Body Work

"Beautifully written, cleverly argued, and skillfully researched, Debra Gimlin's Body Work goes beyond the argument that the beauty industry exists only to control women. Instead, Gimlin examines women's relationship to beauty from a feminist sociological perspective, finding that women are not dupes of the beauty industry but rather use body work in both empowering and degrading ways. It's about time a sociologist delved into women's complicated relationship to the beauty industry!"—Verta Taylor, author of Rock-a-By Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression

"This fascinating study reveals how changing the body is really an effort to reconstruct the self-from aerobics, cosmetic surgery, and hair salon makeovers to therapeutic groups about accepting one's "fat" body. Gimlin fuses theoretical acuity with tender analysis, enabling the reader to engage critically and empathetically with these quotidian social constructionists. With efforts to transform the body becoming ever more frenzied as Baby Boomers age, this book is both timely and important."— Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America: A Cultural History

"Gimlin effectively demonstrates how the business of beauty is ultimately not about abstruse theories but rather about how women negotiate beauty to transact in everyday life. This perception that beauty may be the one area where the personal is not political recasts all theories previously forwarded on the subject and adds significantly to the literature about the culture of beauty."—Raquel Scherr, author of Face Value: The Politics of Beauty

"This thoughtful, interesting, and well-written book emphasizes the complexities of contemporary U.S. women as they negotiate identity through both participation and resistance to dominant beauty ideologies."—Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

"Much more than a straightforward feminist critique of the beauty industry, Body Work offers a nuanced and sensitive analysis of the types of work that women do to construct and to maintain an identity with which they can live comfortably, steering clear of representations of women as passive victims of oppressive structures."—Nilufer Isvan, Assistant Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook