Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism
Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. While the opportunities available to women may have expanded, the ambitions of many young girls are in reality limited by a culture that asks them to see consumerism and self-decoration as their only proper occupations, and their bodies as their only passport to success. At the same time we are encouraged to believe that the inequality we observe all around us is born of innate biological differences rather than social factors. Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, Natasha Walter directs us to look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity - today.
3.5 out of 5 based on 8 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Society, Politics & Philosophy |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
288 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-1844084845 |
| Publisher |
Virago |
| |
Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. While the opportunities available to women may have expanded, the ambitions of many young girls are in reality limited by a culture that asks them to see consumerism and self-decoration as their only proper occupations, and their bodies as their only passport to success. At the same time we are encouraged to believe that the inequality we observe all around us is born of innate biological differences rather than social factors. Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, Natasha Walter directs us to look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity - today.
Read an extract from the book at Times Online
Reviews
The New Statesman
Bidisha
"At this crucial moment in women's history, Walter provides a crystal-clear enunciation of the hypocrisy, shallowness and misogyny of our age… She is especially enlightening on the ubiquity of pornography and its effect on both girls' and boys' understanding of gender."
10/02/2010
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The Observer
Jessica Valenti
"Walter does an excellent job of walking a controversial line... In truth, it's hard to disagree with anything [she] writes. It's what she doesn't say that stops Living Dolls being truly convincing. The book's set-up and subtitle promise something that isn't delivered: the full story. Sexism is hardly limited to the sexualisation of young women and a culture that trumpets gender difference. If only!"
10/02/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Cassandra Jardine
"She attempts to remain impartial – “I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women” – but underneath the rhetoric of empowerment she finds the deep unhappiness that she, no doubt, hoped to find… her arguments are well constructed and vividly illustrated."
10/02/2010
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The Times
Sarah Vine
"As the growth of the so-called glamour industry shows, there is a distinct, if fine, line between liberation and degradation, a line that Walter believes has been crossed. It is on this subject that she is at her most thought-provoking, and has researched and interviewed extensively around her theme, building up a clear and compelling case. Where the book loses impetus is later, when it gets rather too caught up in gender science... Nevertheless, this is an important book, not least because the hypersexualisation of our culture affects not just young girls but society in general."
30/01/2010
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The Mail on Sunday
Susie Orbach
"What's missing in Walter's analysis is an understanding of the way society creates a mentality that inclines girls to engage in pole-dancing, stripping, breast augmentation and so on. Yes, there are huge commercial interests driving women to transform their bodies... But the desire to remake one's body rests on something more insidious: girls now sense that their bodies are objects which need to be sculpted to win the praise, which can then temporarily assuage their own insecurity."
10/02/2010
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The Sunday Telegraph
Jane Shilling
"Repeatedly she declines to press her points to their conclusion. Among the topics she doesn’t explore, in detail or at all, are the effects of parenting, education, class and attitudes to alcohol in the UK on young women’s self-image… Living Dolls is, in short, not so much the 'urgent report on the dangerous situation that our women face today’ that its publishers claim, more an impassioned, emotional polemic."
10/02/2010
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The Scotsman
Claire Black
"A disappointment... Walter's use of well-worn examples – Sex And The City, John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus – only highlights her failure to bring any new perspective to bear. She is, as you'd expect, good on the detail, but what is curiously lacking is a larger theoretical framework in which to contextualise her observations and, more importantly, a sense of outrage or anger that might act as a call to action."
10/02/2010
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The Sunday Times
Camilla Long
"Half Grazia, half felt-knickered left-wing women’s page, the book’s biggest problem is its lack of solutions, or any prescriptive thinking... The final chapter, Changes, at first seems promising, but turns out to be a roundup of fogeyish-sounding campaigns, such as the anti-lads-mag offensive that saw women putting stickers on publications that say things such as “Beachball baps: so much more exciting than equal pay” (oh God)."
10/02/2010
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