The hatred and rage at the imperfect, unfit self can be the flip side of the quest for a perfected, controlled body, achieved through the right combination of workouts, diets, surgeries, and assorted wellness interventions. And it can grow more intense as we engage in another kind of body doubling: aging, that process of witnessing the changing of our face and form via such ravages as pregnancy, sleepless parenting, stress, pollution, and just being alive for enough revolutions around the sun. "Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre," Philip Roth, my problematic king of doppelgangers, observed.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 579