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The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. By Joan Jacobs Brumberg. (New York: Random House, 1997. xciv, 267 pp. Cloth, $25.00, ISBN 0-679-40297-7. Paper, $13.00, ISBN 0-679-73529-1.)
Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that today's female adolescents internalize potent pressures toward beauty and sex appeal. Granted, others worry with her. Brumberg's brilliant contribution is to historicize this high-stakes problem.
Looking back 150 years, Brumberg points out that adolescents have reached menarche progressively earlier, from fifteen to just over twelve on average. Yet, now that girls mature younger, they receive less adult guidance, mentoring, and protection. Our modern openness about once-taboo subjects has not released girls from cultural control: instead, external rather than moral qualities constitute girls' self worth. Starting in the 1920s, education about menstruation focused on hygiene and tidy appearance, not fertility. Well-lit,...