The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls | 
 enlarge | Author: Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 9229
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679735291
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.235
EAN: 9780679735298
ASIN: 0679735291
Publication Date: September 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
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.
Product Description
"Timely and sympathetic . . . a work of impassioned advocacy." --People
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 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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
the body August 15, 2008
made me think about things a little diffrent. It has some really good facts and info in it. Not the best book on the subject but still good.
 Unfulfilled Potential April 16, 2008
The Body Project does shed some insight into a narrow group of American girls, primarily focusing on how life has evolved over the past 2 centuries for white, middle class adolescents. It is now, itself, though, a dated book. Internet and media's impact on "Our Girls" have left this book in the dust. While it still may be read for Brumberg's personal perspective into the transformation out of the Victorian mentality, and through the sexual and feminism movements of the 1900's, the book is neither objective nor very relelvent to our country's diverse cultural makeup today. Unfortunately, from the time I read the title, through each chapter subtitle, I was left with unfulfilled expecations. Nevertheless, I am happy to at least walk away with interesting tidbits on commercialization of menstrual products, bras, and even the historical preoccupation with hymens.
 Understanding a Cultural Obsession April 23, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Topic: - The book is the author's historical perspective, suggesting there are ever increasing visual evaluations and body standards being placed on American Girls.
Commentary: - The book does an excellent job of bringing attention to the messages girls are constantly bombarded with from all forms of media, advertising and cultural rules, messages that try to persuade them their body should have certain attributes and not have other attributes. It outlines how with each new generation, new social visual ideals are added. From shaving legs, to waxing, to eyebrow control, to hairstyles, to overall weight, to muscle tone, to bad breath, to body odor, to feminine hygeine, to piercings, to tattoos, to teeth straightening, to belly button length, to breast shape, to teeth whitening, and on and on.
Writing Style: - I thought the premise and supporting facts of this book were excellent, but if I have to fault one aspect of the book, it is that the writing sometimes lost my attention - this occurred even though I greatly care about the issues discussed in the book.
What would have made this book better?: - There is an inherent conflict in these issues: How do you make "not being a pawn to these social pressures" interesting and sexually attractive? One of the main draws that advertisers and social forces use is: IF you perfectly control your body and develop these many attributes, THEN you'll be more well liked, treated better, more in control, or more sexually attractive. For the book to have been even better, it needed to spend more time promoting non-conformist beauty ideals and conceptual frameworks.
In other words, it needed to do more to show how NOT persuing a "body perfect" can lead to better social relationships, understanding, attractiveness, etc. It's not enough to tell a person, "Don't do that." It's better to show them how alternative paths can produce more fulfilling and better outcomes. This is because women are constantly bombarded with the opposing messages of: "Make your body perfect" and you will receive _____ (fill in the blank).
Why did I write this review?: - I read this book about a year ago, and I didn't feel compelled to write a review. But one of the attributes of a great idea or a great book of ideas is the longer the ideas are considered in your brain (the more evidence and scenarios you evaluate using those ideas), the more those ideas resonate with 'truth' or significance.
Like most people, I use the internet often. I'm just sickened by the frequency of visual beauty ads. From wrinkle creams, to Stry-Vectyn, to Bo-Tox, to acne-fighters, and every other blemish or age-fighting cream, lotion, or potion. The same messages are coming from T.V.
Dove has launched a "Real Beauty" campaign, where they show women with "non-ideal" body types and weight ranges. And while I can admire some of the premise, which is: "Beauty is broader than the narrow definitions of supemodel advertising," I am also saddened as Dove, a cosmetic company, has also introduced the suggestion: Older women and non-ideal women need to spend more money on our beauty products. Olay's campaign of "Fight crows feet . . . on your elbows and your legs" is creating additional Body Projects for women to be concerned about.
Given the constant messages and pressures American women receive, I expect most women have dealt with an eating disorder or OCD mindset about their physical appearance. After reading this book, I admire every woman who has managed to overcome our culture's body obsession and who has found a way to moderate their eating habits and perceptions of their body.
I recommend at least scanning this book to find any topics of interest. Hopefully, young women who have read this book will be more able to recognize the unnecessary demands and often unreachable standards being asked of them. Hopefully they will learn to define their beauty, and the beauty of the women around them, using more non-body-defined benchmarks.
Fabulous April 4, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was the best non-fiction I have ever read. It details the changing attitudes towards girls' bodies from the Victorian era to now. It's a sad, hard truth, but opens readers' eyes to the stark reality of girls' bodies going from prime real estate -joint owners being parents and the future husband- to nothing but over-sexed, under nourished, under appreciated, and under protected citizens of society.
This book is a wonderful chronicle of the changes in physical appearance, as well as mental status, in the ever-changing world of girls in society.
 Fair Attempt to Explain a Growing Problem June 9, 2006
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I see how girls/young women stuggle to achieve a very unrealistic ideal of beauty and how middle aged women stuggle to hang on to what they had as young women. As I approach 50, I know I am expected to stay trim, fit and muscular in spite of the fact that my body struggles mightly against it, especially since pregnancy and child birth.
As for the book, it is heavily researched and some of that research does involve journals from the 19th century and beyond. The first chapter is about how girls' bodies are maturing at a much faster rate than those of their fore sisters and the implications of this. Interesting.
The second chapter covers menstruation and menarche in detail. It is really too long. The basic premise of the chapter is how menarche has become consumerized. Mothers provide their daughters with all the mass manufactured equipment and not much else. The author wants menarche to be explained to girls as the time they enter womanhood, but I have a problem with this for two reasons. #1 Most girls are entering menarche at a time when they are not even remotely ready to be women. #2 When I enter menopause, am I exiting womanhood?
The third chapter covers the quest for perfect skin. It is page after page covering the subject of acne and how it has been dealt with over the past century. This, also, the author feels has been very much consumerized, as mothers take their daughters to the doctors and buy any and every cream and potion to relieve their daughters' agony.
The fourth chapter deals with the history of girls trying to achieve the perfect body and the fifth with the disappearance of virginity and how women have gained sexual freedom, but this has also filtered down to girls in middle school and high school and most of these girls and young women are ill equipped mentally and emotionally to deal with the ramifications of their sexuality.
The overall ideals in the book are excellent. The fact that girls have lost their closeness with mothers, aunts, teachers and other female role models. The fact that most of their learning comes from the media and girls their own ages. The fact that outward beauty is what females are judged by rather than beauty that comes from inside. The fact that girls are no longer protected through the family unit. They are sexually active earlier and earlier and often with older men and not boys of their own age. They have been sold the goods of freedom and independence when they are really not ready for them, etc.
Unfortunately, the book did not so much back up these ideas, but more harped on consumerism...the buying of feminine products, make up, clothes, etc. I am pretty sure this is but I small part of the problem.
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