The making of a modern female body: beauty, health and fitness in interwar Britain

In interwar Britain female athleticism, keep-fit classes and physical culture were celebrated as emblems of modernity, and women who cultivated their bodies in the pursuit of beauty, health and fitness represented civic virtue. This article argues that a modern, actively managed female body was part of women's liberation during this period. A modern female body required sex reform and birth control. Fitness culture was circumscribed by traditional notions of femininity. Women's competitive sport remained controversial and slimming in pursuit of fashion was widely condemned. Women from across the social spectrum embraced sport and joined fitness organizations. The rise of a modern female body contributed towards greater equality between the sexes. However, the gender order did not change fundamentally and the ideal woman of the interwar years was represented as a modern, emancipated race mother.     

Pain,pleasure and bridal beauty: mapping postfeminist bridal perfection

Despite renewed media attention on the wedding, and the emphasis that this pays to bridal performance, feminist analysis of wedding culture has made few inroads. Accounts are needed that understand women's experience of the wedding day, the narrative of becoming the bride, and the way this takes place against a backdrop of postfeminist ambivalence, where traditional wedding practices are re-fashioned through discourses of (consumer) choice and empowerment. In this article, we draw on qualitative data collected with five married women from the Netherlands, who spoke to us about their wedding day and their experience of being/becoming brides. We show how retraditionalisation shapes a new romaticisation of wedding day storytelling, constructed through transformation and the experience of beauty. In analysing these narratives, we show how postfeminist bridal perfection comes to anchor the subjective and affective power of ‘the wedding’ in contemporary culture.     

Body image ideals of low-income African American mothers and their preadolescent daughters

Given the high incidence of obesity and obesity-related health problems among low-income African American women, it is both timely and significant to study factors that contribute to obesity in this population. The perception of current body size (body image) and desired body size (body image ideal) has been associated with the development of anorexia and bulimia in white adolescent girls. Body images and ideals may also be related to the development of obesity among African Americans adolescent girls. This study examined the body images and ideals of 27 low-income African American mothers and their 29 preadolescent daughters. Results suggest that there is a relationship between mothers' perceptions of their daughters bodies and their daughters' body images. Preadolescent, low-income, African American girls have normal weight ideals rather than the ultrathin ideals typically found among white girls. Normal weight girls have ideals that are heavier than their body images. This population may be less motivated than those with thinner ideals to engage in behaviors that would prevent the development of obesity during adolescence. Health promotion programs for this population should acknowledge cultural body weight standards.This study was funded by the American Heart Association of Metropolitan Chicago.Received B.A from the University of Pennsylvania. Research interests include cross-cultural studies of body image, eating disorders, health risk perceptions, and health promotion programs.Received Ph.D. from in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University. Research interests include obesity prevention, binge eating, and cultural differences in eating behavior.     

Fashion culture: creative work,female individualization

This article explores some of the key dynamics of the UK fashion sector as an example of a post-industrial, urban based, cultural economy comprising of a largely youthful female workforce. It argues that the small scale, independent activities which formed the backbone of the success of British fashion design as an internationally recognized phenomenon from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, represented a form of female self-generated work giving rise to collaborative possibilities and co-operation. However without an effective lobby or association (despite the expansion of the fashion media) and under conditions of rapid individualization and in an increasingly harsh climate of neo-liberalization, this creative economy has been overtaken and virtually demolished by the joint forces of a re-vitalized high street fashion culture and the aggressive presence of corporate fashion (‘Prada-ization’). While the UK government celebrates the growth of the cultural economy, it also overlooks the processes making the livelihoods of its predominantly female workforce either untenable or else requiring de-specialization and ‘multi-tasking’.     

Masculinity and female bodies

The visibility of feminine-to-masculine (FTM) transgenderism increased considerably in the 1990s. The late modern/postmodern concept of the body as malleable in service of (gendered) identity presentation facilitated this upsurge in two ways: first, transgenderism became intelligible in society through this discourse. Second, representations of masculinity became increasingly corporeal, performative, and thereby more adoptable for a female-bodied person. In addition, certain developments in the politics and circumstances of the transgender organizations, previously dominated by MTF transgenderists, now advanced the activity and participation of FTMs in particular. The rise of female masculinity underlines the general change of masculinity towards more emphasized corporeality.     

Shaping the online fat acceptance movement: talking about body image and beauty standards

Over the past decade, in Canada and the United States, blogs have become a popular and important space for fat women and their allies to create and further develop discursive strategies to contest the gendered anti-fat discourses perpetuated by the media, governments and the field of medicine and institutions of public health (e.g., Elliot, C. (2007). Journal of Canadian Studies, 41, 134–149. Gimlin, D. (2002). Body work: Beauty and self-image in American culture. Berkeley: University of California Press; Herdon, A. M. (2006). Social Semiotics, 15, 127–141. Rice, C. (2007). Women's Studies International Forum, 30, 158–174. Currently, popular discourses pertaining to fat people, particularly women, tend to range from larger bodies implicating a ‘moral deficit’ to a ‘risky behaviour’ to ‘political discrimination’ where elements from each discourse shape how fat women's bodies are read within the broader culture (Fikkan, J. L., & Rothblum, E. D. (2011). Sex Roles, 66, 575–592. Kwan, S. (2009). Sociological Inquiry, 79, 25–50. These messages in positioning the thin body as the ideal body are embedded in neoliberal discourses around citizenship that, in emphasizing personal responsibility, encourage (sometimes) punishing regimens of strict diets and exercise, and perpetuate an image of responsible citizenship as an extension of modern interpretations (Herdon, 2006). Using content and thematic analysis, we systematically analyze how four female self-identified fat acceptance (FA) bloggers discuss beauty standards and body image as a means to challenge these discourses. Findings suggest bloggers import elements from LBGTQ movements to extend dominant discursive strategies, model alternative forms of fat embodiment, and address the economic marginalization of fat women in industry. Moreover, through discussions on beauty and body image, bloggers use online spaces to contest anti-fat discourses and to develop discursive strategies that move beyond the binary of fat as a lifestyle choice, and body size as biologically or genetically determined that dominate the fat acceptance movement.     

on the orgasm of the species: female sexuality,science and sexual difference

This essay interrogates the assemblage of female sexuality. Drawing on an analysis of Masters and Johnson's anatomical research and primatological research on monkeys, I argue that the female sexuality was the product of encounters between women, machines and monkeys. Orgasm's extra-species life produced a conception of female sexuality as natural in evolutionary and anatomical terms. The set of assumptions that follow this naturalisation of female sexuality through an emphasis on orgasm allow us to further deconstruct notions of female sexuality, naturalness and the politics of knowledge that produce this assemblage. Ultimately, I argue that this focus on anatomy and female orgasm allows us to see the stakes of an anatomically based sexual difference.     

The fiction of female dependence and the makeshift economy of soldiers,sailors, and their wives in eighteenth-century London

Using accounts from the Old Bailey Proceedings, this article examines the economic side of military marriages in eighteenth-century London, outlining a fundamental disjuncture in eighteenth-century attitudes to working wives. While all wives were expected to work, state and parish records of military wives repeatedly stress their total dependence on men's wages and bounty money. In actual fact, soldiers, sailors and their wives made use of a much wider range of survival strategies. By stealing, taking odd jobs, pawning goods, and accepting aid from kin or friends, both husbands and wives might significantly augment military pay and/or poor relief.     

Physical activity and adolescent female psychological development

This study explored the relationship between self-reported past and present physical activity levels and high school adolescent women's self-image, sense of mastery, gender role identity, self-perceived physical ability, and self-perceived attractiveness. The Offer Self-image Questionnaire and the Bem Sex Role Inventory were administered to 149 high school adolescent women who were categorized as either physically active, physically inactive, decreasing in physical activity, or increasing physical activity. Results indicated the physically active group members reported self-image and coping characteristics that were significantly more positive than those reported by the physically inactive group members. They also reported significantly more masculine and feminine characteristics and higher physical ability ratings than inactive group members. The decreased activity group did not differ from any of the other groups. These results suggest that physical activity in adolescence, in comparison with physical inactivity, is associated with healthier emotional expression and emotional control, and higher levels of perceived mastery and coping skills for adolescent women. A decrease in physical activity over the course of adolescence does not necessarily result in psychological distress for adolescent women.Received Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Michigan State University. Major interests are concepts of the self, psychological health, and developmental psychology.Received Ph.D. in sport psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Current research interests include social cognitions in sport and physical activity and the role of sport and physical activity in adolescent development.     

UNICEF, syphilis and the state: negotiating female citizenship in the post-Second World War world

Few charitable organizations have achieved the status of global recognition enjoyed by UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, which embodies the international effort to provide for needy children the world over. Created because of its synchronicity with the United Nations' stated purpose—to maintain peace in the world—UNICEF launched its operations in 1946. Its founding, early operations and eventual restructuring reveal a great deal about concurrent political and economic events, but also provide keen insight into international ideas about who qualified for full citizenship in the post-war world. The consequences of UNICEF's policies, procedures and practices posed challenges to notions of citizenship for both women and children. It challenged citizenship not by questioning sex-specific gender roles, but by judiciously adhering to the United Nations' promise to create equality for men and women alike. UNICEF found itself in the unique position to be able to globalize definitions of what constituted full citizenship in any nation, due to its rapid expansion throughout the world. Through its programs, especially those related to health care, it not only challenged these roles in the West, but began over several decades to complicate the definition of citizenship as it became a forceful presence in Asia and Africa throughout the 1970s.