Discussions about Beauty Issues

A query on WMST-L in October 2008 for a good discussion of beauty issues
elicited the following responses.  For more WMST-L files available on the Web,
see the WMST-L File Collection.

makeup, high heels etc.
for my college-senior daughter, who is asking some good questions.
thanks,

Katha Pollitt
kpollitt  AT  thenation.com

Jeffreys, Sheila. Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in
the West. East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2005.
 
Tamarah Cohen (KGU, JP)
tamarahc  AT  hotmail.com

For a radical feminist analysis see Sheila Jeffreys' Beauty and
Misogyny. Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight is also very good.

Gail

Gail Dines
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Chair of American Studies
Wheelock College
35 Pilgrim Road
Boston, MA 02215
gdines  AT  wheelock.edu

Jessica Valenti covers it in Full Frontal Feminism and there is It's
so You, edited by Michelle Tea. I haven't read it yet, so I can't
recommend it, but I do know undergraduates who have responded really
well to Valenti's stuff.

Chris

Chris Linder
Director, Women's Programs & Studies
Instructor, Department of Ethnic Studies
Colorado State University
112 Student Services
Fort Collins, CO 80523-8200
www.wps.colostate.edu
chris.linder  AT  colostate.edu

I also very much like Sandra Bartky's essays in _Femininity and Domination_
("Foucault, Femininity and the Modernisation of Patriarchal Power" and
"Narcissism and Alienation").  She does an especially nice job of addressing
the very common response that women are freely choosing all this and getting
pleasure from it.
 
_________________________________________________
 Jennifer Saul
 E-mail: j.saul  AT  sheffield.ac.uk

Two suggestions:
 
Beauty Matters edited by Peg Zeglin Brand, Foreword by Eleanor
Heartney. Indiana University Press, 2000.  (From the back of the book)
"Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why,
and to whom does beauyy matter in today's world?  Whose standard of
beaufy motivates African Americans to straighten their hair?  What
inspires beauty queens to want to measure up as flawless objects for
the male gaze?  Why does a French performance artist use cosmetic
surgery to remake her fact into a composite of the master painters'
version of beauty?  How does beauty culture perceive the disabled
body?  Is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at
considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable?
. . . .
 
Measuring Up: How Advertising Affects Self-Image.  Vickie Rutledge
Shields with Dawn Heinecken.  U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.  (From
the back cover) Measuring Up engages with and informs current
theoetical debates within the sometimes complementary and comtimes
contradictory litertures of feminist media studies, feminist film
theory, critical social theory, cultural studies, and critical
ethnography.  This is an important work that explores the forms and
channels of power used in one of the most insidious and overt means of
mass influence in popular culture.
 
Susan Koppelman huddis  AT  msn.com     
Susan Koppelman - The Short Stories of Fannie Hurst; "The Strange History of 
Suzanne laFleshe" and other stories of Women and Fatness; "Women in the Trees:" 
U.S. Women's Short Stories about Battering and Resistance, 1839-1994; 
Between Mothers and Daughters: Stories Across a Generation 
http://www.feministpress.org 

"Anything looked at with love and attention becomes very interesting."

Gary Snyder (1999), Paris review: Beat writers a work. London: Harvill
Press, 209


Barrie Karp
NYC

Colonize This
Body Outlaws
Sandra Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal
Power" in Kate Conboy, ed., Writing on the Body
Fatima Mernissi,"Size 6: The Western Woman's Harem" (in her book entitled
Scheherazade Goes West)
bell hooks, On Beauty

Wendy Chapkis, Beauty Secrets
Jean Kilbourne, "'The More You Subtract, The More You Add': Cuitting Girls
Down to Size" (in Dines, ed., "Gender, Race, and Class in Media")

What about The Beauty Myth ?

Dr. Susan Clark-Cook
Clinician
Counseling and Student Development
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Natural and Applied Sciences