Minding the Body

by Patricia Foster

Overview

A mulitcultural anthology of fiction and  non-fiction literary narratives which addresses the  psychological and political aspects of a woman's body in  today's culture. An important and much-needed  book for women who seek to understand their bodies  and find independent, imaginative ways to cope with  aging, beauty expectations beauty expectations,  and ethnic comparisons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307794741
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/18/2011
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	984,286
File size:	2 MB

Table of Contents

Patricia Foster
“Reading” the Body: An Introduction

Sallie Tisdale
A Weight that Women Carry

Joyce Winter
The Floating Lightbulb

Lucy Grealy
Mirrors

Doris Grumbach
Coming Into the End Zone

Margaret Atwood
The Female Body

Kathryn Harrison
Thicker Than Water

Judith Hooper
Beauty Tips for the Dead

Rosemary Bray
First Stirrings

Pam Houston
Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing

Linda Hogan
Department of the Interior

Connie Porter
Beauty and the Beast

Naomi Wolf
Keep Them Implanted and Ignorant

Hanan al-Shaykh
Inside a Moroccan Bath

Janet Burroway
Changes

Lynne Taetzsch
Fighting Natural

Jenefer Shute
Life-size

Nancy Mairs
Carnal Acts

Patricia Stevens
Stiff Upper Lip

Judith Ortiz Cofer
The Story of My Body

Contributors' Notes

Permissions

Editorial Reviews

The era of birth control pills and legalized abortions is a golden age of freedom compared with our grandmothers' times. Yet, as this collection of fiction and nonfiction suggests, many women's relationships to their bodies are complex and sometimes baffling. So many women hate their bodies, often as a manifestation of a media-influenced body consciousness that exalts a narrow range of physical proportions including ultraslender hips and large breasts. The same media that facilitate such self-loathing also minutely document excessive forms of body awareness (anorexia, bulimia, purging), although rarely the complicated interplay of thoughts and emotions that exacerbates those conditions. The writings at hand generally dissect women's obsessions with media-manufactured body ideals that turn women's bodies into sexual bargaining chips. As they do, they bring new meaning to the notion of selling and being sold and to the term "sexual politics".

Whitney Scott