Femininity edition by Susan Brownmiller Politics Social Sciences eBooks
Download As PDF : Femininity edition by Susan Brownmiller Politics Social Sciences eBooks 
With intelligence and humor, Susan Brownmiller explores the history and unspoken rules of the burden of “feminine perfection”
What is femininity? How is it measured? What are its demands? How are women meant to dress, look, think, act, feel, and be, according to the mores of society?
Susan Brownmiller offers a witty and often pointed critique of the concept of femininity in contemporary culture and throughout history. She explores the demands placed upon women to fit an established mold, examines female stereotypes, and celebrates the hard-won advances in women’s lifestyle and attire. At once profound, revolutionary, empowering, and entertaining, Femininity challenges the accepted female norm while appreciating the women throughout history who have courageously broken free of its constraints.
Femininity edition by Susan Brownmiller Politics Social Sciences eBooks
"Women are all female impersonators to some degree"-- this is one of my favorite quotes from "Femininity".Insecurity about whether we are sufficiently feminine runs deep in girls and women, particularly as we break the stereotypical values of our culture that still honors motherhood at the top of the heap of what a female should want most in life. At a time when women are breaking through traditional barriers at work, in sports, in politics, etc. we are also tying ourselves in knots in order to present a nonthreatening appearance-- be it via ridiculous shoes, thigh-high skirts, long blonde hair, a show of bosom, or a soft reticence and wide-eyed attitude that hides efficiency and assertiveness when in the company of men.
This book acknowledges that some aspects of femininity are based on biological femaleness, while other entrenched aspects are merely restrictive cultural impositions that allow men to feel more comfortable in their masculinity without having to leap through hoops or tie themselves in knots. It also acknowledges that "the feminine esthetic" can be beautiful and fun. But when it works against accomplishment and achievement, call it the handicap that it rightly is.
Product details
|
Tags : Femininity - Kindle edition by Susan Brownmiller. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Femininity.,ebook,Susan Brownmiller,Femininity,Open Road Media
People also read other books :
- St Ambrose On the Christian Faith edition by St Ambrose Religion Spirituality eBooks
- Forest Song Letting Go Forest Song series Book 3 eBook Vila SpiderHawk
- Cazadores de Titanes La cuarta raza Spanish Edition edition by Myriam Millán Elena Dudina Literature Fiction eBooks
- All Tomorrow Problems (Audible Audio Edition) Amanda Lash Cherise Knapp Hyperbolic Productions Books
- No Name Wilkie Collins 9781546352136 Books
Femininity edition by Susan Brownmiller Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews
Susan Brownmiller (born 1935) is an American feminist journalist, author, and activist; she co-founded the “Women Against Pornography” group in 1979. She has written other books, such as Against Our Will Men, Women, and Rape,In Our Time Memoir of a Revolution,Shirley Chisholm,Waverly Place (a novel), etc. [NOTE page numbers below refer to the 271-page hardcover edition.]
She wrote in the Prologue to this 1984 book, “As I passed through a stormy adolescence to a stormy maturity, femininity increasingly became an exasperation… ‘Don’t lose your femininity’ and ‘Isn’t it remarkable how she manages to retain her femininity?’ had terrifying implications. They spoke of a bottom-line failure so irreversible that nothing else mattered… Disqualification was marked on the forehead of a woman whose femininity was lost… for she had destroyed her birthright in her wretched, ungainly effort to imitate a man… Femininity, in essence, is a romantic sentiment, a nostalgic tradition of imposed limitations… To fail at the feminine difference is to appear not to care about men, and to risk the loss of their attention and approval.” (Pg. 14-15)
She continues, “A powerful esthetic that is built upon a recognition of powerlessness is a slippery subject to grapple with… I have attempted a rational analysis that is free of mystification. Coming down hard on certain familiar aspects while admitting a fond tolerance for some others has been unavoidable in my attempt to give an honest appraisal of the feminine strategies as I have myself practiced or discarded them… I offer this book as a step toward awareness, in the hope that one day the feminine ideal will no longer be used to perpetuate inequality between the sexes, and that exaggeration will not be required to rest secure in biological gender.” (Pg. 19)
She admits, “I harbor a deep desire to wear my hair long because, like all the women I know, I grew up believing that long hair is irrefutably feminine. I could certainly use the advantage that long hair confers, but I happen to look terrible when my hair is long… I could risk wearing my hair quite short if I wore makeup and dresses, or put on some earrings, or if I weren’t a feminist … but close-cropped hair on someone like me adds to an image I do not mean to project. I am aware of the conflict. I need to go my own way, yet I also need to stand on the safe side of femininity. So I keep my hair at a middling length, and fret about its daily betrayal.” (Pg. 55)
She recalls, “it became a feminist statement to wear pants. Never again would women wear skirts, I thought… And here it is, well into the Eighties, and a woman who wears nothing but pants is a holdout… a fashion reactionary with no sense of style… On bad days I mourn my old dresses. I miss the graceful flow of fabric… Straight-legged pants are boring. One cannot take on a new identity by wearing trousers. Then why do I persist in not wearing skirts? Because I don’t like this artificial gender distinction. Because I don’t wish to start shaving my legs again… because the nature of feminine dressing is superficial in essence---even my objections seem superficial as I write them down. But that is the point. To care about feminine fashion… is to be obsessively involved in inconsequential details on a serious basis.” (Pg. 80-81) Later, she adds, “Feminine clothing has never been designed to be functional… To be truly feminine is to accept the handicap of restraints and restriction, and to come to adore it.” (Pg. 86)
She points out, “Shopping is indeed the women’s opiate, yet the economy would suffer a new crisis if the American woman dropped her feminine interest in clothes and ceased to be a conspicuous consumer.” (Pg. 99)
She acknowledges, “As a matter of principle I stopped shaving my legs and under my arms several years ago, but I have yet to accept the unesthetic results… At the start of the women’s movement I put away my crayons and paints and haven’t bothered with them since, although I keep a bottle of Revlon Touch and Glow and a blusher stowed away in the medicine chest… There is no getting around the fact that I have an anti-makeup bias… Long before there was a women’s movement … I had come to detest the stuff and the convention that said I had to wear it… As it happens, some women look good in makeup---in societal terms I will even say that they look BETTER in makeup… My made-up friends are defiantly pleased with their feminine tricks of beautification. They are in step with the Eighties… and I am the one who feels defensive and left behind, suffering from self-doubt.” (Pg. 156-159)
She notes, “the cared-for hand is a sign of money, vanity and social refinement, but modern feminine psychology goes further. Growing long nails is a proud achievement, proof that a woman has triumphed over her personal shortcomings and the realistic odds… And the results are indeed a tactile sensation. Thumb against nail, nail against palm, finger against doorbell, the merest gesture gives reassurance of the feminine difference… Gaily enameled fingertips tap out a romantic desire for a life free of drudgery and manual chores… Even when they are glued-on fakes. Fakery may not be chic but nevertheless it is a permissible resort.” (Pg. 179-180)
She observes, “‘Sensible shoes’ announce an unfeminine sensibility, a value system that places physical comfort above the critical mission of creating a sex difference where one does not exist in nature… Sensible shoes aren’t fun. They hold no promise of exotic mysteries, they neither hint at incapacitation nor whisper of ineffective weaponry… Sensible shoes aren’t dressy…” (Pg. 186-187)
She comments, “Women with no particular feeling for babies are extremely reluctant to admit their private truth… That a sizeable number of mothers have no genuine aptitude for the job is verified by the records… where cases of battery and neglect are duly entered… But despite this evidence that day-to-day motherhood is not a suitable or a stimulating occupation for all, the myth persists that a woman who prefers to remain childless must be heartless or less than complete.” (Pg. 214)
She concludes, “My aim is not to propose a new definition of femininity… but to invite examination of a compelling esthetic that evolved over thousands of years---to explore its origins and the reasons for its perseverance, in the effort to illuminate the restrictions on free choice.” (Pg. 235) She adds, “femininity fails as a reliable goal… Women still remain emotionally and financially needy, and understandably they will grasp at strategies that seem to have worked in the past and that appear to be working for some right now… they are thankful that they need not put up with the full armature of deceits and handicaps of earlier generations. For things do improve, and progress is made, and they are, in their awareness if not yet in their freedom to choose, a little closer to being themselves.” (Pg. 237)
As a long-time fan of Brownmiller’s book ‘Against Our Will,’ I was at first flabbergasted to see her write a book like this one. But if you set aside your preconceptions and expectations, there is a great deal of unique, fascinating and revealing social commentary in this book; and it will be of great interest to anyone interested in the psychology of modern women.
I found the title of this book a bit misleading. Webster's defines femininity as, "the quality or nature of the female sex." Ms. Brownmiller's book is not really about innate femaleness; it's about cultural expectations of women, which are sometimes NOT natural qualities. In fact, that is the very point of the book, which I did find interesting despite its purpose having been different than I expected.
Conservative shoppers will want to be aware that Ms. Brownmiller is firmly and blatantly evolutionist, and that coarse language is used throughout the book. I am, myself, a conservative evangelical Christian and, while I did not always agree with the author's reasoning or her conclusions, I found her observations fascinating and quite accurate. (Much to my surprise, she clearly pointed out that some differences between men and women are, indeed, innate.) _Femininity_ is, essentially, an essay on the subject of cultural expectations of women down through the ages, and the effects of these expectations on women in general and the author in particular. While at times these expectations have had logical ties to biological fact, many times they have had entirely external origins. Some are downright ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the text is a bit dated and I believe that some of the author's comments are somewhat inaccurate, in consequence. (As a stay-at-home-mom, I am quite confident that society's expectation is NOT that a woman should "profess as an article of faith that her husband and children come first"; my decision is far too frequently persecuted for that to be the case.) All in all, I found _Femininity_ to be a fascinating book.
This is a wonderful book, very provocative and insightful. It completely delivers, you will not understand gender and femininity the same way again.
Susan Brownmiller is an author who was at the heart of the women's movement from it's beginning.
This book is very well written and sheds light on the issues and the difficulties these women faced.
I hope young women today will read it.
"Women are all female impersonators to some degree"-- this is one of my favorite quotes from "Femininity".
Insecurity about whether we are sufficiently feminine runs deep in girls and women, particularly as we break the stereotypical values of our culture that still honors motherhood at the top of the heap of what a female should want most in life. At a time when women are breaking through traditional barriers at work, in sports, in politics, etc. we are also tying ourselves in knots in order to present a nonthreatening appearance-- be it via ridiculous shoes, thigh-high skirts, long blonde hair, a show of bosom, or a soft reticence and wide-eyed attitude that hides efficiency and assertiveness when in the company of men.
This book acknowledges that some aspects of femininity are based on biological femaleness, while other entrenched aspects are merely restrictive cultural impositions that allow men to feel more comfortable in their masculinity without having to leap through hoops or tie themselves in knots. It also acknowledges that "the feminine esthetic" can be beautiful and fun. But when it works against accomplishment and achievement, call it the handicap that it rightly is.
0 Response to "≫ Read Gratis Femininity edition by Susan Brownmiller Politics Social Sciences eBooks"
Post a Comment