Nonfiction

Read my entire review of Peggy Orenstein’s fourth book about princess culture on Bookslut.

Peggy Orenstein’s fourth book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, chronicles the author’s journey through America’s princess culture with her young daughter, Daisy. Beginning with Disney princesses, Orenstein comes to examine American Girl dolls, the “tween” market, Miley Cyrus, social media, beauty pageants, and of course, Barbie, all in the united effort to best understand the decisions she is making for her daughter. Acknowledging early on in Cinderella Ate My Daughter the tumultuous battlefield of potential body issues, poor self-esteem, rampant sexism, and gender essentialist impositions, Orenstein opens her book with an awareness for the road ahead in raising a girl.

Read my entire review of Jennifer Pozner’s critical take on reality TV on Bookslut.

Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV is the debut book by Women in Media & News founder and feminist journalist Jennifer L. Pozner. An established media critic and leader of media literacy workshops, Pozner has compiled nearly ten years of analysis and research of recent reality shows such as The Millionaire Matchmaker, America’s Next Top Model, and The Real Housewives series, all the way back to Survivor and The Bachelor. Pozner unpacks these guilty pleasure shows with an eye for sexism, racism, misrepresentations of LGBTQ individuals, and canned messages about romantic relationships and gender dynamics.

Here is an excerpt of my review of Traister’s fantastic book. Read the entire review on Bookslut.

Rebecca Traister’s all-encompassing book on the cultural impact of the 2008 presidential election on women voters covers a lot of ground in, surprisingly, very few pages. Traister, a Salon.com reporter who covered the election extensively, draws from own her reporting as well as acute analyses of MSNBC coverage, daytime television talk shows, and many, many print pieces. Incorporating such powerful voices as Melissa Lacewell-Harris (now Harris-Perry), Jessica Valenti, Gloria Steinem, and Rachel Maddow, Traister examines the sexism endured by Hillary Clinton by both the conservative and liberal media, the divide among liberal woman voters, and the catapulting of Sarah Palin as the queen of “the new feminism.”

Susan J. Douglas introduces her book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done, with a definition of what she has coined  as “enlightened sexism.” This new brand of sexism promotes the idea that feminism is no longer needed given certain milestone achievements for women’s rights.

Douglas writes, “Enlightened Sexism a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism — indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved — so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women.”

Douglas supports her thesis by calling on a wide range of  media examples from the 1990s and 2000s such as Melrose Place, the Spice Girls, the reality TV boom, Gossip Girl, and Sarah Palin. Douglas also chronicles feminist efforts that were destroyed by enlightened sexism, such as the birth and death of notoriously smart Sassy magazine, a teen publication Douglas describes as presenting articles and ideas to young girls “[that] could have appeared in the Village Voice or Mother Jones.”

Douglas’s promotes a well-researched concept, as the sexist thread that runs through the manufactured “girl power!” of the 90s up through films like Legally Blonde and Mean Girls is consistently observed. Readers can appreciate Douglas’s wide ranging perspective as she includes pragmatic statistical research, her own experiences raising her millennial daughter, and observations of her students at the University of Michigan.

Most central to Douglas’s idea of enlightened sexism is the birth of reality TV:

As reality TV has evolved in the early twenty-first century and become formulaic, one of the biggest formulas has been to rely on stereotypes, like “the slut” and “the bitch,” and to insist that women be defined by their relationships and assessments by men. As a woman who worked as a “resident psychologists” on one of these shows reported, she was “struck by how embedded in the show’s narrative were the common stereotypes of gender” and how it was in the editing room that “the nonconscious ideology of sexism” took control of the footage. It is in reality TV where the spritzy new girliness of chick flicks and women’s magazines in the late 1990s began to curdle into something more reactionary.

Despite many thoughtful observations, Douglas’s writing wavers when uniting all of her experiences and research into one solid narrative. Successfully, she deconstructs the implicit sexism in Legally Blonde protagonist Elle Woods, explaining that it was Elle’s girliness and attention to hair care practices that won the final court case, not her knowledge of law. But Douglas’s voice struggles when balancing her research with a conversational, informal tone, often relying on jokes to conclude her chapters rather than the analysis her findings merit. Her anecdotal style can often stray too far from central points, detracting readers from the significance of her topic and her riveting research.

Regardless of Douglas’s wayward voice, her research warrants reading. Enlightened Sexism has much to share about Y2kers — young girls and boys who came of age post-2000 whose first experiences with media were Spice Girl lyrics, reality TV characters, Sex and the City, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By tearing into these influences with a critical eye, Douglas taps into a new wave of feminists, calling into question the media consumed in their not-so-distant childhoods and ensuring a new effort on the feminism front. Douglas’s book serves as a strong encyclopedia of media depictions of women for the past two decades, a resource surely needed among feminists of all walks and ages.

To read more about Susan J. Douglas, click here.

Sam Wasson’s book about the classic film Breakfast at Tiffany’s draws not just from the first day of film production but also from the lives and heartbreaks of Truman Capote, Audrey Hepburn, producer Richard Shepherd, screenwriter George Axelrod, and famed costume designer Edith Head.

Wasson opens the book with a close examination of Holly Golightly’s inception, studying Capote’s first brushes with glamor and disappointment as a child. Capote endures a troubled relationship with his mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, a wannabe socialite from humble beginnings who often leaves Capote with relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. Capote’s mother often disappears to Manhattan hoping to rub elbows with the chic and elite but often comes back to Monroeville with little to show for her efforts.

According to Wasson, Capote internalizes his mother’s desperate dedication to metropolitan glamor and, as a result, develops close relationships with women who are cast from the same mold. While living in New York City, the dichotomy of youthful, small town sweetness and uptown sophistication fascinates Capote, and he entertains the idea of writing about his “swans” — delicate and troubled women who suffer under the social caste that they depend on.

After Breakfast at Tiffany’s is published, Jurow-Shepherd considers doing the book as a romantic comedy but Paramount Pictures is puzzled with how to market a New York City call girl with little regard for marriage, family, or love to wholesome American audiences. Producers grapple with how to alter Capote’s tale for the big screen: an openly gay narrator who describes Golightly’s loveless dalliances with rich men, her love of living alone, and her confession to being “a bit of dyke” herself after a few cocktails.

Producers pass on casting sex bombs like Marilyn Monroe and consider a sweeter actress to counteract Holly Golightly’s licentious lifestyle. Hepburn’s agent resists the script. Hepburn too feels that playing such a character will compromise her image. What ensues is a humorous and entertaining behind-the-scenes tale in which Head struggles to appropriately dress Hepburn’s slight form, Capote insists to the press that he could have written the script, and Blake Edwards, the director, demands real actors, not extras, for the famous party scene in Golighty’s apartment.

Wasson’s writing is vivid, lively, and effortlessly comedic as he resurrects scenes and phone calls between producers and writers with quick and snappy dialogue. Wasson’s detailed descriptions of shooting locations and between-the-scenes moments are recreated with a reserved amount of fiction, moving reported events along with novel-like ease. His literary use of Hepburn, Capote, Monroe, and Axelrod read like finely drawn biographical sketches — as if they are  fiction characters of his own making.

Impeccably researched, Fifth Ave, 5 a.m. presents a peek into 1960s cinema but also, as the title promises, the beginning of modern women in film. Wasson consistently contrasts Audrey Hepburn, devoted mother and not-so-appreciated wife, with her party girl role, producing a thoughtful meditation on the Madonna/whore schism. He takes note of the sexist utilization of the term “kook” in the press to soften Holly Golighty’s image and the strategic placement of the cat on Hepburn’s shoulder for the promotional poster.

… that cat, which was so important to the studio was — as their explicit definition indicates — part of their spin on ‘kook.’ Without it, the figure of Holly in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster reads as simply seductive. The presence of the cat quite cleverly plays against that potentially alienating feature — and here’s the key — without negating it… Breakfast at Tiffany’s is kookie, the poster says, but the good kind, the kind with an old-fashioned ending.

Wasson’s analysis of women’s sexuality in the 1960s includes interviews with women who were mini Golightys before the fame of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Their anecdotal stories, along with comments drawn from reviews of the film, reveal the impact Breakfast at Tiffany’s had on depictions of women in the media. Beautifully, he describes how America responded to the progressively themed film that predated the turbulent 60s:

Back then, while the sexual revolution was still underground, Breakfast at Tiffany’s remained a covert insurgence, like a love letter passed around a classroom.

Fifth Ave., 5 a.m. is well-rounded in its reach and study of many topics, facts, and people. The stories of Breakfast at Tiffany’s individual participants could suffice as vignettes of their own, but Wasson brings each of them together in close observation of the film that they’ll each be remembered for.

To read more about Sam Wasson, click here.