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Digital Femininities: The Gendered Construction of Cultural and Political Identities Online examines the role of new media technologies in the production of girls'cultural and political identities. The book argues that the varied and complex spaces which make up our ‘social media'should be conceptualised as important terrains upon which neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities can be both reproduced and subverted. In doing so, the book explores many key issues underpinning current debates around gender politics and digital media, including gendered spatial politics, visibility, surveillance and regulation, beauty politics, and civic and political engagement and activism. Over the last decade, the position of girls and young women within the digital landscape of social media has been a topic of much debate. On the one hand, girls'social media practices are presented as a key site of concern, wherein new digital technologies are said to have produced an intensification of individualised, neoliberal and postfeminist identities. Conversely, others have championed access to social media for young people as a potentially useful political tool, enabling previously marginalised political subjects (such as girls) to access and participate within new and exciting political cultures. Locating itself at the intersection of these two approaches, this book offers a fresh contribution to these debates. Based upon the findings from focus groups with girls and young women aged between 12 and 18 in England, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the digital cultures that emerged from the study. This timely book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary femininity and feminism and the role of digital media in the production of cultural, political and gendered identities.

Why must beauty be seen as a binary that is either oppressive or empowering for women? The Beauty Paradox: Femininity in the Age of Selfies argues that women's experiences of beauty as both validating and belittling is grounded in the contradictory injunctions that they receive regarding their participation in beauty culture. Piazzesi identifies the four main paradoxes of Western beauty culture: the worth paradox, the authenticity paradox, the power paradox, and the commitment paradox and examines how they trail women's everyday experiences, choices, and reflections regarding beauty. She examines the role of beauty in women's everyday lives and in a variety of contexts: informal social encounters, work and career settings, parenting, intergenerational relationships, self-care, and online networking practices. The author broadens the current discourse on beauty with an emphasis on the digital world, primarily the use of selfies.

Cyklický proces hledání použitelné, naplňující, moderní ženské identity nás provází po celý život. Slavná, stále znovu vydávaná kniha o této pouti, obohacená mnoha konkrétními příběhy, pracuje s jungovskými archetypy, mýty a sny. Zabývá se redefinováním ženské identity poté, co žena („hrdinka“) prošla identifikací s mužskou stránkou své osobnosti a má potřebu integrovat obě své součásti do autentického celku. Cesta je rozdělena do několika fází: odmítnutí stereotypního ženství coby závislého, kontrolujícího a plného zuřivosti, ponoření do povědomé „cesty hrdinky“ s pomocí mužských spojenců, jejímž cílem je získat nezávislost, úspěch, peníze, prestiž, moc a úspěch, „období sucha“ následované sestupem do hlubin za hledáním temnější stránky ženství. Z toho vyplývá pochopení potřeby vyléčení nesouladu mezi matkou a dcerou, nové určení a ověření ženských dovedností a jejich integrace s mužskou stránkou z dřívější fáze cesty.Maureen Murdock je americká psycholožka, terapeutka a vysokoškolská profesorka. Napsala několik dalších knih na téma ženské identity.

This book describes contemporary woman's search for wholeness in a society in which she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing upon cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for—and the reality of—feminine values in Western culture today.

Take three things: the home, nature, and the feminine ideal—a notional and perfected femininity. Constitute them as inexorably and universally connected. Enrol them in diverse strategies and tactics that create varied anatomo-politics of the body and biopolitics of the population. Enlist those three things as the “handmaidens” of the government of individuals and groups, places and spaces, and comings and goings. Focus some effort on the periodical press, and on producing and disseminating narratives, discourses, and practices that relate specifically to health and well-being. Deploy those texts and shape those contexts in ways that affect flesh and bone, psychology and social conduct, and the spatial organization and relational dynamics of dwellings and streets, settlements and regions, and states and empires. Stretch these activities over the Anglophone world—from the epicentres of the United Kingdom and the United States to Australia or Canada, New Zealand or India—and extend their reach over the whole of the long nineteenth century. Such are the subjects of this work, in which Elaine Stratford draws from governmentality, the geohumanities, and geocriticism to converse with an extensive archive that profoundly shaped our engagements with home, nature, and the feminine ideal, deeply influenced our collective capacity to flourish, and powerfully constituted diverse geographies of the interior and of empire that still affect us.

First Published in 1997, Crawford attempts to contextualise ideas of female sexuality as signified in academic, popular and in literary publications. Exploring themes of maternal sexuality, the suppression of female sexuality, clinical case studies and the reality of female sexuality in regards to Freudian and other literature.

Rhetoric of Femininity: Female Body Image, Media, and Gender Role Stress/Conflict offers critical and social identity intersectionalities approach to interpretations of femininity among three generations of women for a rhetorical examination of how femininity is made to mean by media and popular culture. Amplified are voices of women across multiple age, ethnic, and sexual orientation groups who shared in focus groups and interviews their perceptions of femininity and feminine ideals. Femininity is explored using theories from communication and mass media, psychology, sociology, and feminist and gender studies. Donnalyn Pompper explores femininities as shaped by cultural rituals and industries, at home and at work in organizations, on sporting fields and arenas, and in politics.

With intelligence and humor, Susan Brownmiller explores the history and unspoken rules of the burden of “feminine perfection” What is femininity? How is it measured? What are its demands? How are women meant to dress, look, think, act, feel, and be, according to the mores of society? Susan Brownmiller offers a witty and often pointed critique of the concept of femininity in contemporary culture and throughout history. She explores the demands placed upon women to fit an established mold, examines female stereotypes, and celebrates the hard-won advances in women's lifestyle and attire. At once profound, revolutionary, empowering, and entertaining, Femininity challenges the accepted female norm while appreciating the women throughout history who have courageously broken free of its constraints.

This book describes contemporary woman's search for wholeness in a society in which she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing upon cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for—and the reality of—feminine values in Western culture today.

Gender and the Construction of Hegemonic and Oppositional Femininities investigates how hegemonic and nonhegemonic forms of femininity are constructed in the social institutions of school, the workplace, and the media. Hegemonic femininities are those that form a complementary and subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity and in doing so legitimize a hierarchical relationship between men and women, and masculinity and femininity. Nonhegemonic femininities include culturally-idealized dominant femininities, which do not legitimize a hierarchical relationship between masculinity and femininity, and gender-deviant subordinate femininities. Through an analysis of existing empirical research and fictional media, the book illustrates the relationship between these various femininities and their relationship with masculinity.

Sister to Sister includes essays and stories by:Meena AlexanderRobin BehnLouise DeSalvoErika DuncanMaria FlookPatricia FosterBonnie FriedmanDonna GordonLucy GrealyJoy HarjoBell HooksPam HoustonJesse Lee KerchevalLori Hope NorrisLetty Cottin PogrebinMona Simpson Debra SparkJoan WickershamJoy Williams

Run Like A Girl is about the impact that participating in sports has on women, how the confidence and strength that it helps to build makes us stronger and better prepared for life's many challenges. In this inspiring book, Mina Samuels uses the personal stories of women and girls of all ages and backgrounds, as well as her own, to take a broad look at the power sports have to help us overcome obstacles in all arenas of life. Run Like A Girl includes the stories of a US-ranked amateur triathlete who's raising an autistic son, a thirteen-year-old girl who falls in love with cross-country running, a woman who runs her first marathon at age sixty, an investment banker who quit her job to become a yoga teacher and adopt a daughter on her own, a young mother with scoliosis who cycled her way back to health and became a jewelry designer along the way, and countless other women, including Kathrine Switzer, Rebecca Rusch, and Molly Barker, who have been changed by their experiences with sports. Run Like A Girl argues that physical strength lends itself to psychological strength, and that for many women, participating in sports translates into leading a happier, more fulfilling life.

This book is an invaluable key to self-understanding. Using examples from her own life and the lives of her clients, as well as from dreams, fairy tales, myths, films, and literature, Linda Schierse Leonard, a Jungian analyst, exposes the wound of the spirit that both men and women of our culture bear—a wound that is grounded in a poor relationship between masculine and feminine principles.Leonard speculates that when a father is wounded in his own psychological development, he is not able to give his daughter the care and guidance she needs. Inheriting this wound, she may find that her ability to express herself professionally, intellectually, sexually, and socially is impaired. On a broader scale, Leonard discusses how women compensate for cultural devaluation, resorting to passive submission (“the Eternal Girl”), or a defensive imitation of the masculine (“the Armored Amazon”).The Wounded Woman shows that by understanding the father-daughter wound and working to transform it psychologically, it is possible to achieve a fruitful, caring relationship between men and women, between fathers and daughters, a relationship that honors both the mutuality and the uniqueness of the sexes.

Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of'proper femininity'over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

A mother's guide to supporting a girls'self-worth as she grows: “Inspired.”—Isabel Allende In this book, Jungian psychologist Virginia Beane Rutter offers a wide variety of everyday things women can do to strengthen a girl's sense of self and ensure confidence and healthy self-esteem throughout her lifetime. Whether rooted in traditions of many cultures, new and creative, or connected to the daily tasks of everyday life, they offer practical ways to support daughters, and celebrate the passage from infancy to adolescence. “Adeptly suggests ways mothers can use traditionally feminine pastimes—shopping, storytelling, even brushing or braiding a child's hair—to instill in a daughter a strong sense of self.”—Pubishers Weekly

Rachel Hillel brings the skills, discipline, & understanding of a therapist trained in clinical psychology & Jungian analysis to the service of the redemption of the erotic soul by looking into women analysand's dreams. The exiled terrain of female passion, erotic & sensuous, is explored in chapters such as'The Vulva Dream,''Healing the Wounded Vulva Dream,''The Holy Communion Dream.'The Sacred Priestess, a votary of the goddess divinity, & the ordinary prostitute are themes in Hillel's search for feminine balance. The sacred transformative principles of the love goddess point to an ultimate reality to be restored in human consciousness. Hillel's penetrating insight reveals ways that modern day women can relate to their own erotic-sensual energies & regain soulful unity.