Posts Tagged ‘women in media’

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.

Read my interview with video remix artist, Elisa Kreisinger, creator of QueerCarrie and Queer Housewives of NYC, on The Daily BR!NK.

Eighteen Acres, the debut novel by Nicolle Wallace, communications director under George W. Bush and campaign advisor for John McCain and Sarah Palin, approaches contemporary politics from the angle of women’s commercial fiction. The three main characters each carry different careers within the realm of US politics: Melanie Kingston, the White House chief of staff, Charlotte Kramer, America’s first female president, and Dale Smith, a White House correspondent.

Read the entire review on Bookslut.

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.”