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Title: The Body Project : An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg ISBN: 0-679-73529-1 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (33 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Historical Ruse
Comment: Many Americans believe that our country is in crisis and that our present time is a hazardous one, especially for our youth. Answers to this cultural emergency are sought in many different spaces and with various means. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, in her book, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls explores the possibility that we can look to history for solutions to the problems that plague American girls today. Using mostly secondary historical sources, adolescent female diaries, and personal interviews, Brumberg presents the story of the change in how young women have felt about their own physicality and how society has viewed the female adolescent form and development. With an emphasis on the twentieth century but including 1808-1996, Brumberg explores the historical treatment of girls' bodies by the girls themselves, their families, and their culture. Through four main girlhood categories--menstruation, skin, body shape, and sexuality--Brumberg describes a world that has transformed from the simple and protective climate of the Victorian era into a hostile and complicated world where no female body is safe. Although Brumberg's work can be appreciated as a noble and genuine attempt at searching out a remedy and explanation for the situation that American girls have found themselves in, I believe that it is more of a personal diatribe than a piece of serious historical work. I feel that there are at least four main elements to The Body Project that cause it to be an unreliable piece of history. First, I believe that in comparing today's issues against history, Brumberg unintentionally glorifies the Victorian era. This is problematic in creating a strong piece of history because her interpretation is based on personal ethics rather than historical extraction. Secondly, The Body Project's historicity is tainted with Brumberg's moral judgments and "traditional" stance on sexuality. Although it can not be expected that a historical work will not contain any hint of personal judgments, there is a reasonable expectation that every attempt at impartiality would be made in a good historical piece. This attempt at ethical neutrality seems to be missing from The Body Project. Thirdly, I believe that Brumberg has a distinct age bias against the intellectual capabilities and moral understandings of young women. This bias warps the historical accuracy of the piece by removing personal agency from young girls for either their role in history or the implementation of a solution. Lastly, and most importantly, I believe that there is other evidence available that doesn't correspond with the information that Brumberg cites. In addition, the evidence that Brumberg uses to support many of her claims and historical retrogression is lacking in complexity and extracted from an unreliably small case size. Please think twice about taking her message to heart. It is more of an alarmist piece than an actual solution to what plagues the lives of adolescent women.
Rating: 5
Summary: Social history doesn't get better than this!
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: History of our modern obsessions
Comment: This book was an amazing journey that helped me understand the underpinnings of the modern American woman's relationship with sexuality. By tracing the roots of our modern traditions to their Victorian foundations, Brumberg educates the reader and also paints a stark picture of the way young girls have started to come into their sexuality in the past few decades. She argues that girls today are out of sync, that their bodies develop before they are emotionally ready to deal with issues of sexuality. She further asserts (and proves, in my opinion) that the historical move away from home-based economies and social structures has robbed modern girls of vital mentoring from their adult female relatives. This lack of female mentoring leads to the confusion and insecurity that anyone who watches MTV cannot deny is rampant today. This book is an important read for educators, parents, and anyone interested in unerstanging how (and why) young women today experience sexualization by a culture all too ready to exploit their insecurities for profit. All in all, a fascinating and very readable study of a crucial subject.
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Title: The Beauty Myth : How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf ISBN: 0060512180 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield, Joan Jacobs Brumberg ISBN: 0811837904 Publisher: Chronicle Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Am I Thin Enough Yet?: The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity by Sharlene Hesse-Biber ISBN: 0195117913 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity by Ophira Edut, Rebecca Walker ISBN: 1580050433 Publisher: Seal Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Survival of the Prettiest : The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff ISBN: 0385479425 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 11 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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