Diaries hold the most precious secrets that a young girl can have. This includes secrets about boys, embarrassing stories, arguments with parents, and also the true confessions of the transition into womanhood. In Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s book, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, she examines the struggle with confidence and body image in adolescent girls not only in today's generation but in past generations as well. Brumberg states that “the process of sexual maturation is more difficult for girls today than it was a century ago because of a set of historical changes that have resulted in a particular mismatch between girls’ biology and today’s culture” explaining that the expectations of today’s culture are too demanding She then moves through the chapters exploring the changing experiences of female maturation. Throughout the book, Brumberg intermingles her own voice as a historian with the voices drawn from girls personal diaries to provide entry into the hidden history of female adolescents’ experience with the body. Brumberg includes prominent women from history that wrote or talked about puberty such as Anne Frank, Lucy Larcom, Margaret Mead, and even Queen Victoria. She includes these historical women to provide the realization that even a queen, a popular poet, a feminist writer in the 1920s all left indications that they felt self-conscious in adolescents, as most girls do. When writing this book, Brumberg felt the twinge of embarrassment in talking about the female body, realizing then that even today women still struggle talking about this subject. The goal for The Body Project is to provoke the intergenerational conversation about female bodies that most women never had or were embarrassed to have. Brumberg comments that the “chapters were designed to ignite memories about those awkward years and to foster conversation among mothers and daughters, female mentors and students, and friends and colleagues” noting that these memories stimulate laughter as well as concern for female maturation (Brumberg xxxi). Adolescence, the It makes one wonder how society came to these ridiculous standards of beauty and the taboo of talking about women's bodies that still resonate today. I can personally attest to the uncomfortableness of the conversation of menstruation and developing bodies. My mother was taught, as her mother before and so on, that these conversations are to be kept in private and talked about quietly. In response to this, the power of men have an increasingly strong hold on the ideal physical beauty and how the changes of the body, such as menstruation, be in private and never spoke of. The Body Project gives a disturbing look at how women in the past few centuries and the present should act, look like, and keep hidden in response to what men think is most desirable. No matter how free women think they are, we are still under the control of men even if it is not directly. This book opens the conversation on the problems that are still plaguing women and how society needs to change to have a healthier environment for women to be comfortable in their
In this book therapist Mary Pipher writes about her experiences at work with adolescent girls. It is intended to make the reader aware of the perils of being a teenager in today's sexualized and media-saturated culture. She talks about how this new and more hostile environment affects adolescent girls' emotional growth and development, and how hard it is to stay true to yourself while trying to fit in with peers. For the most part this book is Dr. Pipher's attempt to reach out to adolescents, as well as their parents and teachers, and tell them that this "problem without a name" is not a death sentence but rather a journey to adulthood, and tells adults how to help these impressionable young girls through what might be the most trying period of their lives.
"Skin blemishes made it impossible for me to really enjoy myself. I was always worrying about the way I looked" (Brumberg, p. 87). Woman all around the world share the same problem, they feel unhappy and self-conscious with the appearance of their bodies. In The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, she successfully illustrates the way adolescents begin to change focus from inner to outer beauty in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Through use of personal diaries and historical research, Brumberg shows her readers the physical differences between girls then and now. Brumberg talks about an array of topics in her book – periods, acne, dieting, piercing, virginity, and sexuality. From their roots in the 1800’s through the Victorian era and into modern society the reader gets a glimpse of the way young women evaluate their bodies and turn them into body projects, and is still to this day sweeping the nation more than ever.
While reading this book, the reader can come to the conclusion that Dr. Mary Pipher was successful with her argument. Her use of rhetoric, diction and style strengthen her claims in her story. The reader should take away from this book that teenage girls go through a lot during puberty and it is up to society and parents to create a more accepting and understanding world for
Karin Martin (1998) discusses how our bodies are gendered at young ages in her exploration of how bodily differences are constructed in preschool. Martin’s research (1998) shows the differences between the two genders that we make, even at such young ages. Our bodies are gendered in social institutions and these differences create a context for social relations in which differences confirm inequalities of power (Martin, 1998). As we get older our bodies continue to be gendered, with reference to body hair; women are taught to remove their body hair to be feminine. Christina Hope (1982) argues that this misogynistic idea, comes from the societies ideals about the different sexes. She says that American society depicts men and women as polar opposites, and therefore women removing their body hair keeps them feminine as it is a masculine trait to have body hair (Hope, 1982). Hope (1982) also explains that American cultural has the tendency to group women with non-adults, and men with adults. She argues that a woman naturally grows body hair during or after puberty, and the removal of it may be “feminine” but it is also “childlike” (Hope 1982). Women’s hair removal products are often advertised with terms like “baby soft”, reinforcing this idea that a feminine woman is much like a child. These idea’s are all a part of the western world’s culture,
McCabeLina, M.A., & Ridge, A.R. (2006). "Who thinks I need a perfect body?" Perceptions and internal dialogue among adolescents about their bodies. Sex Roles, 55(5-6), 409-419.
Chapter nine is titled “Gender and Sexuality”. This chapter discusses terms such as “gender”, “sexuality”, and “sexual scripts”. These terms are closely related to the importance that the Lammily doll and the possible impact it could have on girl’s understanding of these topics which largely affect who they are and how they are perceived to be. Chapter thirteen, is titled “The Body, Medicine, Health, and Health Care”. My interest in this chapter as related to the article is because it discusses The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. I find this chapter to be especially important to this article. Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, “argues that the media confront the vast majority of people with unattainable standard of beauty” (Ritzer 383). Wolf’s argument is completely valid and provides an explanation to the debate of Barbie versus Lammily. The Barbie doll enforces this concept of the “male gaze” by constantly forcing the unreachable image promoted by the men who run the media and companies such as this. While the Lammily doll promotes the idea of the promotion and enforcement of an achievable standard beauty. The Lammily doll’s beauty is achievable because it is “average”, in the sense that this doll was created to closely resemble the average body shape of healthy nineteen year old
“We found that equality for women was generally directed toward white women 's issues” Tohe continued “Most Indian women ended up in low paying, dead-end jobs that offered few benefits...”(182) In American culture women of color are on the bottom rung of the societal hierarchy, with little representation and help from the Feminist Movement but they have still made strides and risen above what they were given. In a large portion of the text Tohe contrasts how her culture views puberty versus American culture, and Tohe uses her personal experience to paint the contrast as a whole for the audience. “The underlying message was that puberty was a dirty and shameful business that you went through alone.”(180) Tohe contrasts her culture and how they see puberty as a celebration and as a transition into womanhood, and even more importantly
Today I will discuss the immune system and what makes it so important and vital for our everyday well-being and defending our body against sickness and disease.. First off, what is the immune system? Vaccines.gov informs readers that, “The immune system is a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by “foreign” invaders. These are primarily microbes—tiny organisms such as bacteria, parasites, and fungi that can cause infections.” Why are these important to us as humans? Very simple, without our immune system ,things such as viruses, the common cold and flu, would likely cause severe trauma or death to our body very easily. However, antibodies
Moreover, when young women develop and hit pubescence, they begin to feel as though they are sufficiently bad. For example, the poem "Barbie Doll" states, “then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said, you have a great big nose and fat legs,” is referring to when a girl reaches puberty, goes to school and classmates judge her by how she looks (5 and 6). Pubescence is the start of a decrease, the start of tormenting and misery. Her schoolmates are acting as per the sorts of "defects" they hear hopeless grown-ups
“Sit up, smile, keep those legs crossed, and remember you are a lady!”; these are examples of the common phrases a young girl is taught at childhood as her introduction to hegemonic femininity (Connell, n.d.). This introduction is paired with the media’s constant reminders to shoot for big breasts, small waists, curves, big hair , big smiles, charming eyes, long hair, and smooth skin with a nurturing, warm personality. Then there is the introduction to motherhood at a young age with the multitudes of toys that are set up kitchens accompanied by doll babies that are engineered to cry and mock an infant’s mannerisms (Allen, 2013). Hegemonic femininity can be defined as upholding the ideal standard of ultimate femininity held throughout body
One of women’s constant struggles is upkeep with culture and society’s ever-changing definition of beauty. Although both genders have hair on their bodies, the views and acceptability of the amount or the location of body hair vary immensely. In fact, women are often thought to be hairless and men to be hairier (DeMello, 2014). Women must then put in effort to uphold a standard, in which the idea that being feminine is natural and effortless (Toerien and Wilkinson, 2003). That being the case, I will argue that the hairless female body has been transformed over time to represent beauty and youth. More importantly, I will argue that it has now become normative in Western society and deemed unacceptable if women do not conform to the hairless
Taking them all into account, we can come to a better conclusion. The overarching theme of the course content has been understanding the histories and structures connected to the body—different types of bodies. Similarly, these sources allow us to do the same for the body of breastless women. These sources offer the histories of mastectomy and breastless bodies, and they delineate the interconnectedness of the mastectomied body and society. Countless times, we have discussed maintaining an open-mind in regard to how we relate, as individuals, to these bodies.
In today’s society, women tend to be oversexualized and, in severe cases, treated more like objects of desire from a well-choreographed fantasy than like actual human beings. Some women like this kind of mentality and openly advocate it; some do not share the same point of view yet are free to voice their opinions on the matter and protest against being treated as sexual objects. This is all rather straightforward and simple for adult females; however the real dilemma occurs when we consider young girls. Before a girl turns 18 and o...
Exact Beauty: Exploring Women's Body Projects and Problems in the 21st Century. Mandell, Nancy (5th ed.). Feminist Issues: Race, Class, and Sexuality (131-160). Toronto: Pearson Canada, Inc. Schulenberg, Jennifer, L. (2006).
Presidential election represents a culmination of underlying messaging concerning standards of female beauty and the spread of these messages via the media. President Donald J. Trump’s views on women reveal the extent to which beauty as contingent with worth have permeated the core of American culture. With a President who frequently demeans women not only for any opposition they may show towards his past and current actions but for their bodies as well, the balance of power has shifted. The impossible standard imposed on young girls and women is now a threat from multiple angles. An analysis of the intricate layers of influence and power over the ways women perceive their bodies reveals a disturbing trend in the U.S. as dangerous to a woman’s wellbeing as it is pernicious to the