wasn’t all about the demand for thin actresses. She had the same internal anguish most of us do when we come to the realization that we’re gay. She was closeted for the sake of her acting career because she knew that the white hot spotlight of Hollywood would cease to shine on her if she came out. Being gay, she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin, overweight or not (though she never was) and so she obsessed about her appearance, the one thing she could control.
The book ends with Portia’s recovery and ultimate happiness. I would have liked a bit more about how she fought and beat the disease and how she determined to move on with an open, gay life free of anorexia.
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