The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls

Historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg answers the question of why American girls are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of thirteen. Drawing on diary excerpts and media images from 1830 to the present, Brumberg traces girls’ attitudes toward topics like breast size, menstruation, hair, clothing, and cosmetics. She exposes the shift from Victorian concern with character to our modern focus on outward appearance, particularly the desire to be model-thin and sexy. Brumberg’s compassionate and insightful book explores the gains and losses adolescent girls have inherited since shedding the corset and the ideal of virginity for a new world of sexual freedom and consumerism.

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