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The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
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Music Books > Bachelor Girl > Item 6
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The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
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by Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Sales Rank: 45196
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List Price: $14.95
$10.17
At Amazon
on 12-29-2007.
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Features
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage September 1, 1998
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679735291
ISBN-13: 978-0679735298
Product Dimensions:
7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
Product Review
Adolescent girls today face the issues girls have always faced: "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to be?" Unfortunately their answers, now more than ever before, revolve around the body rather than the mind, heart, or soul. "The body is at the heart of the crisis that [Carol] Gilligan, [Mary] Pipher, and others describe. The fact that American girls now make the body their central project is not an accident or a curiosity," writes Brumberg, "it is a symptom of historical changes that are only now beginning to be understood." The historical photos, thorough research, and political even-handedness make this a book of worth and sincerity. The Body Project is also comforting for women, adolescents, parents, lesbians, and male lovers of women--helping us sort out the roots of female insecurities, obsessions, and angst.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
YA?From the most private method of sanitary protection to the most intimate place to pierce one's body, this history of feminine hygiene and fashion records young women's obsession with looks and how society has channeled and manipulated them to reflect the values of the times. From diaries, journal articles, advertising, and doctor's records, the author has amassed information about mainly middle-class American girls of the 19th and 20th century that shows how they have been raised first by overprotective, repressive adults to play a submissive role in society and, more recently, to be consumers in an ever-widening marketplace. From skin cream to dieting to figure-altering garments and body piercing, physical enhancements in the last 200 years are reported. Beginning with an account of Abigail Adams's concern about the early maturation of her 11-year-old granddaughter in 1806 and progressing to descriptions of today's independent young women grappling with numerous options of dress and sexual conduct, a thought-provoking social history is revealed. The author begins and ends her treatise with a passionate argument for advocacy for today's girls who are preyed upon by the media and allowed dangerous sexual options without emotional maturity and are lacking the protective umbrella of moral guidelines and supervision provided by earlier generations. Young women will enjoy the numerous photos and will have a giggle about the corsets and belts of earlier times. A fine choice for mother-daughter book groups.?Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Joan Jacobs Brumberg has attracted her share of controversy for this book and her earlier work in the field of "body history". The criticism lies largely in the fact that Brumberg does not fit easily into the pro-sex feminist/anti-sex traditionalist dichotomy that characterizes far too much of the discussion about young women's sexuality and body identity these days. Using diary excerpts as her core sources of evidence, Brumberg charts the changing relationship between young women and their bodies over the past century and a half. Though the material on the 19th and early 20th century is fascinating, useful, and accessible for a general audience, the high point of the book comes over the final two chapters, which cover the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. Unlike cultural conservatives in the feminist world (think Christina Hoff Summers or Gertrude Himmelfarb), Brumberg is deeply appreciative of the enormous benefits of the sexual revolution, especially in terms of the availability of sexual information and the growing willingness of our society to see women as active sexual agents. On the other hand (unlike a Naomi Wolf), she is troubled (and rightly so, in my opinion) by the eagerness of our culture to sexualize and exploit the bodies of adolescent women who are simply not prepared to cope with the emotional, social, and physical impact of early sexual experience. In her final chapter, Brumberg writes: "Although I applaud the social freedom and economic opportunities enjoyed by the current cohort of high school and college girls, their "autonomy" seems to be oversold, if not illusory." Young men tend to only applaud young women's autonomy when it leads to sexual availability, not when it leads to the decision to postpone sex; advertisers certainly only applaud young women's autonomy when it leads them to buy their products, not when it leads them to question consumerism itself. The more I hear the stories of my female students, of all races and socio-economic backgrounds, about the prevalence of eating disorders, their anxiety about their own bodies, and the pain of our casual and exploitative "hook-up" culture, the more I realize that Brumberg is right when she notes, in her conclusion, "more than any other group in the population, girls and their bodies have borne the brunt of 20th century social change, and we ignore that fact at our peril." It is not anti-feminist to want to protect young women from sexual and commercial exploitation; indeed, it is the essence of what it means to believe in women.
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The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
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