ABSTRACT
This chapter provides how Louise O'Neill's dystopian novel confronts the cultural obsession with and anxieties about female agency, sexuality, and physical appearance. It examines how political pressures from the Zone to achieve an extremely thin body increase the likelihood and severity of eating disorders as well as other self-destructive behaviours. The chapter considers how other female characters in this novel contribute to this intense focus on the body: the "chastities", who teach at the School, and the other eves, who remind Freida she must remain physically and emotionally detached in order to be attractive to men. It investigates the competing fates of reproductive companions, sexualized concubines, and asexual chastities. The chapter focuses on freida's recognition of her own powerlessness and her decline into a state of oblivion and utter loss of control. freida's tragic awakening to her own defenselessness speaks to the society's objectification and punishment of female bodies as a way of proving self-worth, attractiveness, and success.
