Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful cultural practices in the WestThe new edition of Beauty and Misogyny revisits and updates Sheila Jeffreys' uncompromising critique of Western beauty practice and the industries and ideologies behind it. Jeffreys argues that beauty practices are not related to individual female choice or creative expression, but represent instead an important aspect of women's oppression. As these practices have become increasingly brutal and pervasive, the need to scrutinize and dismantle them is if anything more urgent now as it was in 2005 when the first edition of the book was published. The United Nations concept of "harmful traditional/cultural practices" provides a useful lens for the author to advance her critique. She makes the case for including Western beauty practices within this definition, examining their role in damaging women's health, creating sexual difference and enforcing female deference. First-wave feminists of the 1970s criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting and depilation, but a later argument took hold that beauty practices were no longer oppressive now that women could "choose" them. In recent years the reality of Western beauty practices has become much more bloody and severe, requiring the breaking of skin and the rearrangement or amputation of body parts. Beauty and Misogyny seeks to make sense of why beauty practices have not only persisted but become more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing, surgical alteration of the labia and other forms of self-mutilation. The book concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created. A new and thoroughly updated edition of this essential work will appeal to all levels of students and teachers of gender studies, cultural studies and feminist psychology, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women's health. |
From inside the book
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... ideas have not been taken up, or developed within mainstream feminism or the feminist academy. Nonetheless ... idea that women could be empowered by exercising personal choice and sexing themselves up. This time is perhaps best ...
... idea of 'girl power', the foolishness of which is easily understood by comparing it with the idea of 'boy power', since men are not called boys and liberation movements that men are involved in are not infantilized in this way. In ...
... p. 44). The authors argue against the idea that sexualized popular culture is only problematic for children and young people, and call for more criticism of the way in which 'being a young woman/man is influenced by xviii Preface.
... idea that the behaviours of femininity and masculinity are natural, even if mysteriously located in persons of the biological sex not usually associated with them, even more necessary in the present. Resurgence of feminism Though the ...
... ideas and practices of lesbian feminists in the second wave and demonstrates the differences between that time of face-to-face feminism and today's more Internet-centred variety. Feminist research on beauty practices In the ten years ...
Contents
1 | |
beauty practices as womens agency or womens subordination | 5 |
2 Harmful cultural practices and Western culture | 25 |
dressed men reveal the naked reality of male power | 41 |
prostitution constructs beauty | 61 |
5 Fashion and misogyny | 81 |
6 Making up is hard to do | 101 |
7 Mens foot and shoe fetishism and the disabling of women | 119 |
beauty practices as selfmutilation by proxy | 139 |
a culture of resistance | 159 |
References | 167 |
Index | 183 |
Other editions - View all
Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West Sheila Jeffreys No preview available - 2015 |
Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West Sheila Jeffreys No preview available - 2015 |