"Beautifully written, cleverly argued, and skillfully researched, Debra Gimlin's Body Work goes beyond
the argument that the beauty industry exists only to control women. Instead, Gimlin examines women's relationship
to beauty from a feminist sociological perspective, finding that women are not dupes of the beauty industry but
rather use body work in both empowering and degrading ways. It's about time a sociologist delved into women's complicated
relationship to the beauty industry!"--Verta Taylor, author of Rock-a-By Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum
Depression
"This fascinating study reveals how changing the body is really an effort to reconstruct the self-from aerobics,
cosmetic surgery, and hair salon makeovers to therapeutic groups about accepting one's "fat" body. Gimlin
fuses theoretical acuity with tender analysis, enabling the reader to engage critically and empathetically with
these quotidian social constructionists. With efforts to transform the body becoming ever more frenzied as Baby
Boomers age, this book is both timely and important."
--Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America: A Cultural History
"Gimlin effectively demonstrates how the business of beauty is ultimately not about abstruse theories but
rather about how women negotiate beauty to transact in everyday life. This perception that beauty may be the one
area where the personal is not political recasts all theories previously forwarded on the subject and adds significantly
to the literature about the culture of beauty."
--Raquel Scherr, author of Face Value: The Politics of Beauty
"This thoughtful, interesting, and well-written book emphasizes the complexities of contemporary U.S. women
as they negotiate identity through both participation and resistance to dominant beauty ideologies."
--Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
"Much more than a straightforward feminist critique of the beauty industry, Body Work offers a nuanced and
sensitive analysis of the types of work that women do to construct and to maintain an identity with which they
can live comfortably, steering clear of representations of women as passive victims of oppressive structures."
--Nilufer Isvan, Assistant Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Submitted By Publisher, October, 2003
Summary
Today women are lifting weights to build muscle, wrapping their bodies in seaweed to reduce unwanted water retention,
attending weigh-ins at diet centers, and devoting themselves to many other types of "body work." Filled
with the voices of real women, this book unravels the complicated emotional and intellectual motivations that drive
them as they confront American culture's unreachable beauty ideals. This powerful feminist study lucidly and compellingly
argues against the idea that the popularity of body work means that women are enslaved to a male-fashioned "beauty
myth." Essential reading for understanding current debates on beauty, Body Work demonstrates that women actually
use body work to escape that beauty myth.
Debra Gimlin focuses on four sites where she conducted in-depth research--a beauty salon, aerobics classes, a plastic
surgery clinic, and a social and political organization for overweight women. The honest and provocative interviews
included in this book uncover these women's feelings about their bodies, their reasons for attempting to change
or come to terms with them, and the reactions of others in their lives. These interviews show that women are redefining
their identities through their participation in body work, that they are working on their self-images as much as
on their bodies. Plastic surgery, for example, ultimately is an empowering life experience for many women who choose
it, while hairstyling becomes an arena for laying claim to professional and social class identities.
This book develops a convincing picture of how women use body work to negotiate the relationship between body and
self, a process that inevitably involves coming to terms with our bodies' deviation from cultural ideals. One of
the few studies that includes empirical evidence of women's own interpretations of body work, this important project
is also based firmly in cultural studies, symbolic interactionism, and feminism. With this book, Debra Gimlin adds
her voice to those of scholars who are now looking beyond the surface of the beauty myth to the complex reality
of women's lives.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Body Work as Self Work
2. The Hair Salon: Social Class, Power, and Ideal Beauty
3. Aerobics: Neutralizing the Body and Negotiating the Self
4. Cosmetic Surgery: Body and Self in a Commodity Market
5. NAAFA: Reinterpreting the Fat Body
6. Conclusion: The Body, Oppression, and Resistance
Notes
Index