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Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, 224 pp., $49.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper.
Piscataway, NJ: Kutgers University Press, 2001, 192 pp., $52.00 hardcover, $22.00 paper.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, 181 pp., $48.00 hardcover, $16.95 paper.
Three recently published books explore the variety of ways in which women not only learn to tie their value and self-worth to their appearances, but also struggle to find ways to challenge and subvert the tyranny that such a concern exerts in their lives.
Measuring Up, How Advertising Affects Self-Image explores relationships between idealized images of female bodies in advertising and the ways that those images shape male and female perceptions and behaviors toward female bodies. The author, Vickie Rutledge Shields, argues that the ubiquitous and endlessly repeated images of youthful, slender, and beautiful bodies in advertising represent an impossible feminine ideal, perpetuate a singular monolithic aesthetic, and establish the primacy of appearance to women's lives. Images of women in ads likewise affect the assignment and enactment of gender roles within culture. Although Shields surveys opinions from both men and women, it is apparent from the analysis she presents that ads have a particularly negative impact on women's lives.
Shields compares responses of men and women to eight ads identified by scholars of gender and advertising as representing prevailing stereotypes of sex roles and ritualized gender behavior. What the voices of the real life people in her research reveal is that ads have a deeper impact on how women view themselves than is true of their male counterparts. The repetition of images of idealized female bodies becomes fundamental to a woman's feelings of self-worth and social valuation and also contributes to a variety of social pathologies ranging from sexual harassment and subordination to eating disorders, low self-esteem, even rape. Ads likewise establish women in no uncertain terms as objects to be improved upon to merit the gaze of the all important-male Other. Shields notes that the impact of advertising is especially dramatic in the lives of adolescent girls who, lacking a strong self-concept, often look to advertising for guidance on how to act and look. But the "symbolic annihilation" or deliberate exclusion of images of gays and lesbians, the aged, the disabled, and people of color is equally harmful,...