How big business plays on women's second-class status and social insecurities to market cosmetics and rake in profits. The introduction by Waters explains how the entry of millions of women into the workforce during and after World War II irreversibly changed U.S. society and laid the basis for a renewed rise of struggles for women's emancipation."A lively and surprisingly timely historical lesson in the ever-raging controversy surrounding women, beauty, and oppression."Ms.Introduction by Mary-Alice Waters, photos, notes, index.
The first ever collection of writing from the Brixton Black Women’s Group, one of the first and most important black radical organisations of the 1970s "We came to Britain in search of better opportunities or to get some of the wealth which had been misappropriated from the Caribbean, but what in reality did we find? Speak Out brings together the writings of Brixton Black Women's Group for the first time, in a landmark collection. Established in response to the lack of interest in women's issues experienced in male-dominated Black organisations, the Brixton Black Women's Group's aim was to create a distinct space where women of African and Asian descent could meet to focus on political, social and cultural issues as they affected black women. Brixton Black Women’s Group published its own newsletter, Speak Out, which kept alive the debate about the relevance of feminism to black politics and provided a black women's perspective on immigration, housing, health and culture.
An introduction to Japan's burgeoning beauty culture, which investigates a range of phenomenon - aesthetic salons, dieting products, male beauty activities, and beauty language - to find out why Japanese women and men are paying so much attention to their bodies. It aims to challenge various assumptions about the naturalness of beauty standards.
Shares the story of the revolutionary Marxist and Catholic Grace Holmes Carlson and her life-long dedication to challenging social and economic inequality On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson returned to her work as an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor of psychology at St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis where she advocated for social justice, now as a Catholic Marxist. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist is a historical biography that examines the story of this complicated woman in the context of her times with a specific focus on her experiences as a member of the working class, as a Catholic, and as a woman. Her story illuminates the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. It contributes to recent historical scholarship exploring the importance of faith in workers’ lives and politics. And it uncovers both the possibilities and limitations for working-class and revolutionary Marxist women in the period between the first and second wave feminist movements. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) ultimately reveals significant continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her particular partisan commitments, most notably her life-long dedication to challenging the root causes of social and economic inequality. In that struggle, Carlson ultimately proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.
Addresses the evidence for the belief that enjoyment of fashion is necessarily inconsistent with feminist values, from a feminist point of view. This book begins by establishing that many feminists hold this belief, and argues that disagreeing does not mean claiming that feminism was unnecessary or that it is rendered redundant by social mores.
Challenging assumptions about women's magazines, Currie looks at young readers and how they interpret the message of magazines in their everyday lives. A fascinating, sometimes surprising study of young women and their relationship with print media.
What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post reveals how Instagram shifts long-established ways of interacting with images. Tara Ward argues Instagram is a structure of the visual, which includes not just the process of looking, but what can be seen and by whom. She examines features of Instagram use, including the effect of scrolling through images on a phone, the skill involved in taking an “Instagram-worthy” picture, and the desires created by following influencers, to explain how the constraints imposed by Instagram limit the selves that can be displayed on it. The proliferation of technical knowledge, especially among younger women, revitalizes on Instagram the myth of the masculine genius and a corresponding reinvigoration of a masculine audience for art. Ward prompts scholars of art history, gender studies, and media studies to attend to Instagram as a site of visual expression and social consequence. Through its insightful comparative analysis and acute close reading, Appreciation Post argues for art history’s value in understanding the contemporary world and the visual nature of identity today.
This book explores an innovative study of women who undergo cosmetic study and the doctors who carry it out. It situates cosmetic surgery as a personal choice made by women against the social and cultural reality of the way women's bodies are scrutinised in Western countries.
