Where the Girls Are
Susan J. Douglas
So, upon being assigned a feminist book on the media since the fifties, I groaned. I thought this was going to be a horrible rant against men and male-dominated society, yet another angry and mindless woman repeating the familiar lines about sexism without bringing any merit to her claims. This book is all that and more, and I absolutely loved it. Douglas isn't just a raging feminist, she's a hilarious raging feminist, the kind that I've been waiting for, the kind I can agree with. What's most amazing about Douglas, and she admits this herself, is that she's happily married with a child of her own. Her own existence outside the traditional stereotypes of feminism helps her gain credibility as she consistently heaves one deft stroke after another at the male-dominated media.
Douglas uses her personal experience and her humor to the benefit of her argument, making this book not a dry academic treatise but a lively semi-autobiographical look at the media and resulting perceptions about feminism and women in general. Douglas uses familiar examples such as TV shows, movies, music, and even advertising to address the issues currently plaguing the women's movement: most notably, its factionalization and trivialization in the news media today. Because Douglas tracks feminism and female perception through the decades, her own experience remains peripheral and never dominates the discussion at hand, only illuminating the real-world applications of her arguments, and thereby strengthening them.
Douglas manages to tow the line herself while describing that strange middle ground between the acerbic feminist fringes and the passively anorexic images of pure male fantasy where the girls actually find themselves in life. Though the narrative begins with a focus on portrayal of women in general and then moves to the perception of the women's movement as well as general views, this change in analysis accurately reflects the change in focus of the media and the country at large. The narrative is always fresh and always challenging, while avoiding the usual pitfalls of demagoguery and overbearing sloganizing.
What Douglas has managed to do is relate her personal struggle to that of millions of American women through the mass media, passing the torch beautifully through her moving and personal epilogue. And after all, how can you resist an academic book with chapter titles such as "The Rise of the Bionic Bimbo"?
Grade: A
Susan J. Douglas
So, upon being assigned a feminist book on the media since the fifties, I groaned. I thought this was going to be a horrible rant against men and male-dominated society, yet another angry and mindless woman repeating the familiar lines about sexism without bringing any merit to her claims. This book is all that and more, and I absolutely loved it. Douglas isn't just a raging feminist, she's a hilarious raging feminist, the kind that I've been waiting for, the kind I can agree with. What's most amazing about Douglas, and she admits this herself, is that she's happily married with a child of her own. Her own existence outside the traditional stereotypes of feminism helps her gain credibility as she consistently heaves one deft stroke after another at the male-dominated media.
Douglas uses her personal experience and her humor to the benefit of her argument, making this book not a dry academic treatise but a lively semi-autobiographical look at the media and resulting perceptions about feminism and women in general. Douglas uses familiar examples such as TV shows, movies, music, and even advertising to address the issues currently plaguing the women's movement: most notably, its factionalization and trivialization in the news media today. Because Douglas tracks feminism and female perception through the decades, her own experience remains peripheral and never dominates the discussion at hand, only illuminating the real-world applications of her arguments, and thereby strengthening them.
Douglas manages to tow the line herself while describing that strange middle ground between the acerbic feminist fringes and the passively anorexic images of pure male fantasy where the girls actually find themselves in life. Though the narrative begins with a focus on portrayal of women in general and then moves to the perception of the women's movement as well as general views, this change in analysis accurately reflects the change in focus of the media and the country at large. The narrative is always fresh and always challenging, while avoiding the usual pitfalls of demagoguery and overbearing sloganizing.
What Douglas has managed to do is relate her personal struggle to that of millions of American women through the mass media, passing the torch beautifully through her moving and personal epilogue. And after all, how can you resist an academic book with chapter titles such as "The Rise of the Bionic Bimbo"?
Grade: A
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