Drawing from popular culture over the past two decades, this collection of essays explores the question 'Why do brilliant women make society ill at ease?,' revealing how the media both constantly affirms stereotypes of femininity while challenging the stigmatization of smart women. Simultaneous.

Product Description: A series of fascinating chapters analyze cookery books through the ages. From the convenience-food cookbooks of the 1950s, to the 1980s rise in 'white trash' cookbooks, and the surprise success of the Two Fat Ladies books from the 1990s, leading author Sherrie Inness discusses how women have used such books over the years to protest social norms...read more

Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft. WWF, The Sopranos, Witchblade, La Femme Nikita. The women of pop culture are center stage and as tough as ever. Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection highlighting the heroines we've grown to worship. What can they tell us about women in the Twent-first-century? What can they tell us about how popular culture depicts women? Do the characters escape traditional gender role expectations? Or do they adhere to sexual, racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes? The essays in Action Chicks provide fans with a new look at their favourite icons and their relationship to the popular media machine. A fascinating collection that's bound to stir up some excitement.

Product Description: Wedged between the idealism and activism of the 1960s and the avarice of the 1980s, the 1970s tend to be allocated a slender role in American cultural and social history. Only now have scholars begun to examine the suspect decade—perhaps in part because it has seemed too close, at least for many who lived through it, and in part because cultural critics have rendered it synonymous with cultural stagnation and overall frivolity...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Meatloaf, fried chicken, Jell-O, cake―because foods are so very common, we rarely think about them much in depth. The authors of Cooking Lessons however, believe that food is deserving of our critical scrutiny and that such analysis yields many important lessons about American society and its values...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Who cooks dinner in American homes? It's no surprise that “Mom” remains the overwhelming answer. Cooking and all it entails, from grocery shopping to chopping vegetables to clearing the table, is to this day primarily a woman's responsibility...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: For many Americans, eating ethnic food is so commonplace as to be taken for granted. Yet, whether we acknowledge it or not, such foods create a powerful social language that speaks of cultural traditions and tastes that have been handed down from one generation to the next and, in some cases, appropriated and commodified by American commercial culture...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: At supermarkets across the nation, customers waiting in line—mostly female—flip through magazines displayed at the checkout stand. What we find on those magazine racks are countless images of food and, in particular, women: moms preparing lunch for the team, college roommates baking together, working women whipping up a meal in under an hour, dieters happy to find a lowfat ice cream that tastes great...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Girl Power has become the rallying cry for a new generation of girls as they navigate―on their own terms―the perilous yet exhilarating journey from girlhood to adulthood. Though this transformation is often difficult for middle-class white girls growing up in the United States, it is unimaginably more difficult for girls, often in developing countries, who contend with such life-threatening issues as poverty, abuse, and civil war...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Riding the wave of a booming girl culture worldwide, this collection of girls' voices across the globe invites us to learn more about their varied girlhoods. From coming-of-age rituals in South Africa to the impact of computers and popular magazines on girls in Japan and Germany, Millennium Girls offers us a broader vision of girlhood around the world. Though a universal experience, girlhood is not always carefree. Instead, as this book documents, many girls are not valued for who they are, whether socially, culturally, or intellectually.Despite the countless girls around the globe who remain voiceless, mostly white, middle-class girls in the United States and Britain have often been given their turn to speak about their lives. This emphasis on these girls, while important, cannot adequately explore the connections between them and girls around the world. In a society that is becoming increasingly globalized, Millennium Girls fills this gap, becoming essential reading for anyone interested in girls and women and the differences and similarities in girlhoods among varied cultures and societies.Around the globe, girls often face bleak realities about their lives, careers, and families. In many cases, they are still second-class citizens, doubly marginalized by their age and gender. Girls are further marginalized because their lives are rarely taken seriously or are disregarded entirely; this is particularly true for girls living on the fringes of society because of their race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. For these reasons, girls become voiceless in many cultures, both inside and outside of the United States. Millennium Girls addresses this absence and creates a space for some of the girls, who have not been allowed or given an opportunity, to speak. Voices of girls in South Africa, Japan, Germany, Israel, and the United States blend together to create a unique portrait of shared and differing experiences of girlhood. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: The contributors, including such leading scholars as Vicki L. Ruiz, Jennifer Scanlon, and Miriam Formanek-Brunell, examine myriad ways in which a variety of discourses and activities from popular girls' magazines and advertisements to babysitting and the Girl Scouts help form girls' experiences of what it means to be a girl, and later a woman, in our society...read more

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Product Description: Electroshock. Hysterectomy. Lobotomy. These are only three of the many "cures" to which lesbians have been subjected in this century. How does a society develop such a profound aversion to a particular minority? In what ways do images in the popular media perpetuate cultural stereotypes about lesbians, and to what extent have lesbians been able to subvert and revise those images? This book addresses these and other questions by examining how lesbianism has been represented in American popular culture in the twentieth century and how conflicting ideologies have shaped lesbian experiences and identity...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The many popular representations of student life at women’s colleges produced in the United States during the Progressive Era are examined. The college woman was described and defined in a period when women’s higher education was still socially suspect...read more