The Body Project

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Timely and sympathetic a work of impassioned advocacy PeopleA 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 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 inner beauty 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 Joan Brumberg s book offers us an insightful and entertaining history behind the destructive mantra of the 90s I hate my body Katie Couric Read The Body Project By Joan Jacobs Brumberg – kino-fada.fr Though this book was definitely interesting, I found it rather troubling in the end and not for the usual reasons Brumberg came off in the final chapters as not being very sex positive the emergence of a right to sexual expression can be as problematic as the right to smoke cigarettes 142 , which is fine, but it was then that I started noticing some specious citations For example, on page 203 of the pictured edition, Brumberg remarks parenthetically at the close of a paragraph that in Though this book was definitely interesting, I found it rather troubling in the end and not for the usual reasons Brumberg came off in the final chapters as not being very sex positive the emergence of a right to sexual expression can be as problematic as the right to smoke cigarettes 142 , which is fine, but it was then that I started noticing some specious citations For example, on page 203 of the pictured edition, Brumberg remarks parenthetically at the close of a paragraph that in 1994, one third of African American ma...Intended to reveal the history behind the struggles of adolescent girls in terms of body image and self identity Instead, it is a micrcosm of exactly what is wrong in this field of research it focuses solely on white, middle to ...2 1 2 stars Not entirely a waste of time, but waydisappointing than I thought I really wanted to love this book, but just couldn t get there The concept was a good one Providing historical information from adolescent girls diaries journals to discuss the history of our changing body consciousness However, the diaries often seemed forgotten, and that was disappointing In addition, I felt that Brumberg added a bit too much of her own opinion judgments throughout the text, which took m 2 1 2 stars Not entirely a waste of time, but waydisappointing than I thought I...We are obsessed with bodies and perfection as a culture We are willing to inject ourselves with toxins, go under for massive surgery to have things implanted pulled trimmed tucked in and sucked out We are willing to swallow pills, starve and or puke to lose weight We are willing to spend massive amounts of money on products for hair, skin, nails We are willing to go into a salon and have a strang...This is a okay book for body politics in feminism While I don t agree with everything there are a lot of good and valid points It does focus heavily on cis gendered and white women, so lacking in diversity and intersectionality weakened the narrative.There were a lot of interesting points made, ...I wanted this to be a better book than it was The tracing of developments in the ways that girls bodies in America have been socially regulated over the past century or so is pretty interesting stuff, but I was constantly frustrated by the complete lack of political analysis that the author brought to her narrative While she does attend to the ways in which ideas about appropriate female bo...I like her premise, but think she suffers a bit from bending the evidence to fit her thesis I think a better thesis than sexual liberation is making girls stress out about their bodies is sexual liberation is causing girls to stress out about their bodies in DIFFERENT ways than before In a history of beauty that includes being corsetted until it deforms your internal organs and taking daily doses of arsenic to be pale and wan enough for the current style, I don t find dieting to the extr I like her premise, but think she suffers a bit from bending the evidence to fit her thesis I think a better thesis than sexual liberation is making girls stress out about their bodies is sexual liberation is causing girls to stress out about their bodies in DIFFERENT ways than before In a history of beauty that includes being corsetted until it deforms your internal organs and taking daily doses of arsenic to be pale and wan enough for the current style, I don t find dieting to the extremes of an...Interesting in some areas, in particular when dealing with menstruation, but it loses something towards the end.half way through, and this is fascinating, albeit occassionally uncomfortable stuff uncomfortable is an understatement the story is a tragedy, really and then it sinks in that it is a tragedy that i have lived and continue to live it s one of those books that i wishpeople who should read it would read it, but they probably won t though it was in the late 90s not that long ago it seems things continue to decline in the realm of young girls and it s incr half way through, and this is fascinating, albeit occassionally uncomfortable stuff uncomfortable is an understatement the story is a tragedy, really and then it sinks in that it is a tragedy that i have lived and continue to live it s one of those books ...Actual Rating 2.5 StarsIn this book, Brumberg examines the one hundred years of history between 1895 and 1995, and how society s attitude has changed toward young women She asks the question, even though we are now free of corsets and haverights, do we really have it any better than our Victorian ancestors To answer this, she cites passages from diaries of teenage girls dating back to the 1800s, research, and anec...

The Body Project
  • English
  • 25 March 2017
  • Paperback
  • 214 pages
  • 0679735291
  • Joan Jacobs Brumberg
  • The Body Project