Body image: a handbook of theory, research, and clinical practice, ed. by Thomas F. Cash and Thomas Pruzinsky.  Guilford, 2002.  530p bibl index afp ISBN 1-57230-777-3, $60.00. Reviewed in 2003feb CHOICE.
40-3703  BF697  2002-6334 CIP 
 
Cash and Pruzinsky expertly planned, coordinated, and edited this volume, which dispels the myth that body-image issues primarily concern young women. This reviewer was particularly pleased to discover separate chapters devoted to body-image development at various phases of the life span. Section 2, “Developmental Perspectives and Influences,” is particularly strong because the contributors devote attention to life phase and external influences on body image. Also valuable is the section titled “Individual and Cultural Differences,” which is an excellent example of the integration of research and discussion of its applications–a hallmark of this handbook. Sections 7 and 8 make a clear–and critical–distinction between methods that individuals use to change the “body” (such as surgery) and what can and should be done to change “body images.” Recommended for general readers, students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in body image. — R. E. Osborne, Southwest Texas State University 

DeShazer, Mary K.  Fractured borders: reading women’s cancer literature.  Michigan, 2005.  301p bibl index afp ISBN 0-472-09909-4, $70.00; ISBN 0472069098 pbk, $24.95. Reviewed in 2006sep CHOICE.
44-0162  PS169  2005-16627 CIP 
 
This well-researched, accessible book analyzes a variety of women’s texts about cancer. DeShazer (women’s studies and English, Lake Forest Univ.) includes a range of genres and so broadens the recent scholarship on women’s cancer literature, which often considers only autobiographical prose narrative (e.g., Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman’s Beyond Slash, Burn, and Poison: Transforming Breast Cancer Stories into Action, CH, May’05, 42-5304, which classes under medicine). Using a feminist theoretical framework that takes into account theories of the body, performance theory, and disability studies, DeShazer presents close readings of plays by Margaret Edson, Susan Miller, Lisa Loomer, Maxine Bailey, and Sharon Lewis; poetry by Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, and Hilda Raz; popular fiction by Patricia Gaffney, Elizabeth Berg, Anna Quindlen, and Jayne Anne Phillips; experimental fiction by Carole Maso, Susan Minot, and Jeanette Winterson; and autobiographical narratives by Katherine Russell Rich, Ruth Picardie, Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum, and Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick. Along the way she identifies five ways in which women’s cancer-stricken bodies are typically represented–“medicalized,” leaky, amputated, prosthetic, and (not) dying–and explores how the meanings of cancer are constructed and the consequence for female subjectivity. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers; all levels. — A. E. McKim, St. Thomas University 

Dress sense: emotional and sensory experiences of the body and clothes, ed. by Donald Clay Johnson and Helen Bradley Foster.  Berg, 2008 (c2007).  188p bibl index; ISBN 9781845206932, $34.95. Reviewed in 2009jan CHOICE.
46-2747  GT524  2007-33131 CIP 

Joanne Eicher challenged scholars to explore how clothing relates to all five senses, not merely sight, and to include human feelings associated with wearing apparel. In 1992, Eicher and her colleague, Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, broke new ground in defining clothing (“dress”) as an assemblage of modifications and/or supplements to the body. This notion led to a variety of cross-cultural studies. Former Eicher students, building on her unique terminology, wrote many of the 15 entries (historical/contemporary/futuristic) in this thought-provoking volume. Topics cover a broad spectrum, from Greek village to Moroccan costumes and British imperial clothing in India to Hungarian communist dress practices. All reveal some relationship between clothing (including jewelry, ornamentation, hairstyles and coverings, fragrances, and body paintings) and the communication of ethnic, gender, and social values. African cultures are emphasized (Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, South Africa, Senegal, Somali) because Eicher carried out extensive fieldwork on that continent. Overall, these essays open new vistas. Examples of ways to understand clothing include sound (created by metallic bells and amulets), smell (natural body odor, incenses, herbs), taste (original Indian madras as detected by saltiness of dyes used), and touch (body tattoos, heavy wool). New digital research even allows for simulating fitted clothing and environmental touch, smell, and taste sensations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. — B. B. Chico, Regis University 

Gottschild, Brenda Dixon.  The black dancing body: a geography from coon to cool.  Palgrave, 2003.  332p bibl index ISBN 0-312-24047-3, $29.95. Reviewed in 2004oct CHOICE.
42-0862  GV1624  2003-41434 CIP 
 
Combining interviews with dancers and choreographers who came of age artistically during the 1970s and 1980s with her own observations about the US popular culture’s debt to African American concert and vernacular dance, Gottschild (emer., Tempe Univ., and research fellow, Univ. of Pennsylvania) debunks myths about African Americans, their bodies, and ballet. At the center of her observations–and this book–is the butt! Nowhere have African Americans and their buttocks been more at the center of controversy than in classical ballet. Gottschild reminds readers that few people of any ethnicity are naturally endowed with the lean and supple bodies required of classical ballet dancers. Those bodies are the result of intensive training. Why, then, are African Americans singled out as unsuitable? Gottschild gets right to the point: racist beliefs about their butts. Gottschild never succumbs to polemics. Instead, she provides an often-entertaining historical context for understanding how myths about “black dancing bodies” were perpetuated during the early 19th century and persist even today. Well written and illustrated with rare photos of some of today’s most active black concert dancers and dance ensembles, this book will appeal to a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. — S. A. Adell, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Grogan, Sarah.  Body image: understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women, and children.  Routledge, 1999.  225p bibl indexes ISBN 0-415-14784-0, $75.00.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 1999sep CHOICE.
37-0628  BF697  98-4036 CIP

This title has been reviewed jointly with Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality by Gail Weiss.

An important topic, body image has been largely ignored by all but a scant few philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. These two volumes go a long way toward rectifying this oversight. Grogan’s book is more research oriented, Weiss’s more philosophical. Both make important points, many of them compatible. For example, Weiss discusses the social nature of body image and individuals’ dependence on others to establish perceptions of body image; Grogan looks at how the group to which one turns for social information relevant to body image (e.g., family, friends, media) can have a profound impact. Both authors discuss the importance of examining the elasticity of body image during adolescence, but Grogan speaks specifically to the interconnection of media, advertising, and body image. One particular strength of Weiss’s discussion is her challenge of the psychoanalytic notion that body image is gender neutral. This is a very important idea to discuss, and Weiss’s arguments mesh well with Grogan’s discussion of the differential body image expectations and illnesses of women, men, and children. Although both books are well researched and comprehensive, Grogan’s is the more accessible; readers will find its timely cross-cultural research and comparisons interesting and somewhat surprising. A much more difficult read because of her writing style and philosophical tone, Weiss’s volume will be beyond the scope of all but the most astute undergraduate and general reader. Both works are highly recommended for graduate students and researchers/faculty, but Grogan’s audience will extend to upper-division undergraduates and professionals. — R. E. Osborne, Indiana University East 
 

Henderson, Carol E.  Scarring the black body: race and representation in African American literature.  Missouri, 2002.  183p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8262-1421-5, $32.50. Reviewed in 2003may CHOICE.
40-5080  PS153  2002-73957 CIP 
 
Exciting, innovative, scholarly, and creative, this study brings together unique literary and historical research for a common theme. Inspired by the language of the scarred body of a woman in church, a woman who had obviously been brutalized, Henderson (Univ. of Delaware, Newark) argues that women’s brutalized corporeal bodies serve as an emblem for conceptualization of national identities and also contextualize social, political, and ethnic identity. Thus, the body of African American women, especially during slavery, can be so identified in the African American literary canon. Henderson looks at Sherley Anne William’s Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Ann Petry’s The Street (1946), bringing new insights into the reading and the suppressed voices of women in these novels. Texts by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison serve as illustrative support of the brutalization of male bodies, and Henderson analyzes the fear that lynching and castration imbedded in the psyche of African American males. This book–with its compelling chapter organization and thematic approach–demands close reading. Copious notes and extensive bibliography are excellent. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Collections supporting American literature, women’s studies, and American and African American studies; upper-division undergraduate and above. — B. Taylor-Thompson, Texas Southern University 

Jackson, Ronald L., II.  Scripting the black masculine body: identity, discourse, and racial politics in popular media.  State University of New York, 2006.  179p bibl index afp ISBN 0-7914-6625-6, $71.50; ISBN 0791466264 pbk, $22.95. Reviewed in 2006jul CHOICE.
43-6290  E185  2005-2385 CIP 
 
Jackson (Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park) combines the insights of intercultural communication models and critical identity studies to argue for the pathologized scripting of African American identities in popular media. In particular, the author focuses on the black male body as the site at which demeaning stereotypes of black men pervade. He historicizes black body politics across the Jim Crow era, then focuses on contemporary media productions of black masculinity in order to demonstrate the limited (and limiting) images that constitute African American gender identities in film, music, news broadcasts, etc. Jackson avoids recent studies of black masculinity that might have served his purpose, e.g., Maurice Wallace’s Constructing the Black Masculine (CH, Jan’03, 40-2570) and Marlon Ross’s Manning the Race (CH, Feb’05, 42-3745). Despite this, his work advances the critical examination of black masculinities seen in such works as Phillip Brian Harper’s Are We Not Men: Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African American Identity (1996), bell hooks’s We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004), and Representing Black Men, ed. by Marcellus Blount and George Cunningham (CH, Sep’96, 34-0065). This is a significant contribution to the literature on masculinity studies, African American studies, and intercultural communications. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. — D. E. Magill, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown 

Lima, L^D’azaro.  The Latino body: crisis identities in American literary and cultural memory.  New York University, 2007.  231p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8147-5214-4, $70.00; ISBN 0814752152 pbk, $21.00; ISBN 9780814752142, $70.00; ISBN 9780814752159 pbk, $21.00. Reviewed in 2008mar CHOICE.
45-3643  PS153  2007-6121 CIP 
 
Lima (Bryn Mawr College) charts the strategies used to construct Latino (specifically Mexican American) identities at different points in US history, from the Mexican American War, through the Chicano movement of the 1960s, through the culture wars of the Reagan era and the institutionalization of Latino literature in the academy, to the recent murders in Mexico’s Ciudad Ju^D’arez. These “crisis moments” move Latino authors from assimilationist to contestatory positions, but it is clear that one cannot trust mainstream constructions of citizenship that consider the Latino body as foreign or marginal. Lima chooses interesting texts–Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck (1542), Tom^D’as Rivera’s … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1971), and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Ju^D’arez Murders (2005), among others–to illustrate how Latinos have used memory, along with racial and ethnic denominations, to become subjects of US national history. An engaging, original, readable work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. — A. A. Edwards, Mercyhurst College 

Luciano, Lynne.  Looking good: male body image in modern America.  Hill & Wang, 2001.  259p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8090-6637-8, $25.00. Reviewed in 2001jul CHOICE.
38-6502  BF697  00-32013 CIP 
 
Today we are not surprised to see men preening, trying to stay fit, and presenting themselves as favorably as do their female counterparts. In a readable, historical account, Luciano lays out the societal changes that have promoted the growing male preoccupation with body images and self-esteem. The essential point she makes: male bodies have become as public as women’s, with the resultant continuous scrutiny, lust, and evaluation. Luciano contends the blame can be attributed to major societal shifts, primarily affluence, but also consumerism; drug availability; female independence; the loss of male, middle-class job security; and baby boom resistance to aging, best illustrated by the Viagra phenomenon. Excessive expectations play a large role in the changing standards, too. Currently, many men feel they must remain competitive in all arenas of life to prosper: physical fitness, job readiness, and sexual prowess. Although the author provides good contrast between past and present, additional comparisons by ethnicity and sexual orientation would have strengthened the book. Many women have fought against being evaluated solely on looks; are men resisting as well? If they are, what forms does this resistance take? Nevertheless, recommended for studies in gender and social psychology. — S. D. Borchert, Lake Erie College

Springgay, Stephanie.  Body knowledge and curriculum: pedagogies of touch in youth and visual culture.  P. Lang, 2008.  144p bibl index afp ISBN 1433102811 pbk, $32.95; ISBN 9781433102813 pbk, $32.95.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2009aug CHOICE.
46-6948  HM636  2008-6442 MARC 
 
In an age when childhood obesity, adolescent pregnancy, and youth activism are of increasing relevance, Springgay (art education and women’s studies, Pennsylvania Univ.) explores high school students’ lived experiences of their bodies through visual and textual means. One of the preeminent scholars in the fields of arts-based research and arts-based methodology, Springgay builds upon previous work such as Curriculum and the Cultural Body (edited with Debra Freedman, 2007) to provide a penetrating and insightful study of how educational encounters with students in an arts classroom can lead to new ways of thinking and being. Using rich and thick descriptions of student interactions with art and body, Springgay organizes her book around chapters that examine feminist theories of touch and inter-embodiment, alternative models for understanding body image, corporeal cartographies, a pedagogy of corporeal generosity, and teaching and learning through touch. The study poses questions about body knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy, and artistic forms of creating and enacting; research that is both broad reaching and incisive, and that will cause some readers discomfort. Abundant photographs; clear and forceful writing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — S. T. Schroth, Knox College 

Steinberg, Michael.  The fiction of a thinkable world: body, meaning, and the culture of capitalism.  Monthly Review, 2005.  223p bibl index ISBN 1583671153 pbk, $17.95. Reviewed in 2005nov CHOICE.
43-1503  B841  2005-245 CIP 
 
This wide-ranging interdisciplinary text has a thorough grounding in the history of ideas. Appropriate stage setting for the text’s main thesis includes a novel interpretation of the influence of the ancient Greeks upon the current worldview, contrasted with thinkers such as Mencius in ancient China. Steinberg (an independent scholar) aims to show that “the spiral of consumption . . . drives the engine of capitalism and strip mines our physical environments and our inner lives.” Although Steinberg notes that this is the “very heart” of Marx’s claims regarding the separation of self and body, he moves beyond Marx and Marxism when he concludes that “the entire progression of romanticism, scientism, modernism, and postmodernism seems to follow from this separation, and because all these positions begin from the opposition between individual and social none can find a way out of that split.” Steinberg’s arguments regarding self, other, ethics, and Christianity are highly original and at times controversial. Steinberg also gives his reader closure: one can escape the psychologically and socially devastating and environmentally unsustainable separation between self and body via “a negative politics of purposeful action without predetermined goals.” This fascinating text complements the works of Wendell Berry. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. — H. Storl, Augustana College (IL)

Tsiaras, Alexander.  The architecture and design of man and woman: the marvel of the human body, revealed, by Alexander Tsiaras with Barry Werth.  Doubleday, 2004.  251p ISBN 0-385-50929-4, $50.00.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2005jul CHOICE.
42-6476  QM25  2003-68830 CIP 
 
Tsiaras and Werth (independent scholars) understand so well what educators have all known and stressed to students for years: that form and function are intimately linked in biological tissues, organs, and systems. Merging science with art, Tsiaras combines computer graphics with the power of medical imaging to allow readers to peer into the depth and complexity of the human body. In this landmark text, one lingers over every page and comes away with new insights about and a deeper understanding of each organ system. Subtle and important differences between male and female form and function are delicately interwoven throughout. Beautifully created and important, this text will be both accessible and interesting to instructors, physicians, artists, and students of all levels. It will be a must-have for undergraduate and graduate libraries and, moreover, will find its way to the shelves of faculty teaching in all areas of animal/human biology, scientific illustration, and art. It sets a new standard for how imagery can enhance understanding, and its conservative size ensures that it will not be lost in the oversized-books section of most libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. — K. Crawford, St. Mary’s College of Maryland 

Wykes, Maggie.  The media and body image: if looks could kill, by Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunter.  Sage Publications, CA, 2005.  252p bibl index ISBN 0-7619-4247-5, $79.95. Reviewed in 2005jul CHOICE.
42-6319  P94   MARC 

Wykes and Gunter (both Univ. of Sheffield, UK) take a novel approach to familiar subjects–body image, eating disorders, Western ideals of beauty, media representations of femininity–by offering historical contextualization of the discourses surrounding each issue and articulating how these discourses relate. The upshot is a useful discussion that interrogates, rather than presumes, the effects of mass media on audiences and consumers. After describing the “moral panic” over eating disorders and an escalating rate of body dissatisfaction (particularly among young women), the authors devote part 1 to a summary of requisite post-structuralist theories about discourse, media, and the body. They offer a survey of medical, psychological, and feminist discourses about gender and eating disorders, and a review of content analyses of print (newspapers and magazines) and screen (television and the Web) representations of the female body. Part 2 reviews empirical (survey and experimental) research on how exposure to mediated messages about femininity and thinness influence the audiences’ actual body images. Although causal relationships between media exposure and eating disorders have not been conclusively proven, the authors illustrate how mass media are complicit in selling thinness. Numerous subheadings and frequent previews and summaries make this book readable as well as valuable. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate and research collections. — P. A. Fulfs, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown