The Body Project
An Intimate History of American Girls
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning author of Fasting Girls explores what teenage girls have lost in this new world of freedom and consumerism—a world in which the body is their primary project.
"Fascinating ... riveting ... Women and girls should read this fine book together." —The New York Times Book Review
A hundred years ago, women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their daughters to do the same. The ideal of the day, however, was inner beauty: a focus on good deeds and a pure heart. Today American women have more social choices and personal freedom than ever before. But fifty-three percent of our girls are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of thirteen, and many begin a pattern of weight obsession and dieting as early as eight or nine. Why?
In The Body Project, historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg answers this question, drawing on diary excerpts and media images from 1830 to the present. Tracing girls' attitudes toward topics ranging from breast size and menstruation to hair, clothing, and cosmetics, she exposes the shift from the Victorian concern with character to our modern focus on outward appearance—in particular, the desire to be model-thin and sexy. Compassionate, insightful, and gracefully written, The Body Project explores the gains and losses adolescent girls have inherited since they shed the corset and the ideal of virginity for a new world of sexual freedom and consumerism—a world in which the body is their primary project.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Contributing meaningfully to the alarm-sounding of Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, Brumberg (Fasting Girls: A History of Anorexia Nervosa) examines-- through the lens of the adolescent female body--the crisis of confidence faced by girls in today's hypersexualized consumer culture. From the sanitizing and commercializing of menstruation to the rise of dermatologists, training bras and anorexia nervosa, the changing ways in which girls' bodies have developed over this century--and society's changing attitudes about that development--are sketched vividly and with candor. The average age at menarche is now 12, Brumberg explains. In the 1800s, menarche usually occurred at 15 or 16, today's average age of first intercourse. This earlier physical maturation is accompanied by a steep increase in autonomy over dress, sexual activity and other areas unthinkable in Victorian times--but, the author makes clear, such accelerated maturity comes at a cost. Brumberg argues forcefully that, rather than facilitating emotional or intellectual maturation, "contemporary culture exacerbates normal adolescent self-consciousness and encourages precocious sexuality." In a somewhat jumbled conclusion, she advocates multigenerational dialogue to help girls establish a standard of sexual ethics. Brumberg's meticulous documentation includes copious personal diary accounts from adolescent girls. Photos.
