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 

Body image, eating disorders, and obesity in youth: assessment, prevention, and treatment, ed. by Linda Smolak and J. Kevin Thompson.  2nd ed.  American Psychological Association, 2009.  389p bibl indexes ISBN 1-4338-0405-0, $59.95; ISBN 9781433804052, $59.95. Reviewed in 2009apr CHOICE.
46-4715  RJ506   2008-23404 CIP 

In this meticulously updated, evidence-based edition of a book first published in 2001, esteemed international contributors provide a broad yet integrated look at issues impacting weight and eating issues among youth. This volume is unique for its focus on the early onset of eating problems (most other work on childhood risk factors focuses more on adult outcomes). Considering developmental, familial, social, and cultural challenges, the book looks at a variety of issues–for example, the fundamental differences in assessing, treating, and preventing eating disorders in children (versus older adolescents and adults) and the unintended consequences (e.g., more disordered eating) of programs targeting childhood obesity prevention. The book points out the enormous gaps in the body of current knowledge about eating disorders and obesity in children, foremost among these biological factors, psychopharmacological approaches, and longitudinal data. Particularly noteworthy are chapters on pre-adolescent boys and on eating in “ethnically diverse groups.” A must read for all who are involved in clinical, counseling, research, or treatment programs related to eating disorders, this valuable book provides a starting point for those interested in enhancing the health and well-being of elementary and middle school children. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. — J. M. Lacey, West Chester University of Pennsylvania 

Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. The body project: an intimate history of American girls.  Random House, 1997.  267p index afp ISBN 0-679-40297-7, $25.00.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 1998feb CHOICE.
35-3379  HQ798  96-21885 MARC

The Body Project is an engrossing and compelling book for a broad audience, written by one of the most accomplished feminist historians of this generation. Synthesizing a broad range of specialized studies from science, medicine, social science, and the humanities, and drawing as well on a century of unpublished diaries of adolescent girls, Brumberg argues that female adolescence in the US at the turn of the 21st century is much more perilous than at the turn of the 20th. The principal reason for this change is that the typical adolescent girl has become obsessed with “the body,” making it “into an all-consuming project in ways young women of the past did not.” Provocatively, Brumberg contends not only that such a preoccupation–reinforced by the culture as well as internalized by girls themselves–damages these young women, but also that the solution to this problem is to find contemporary ways of protecting them. Girls today, she asserts, are biologically more mature at a younger age than past generations, but emotionally they are perhaps more vulnerable. A tour de force, this book should appeal to parents, teachers, other professionals who deal with issues of gender, sexuality, youth, and medicine–and young women themselves. — M. Marsh, Temple University 

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying bodies: disability in contemporary life writing.  Michigan, 2009.  204p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780472070695, $65.00; ISBN 9780472050697  pbk, $27.95. Reviewed in 2010apr CHOICE.
47-4265  PS153   2009-18643 CIP 

“Bodies have always signified in Western culture,” posits Couser (English and disability studies, Hofstra Univ.). Still, that significance has been “to the disadvantage of those with bodies that differ from some ideal or norm.” Not surprisingly, the life writing of individuals with disabilities has been marginalized; first-person disability narrative has historically been reductive, conforming to common rhetorics that often reinforce disability’s stigma. But the author observes that the last quarter century has witnessed a “cultural and historical phenomenon” as persons with disabilities have begun to “face” their bodies and to write about them in ways that claim ownership and demand full citizenship. In eight essays and an epilogue titled “The New Disability Memoir,” Couser explores this phenomenon by both synopsizing and analyzing contemporary life writings of authors like Lucy Grealy and Lauren Slater, touching on topics such as ethics in disability memoirs and disability rights. Also author of Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life-Writing (1997), Couser here contributes another study that deserves the critical yet compassionate treatment that he is in the unique position of providing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. — S. M. Erby, Wilson College 

Davis, Kathy.  The making of Our bodies, ourselves: feminism travels across borders.  Duke University, 2007.  277p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780822340454, $79.95; ISBN 9780822340669 pbk, $22.95. Reviewed in 2008jul CHOICE.
45-6240  HQ1154  2007-14062 CIP 

Davis (Utrecht Univ.) marvelously recounts the emergence of Our Bodies, Ourselves, (OBOS) the feminist women’s health book that has been updated and translated multiple times since it was produced by the Boston Women’s Health Collective (BWHC) in 1970. Organizing her work around the assumption that OBOS is best understood as a feminist epistemological project, Davis also argues that the book is best understood as an international dialogue rather than a one-way transmission of Western (US) feminism and knowledge. Davis outlines the BWHC and looks at letters written to the collective and the ways that readers’ feedback and experiences shaped further productions of the book. Through interviews with translators and activists from other countries, Davis explores linguistic and cultural translations needed to provide a meaningful and politically attuned resource for women in differing contexts. For example, Davis reads the Latin American translation as returning OBOS to its collectivist origins and away from the individualistic self-help frame of US production. A Bulgarian translation project decenters the OBOS critique of medicalization, which seems cynical in a context with inadequate access to basic health care. Summing Up: Highly recommended . Women’s studies, medical anthropology and sociology, and possibly public health programs; upper-division undergraduates and above. — J. L. Croissant, University of Arizona 

Fahy, Thomas.  Freak shows and the modern American imagination: constructing the damaged body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.  192p bibl index ISBN 1-4039-7403-9, $65.00; ISBN 9781403974037, $65.00. Reviewed in 2007may CHOICE.
44-4907  PS374   2005-56619 CIP 

This interesting book looks at the notion of freakishness during the first half of the 20th century and the incorporation of freakishness into artistic discourses, especially literature. Fahy (English and American studies, Long Island Univ.) considers how freaks and freak shows were negotiated through the imaginations of writers from Willa Cather to Truman Capote, including William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, Tillie Olsen, Rebecca West, and John Steinbeck. Throughout, Fahy contextualizes the notion of the “freak” within changing, often vexed, social attitudes, and through this lens explains the slow, eventual decline of the freak show. In general, the book’s trajectory is chronological. Chapter 1 deals with the “freakishness” of the racial Other in the years preceding WW I. Subsequent chapters look at the “war-injured body” of WW I; the worn and deteriorating body of the Depression (here the author provides a fascinating discussion of FDR’s disability); and the queer body in the homophobic context of the 1940s-50s. Adding an innovative touch most often associated with cultural studies, Fahy concludes each chapter with a short personal vignette in which he describes an experience he had with a so-called freak. Including numerous photographs, this book makes a solid contribution to literary studies and cultural studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates; graduate students. — E. T. Klaver, Southern Illinois University Carbondale 

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. Embodiment and cognitive science.  Cambridge, 2007 (c2006).  337p bibl index ISBN 0-521-81174-0, $70.00. Reviewed in 2007dec CHOICE.
45-2314  BF151   2005-709 CIP 

Gibbs (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) makes a compelling argument for a much closer connection between the corporeal body and the expressions of a person’s mind and behavior than the tenets of cognitive science usually admit. He reads signs of a shift toward appreciation of varieties of “embodied” selves in the work of, for example, Antonio Damasio (neuroscience) and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (language), but in the main he shows that since the 1950s–and the inception of cognitive science and the metaphor of the thinking mind as a computer–the discipline has essentially developed along the old Cartesian lines, which distinguish the body as irrational and the mind as a higher order of rationality. The seven core chapters of this book cover perception, action, imagery, memory, reasoning, affects, development, and the million-dollar-question of consciousness, and the author adds interesting details of psychological experiments that back up this substantial development of his thesis. This fascinating and well-written book should be read by psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and students of the “person.” Gibbs provides much cognitive research evidence for a notion parallel to his own: Freud’s claim that the ego (roughly speaking, the self) is “first and foremost a bodily ego.” Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. — R. H. Balsam, Yale 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 

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 

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 

Molinary, Rosie.  Hijas Americanas: beauty, body image, and growing up Latina.  Seal Press, 2007.  325p index ISBN 1580051898 pbk, $15.95; ISBN 9781580051897 pbk, $15.95. Reviewed in 2008may CHOICE.
45-5290  E184   2006-38580 CIP 

Molinary’s book promised great things about Latina beauty and body image, but it lacks complexity and coherence. While there are many stories that will resonate with both Latina and non-Latina readers alike, the lack of solid editing makes this book of limited utility in the classroom or library. Molinary developed a comprehensive “Growing up Latina” survey and set of follow-up interview questions that clearly provided interesting data and anecdotes, but again, the lack of coherence and organization leaves readers with an overwhelming feeling of repetition in every chapter. The sample sizes were ample: 521 survey participants and 80 interviews. The one positive feature of the book is the blending of the statistical data, interview responses, and cultural and autobiographical stories, with Latinas from varying backgrounds. The diversity among Latinas is clear and perhaps would have provided an easier-to-follow chapter structure: grouping by geography, nationality, age, or income. The strongest chapter is the eighth, containing biographies of five famous Latinas such as California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, although why it appears where it does in the book is a mystery, as are many other organizational decisions. Summing Up: Not recommended. — S. M. Green, California State University—Chico 

Siebers, Tobin.  Disability theory.  Michigan, 2008.  231p bibl index afp ISBN 0-472-07039-8, $65.00; ISBN 9780472050390 pbk, $22.95; ISBN 9780472070398, $65.00; ISBN 0472050397 pbk, $22.95.  Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2009jun CHOICE.
46-5682  HV1568  2007-52247 CIP 

Siebers’s book meets a need for a sophisticated text on disability theory for the classroom. The text positions itself at the intersection of “cultural studies, literary theory, queer studies, gender studies, and critical race studies,” and celebrates the all-inclusiveness of disability as part of the human condition. Siebers (English, Michigan) calls for a new definition of universal human rights based on “human fragility, vulnerability, and disability as the standard for rights-bearing status.” This radical idea is one of the many challenging notions this fine book explores. How about contemplating “a sexual culture for disabled people?” Or how shame obstructs the claiming of disabled sexual identity? Or disabled folks as sexual minorities? Or being punished for studying what you are: female, gay, disabled, black? The chapter on narcissism gets this reviewer’s vote for one of the clearest statements about the criticisms of identity politics. Siebers has illuminated the meaning of narcissism when he states that the accusation of narcissism against “people with disabilities … is a political formation that inhibits their ability to act politically.” Look for the many more treasures to be found in this book. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. — P. A. Murphy, adjunct, University of Toledo 

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 

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