I am one of those baby-boomers who "forgot to have children" until my early forties. Once we began trying, I was amazed, then distraught, when pregnancy didn't happen as it had, unplanned, when I was thirty, the very first time the birth control barrier was down. Susan Sarandon, exactly my age, was radiantly pregnant; in fact, it seemed that every movie star of my generation was. People magazine was celebrating: "It's never too late!" So I was startled when my doctor sternly put a damper on my enthusiasm. "It's going to be an uphill battle," he warned, writing out a prescription I was sure I didn't need.
Many people, both in academic and nonacademic circles, have come to regard feminist arguments concerning the biases and exclusions of Western culture either as outmoded by progressive changes in gender relations, or as paranoid delusions, fueled by a mania for "political correctness" rather than truth.
In our Sunday news. With our morning coffee. On the bus, in the airport, at the checkout line. It may be a 5 a.m. addiction to the glittering promises of the infomercial: the latest in fat-dissolving pills, miracle hair restoration, makeup secrets of the stars. Or a glancing relationship while waiting at the dentist, trying to distract ourselves from the impending root canal. A teen magazine: tips on how to dress, how to wear your hair, how to make him want you. The endless commercials and advertisements that we believe we pay no attention to.
As someone who for over twenty-five years has written and taught about cultural myths and images, I had the hubris to imagine that I was savvy about all the major norms and assumptions that comprise contemporary Western "constructions of reality." That was before we adopted a child.
The answer to this question regarding the nature of 'eating' disorders is not a definition, but a history - in fact, three histories.
On a February night, three days before the unveiling of our father's stone in a cemetery on Long Island, we three sisters (Mickey, fifty-eight, a clinical psychologist; Susan, forty-nine, a university teacher and writer; Binnie, forty-five, a clinical social worker) assembled around Mickey's dining table to diagram the apartments we lived in when we were growing up. The chairs we sat upon were familiar, but that night, as we tilted toward each other, excitedly scrutinizing each other's memories, they seemed perches more than seats. Like neighboring monarchs mapping disputed territory, we prepared to do a gentle battle with the truth, that is, each of our &dlquo;truths.&rlquo;
"It's a Face-Lifted, Tummy-Tucked Jungle Out There," The New York Times reported not long ago, describing what is available nowadays to the forty-something executive wanting to make his "packaging" more youthful
On August 2, the Showtime cable network will broadcast Adrian Lyne’s film Lolita, and in late September, the movie will be officially released in theaters. Like the publication of the novel on which it is based, the public premiere of the movie is a long-awaited, controversial event. The film was spurned by U.S. distributors for nearly a year while it played in various cities in Europe, and Lyne complained of the tyrannies of political correctness in America. He proudly pointed out that Nabokov’s novel, published in Paris in 1955, also had to wait for acceptance in the United States.
When Alicia Silverstone, the svelte nineteen-year0old star of Clueless, appeared· at the Academy Awards just a smidge more substantial than she had been in the movie, the tabloids ribbed her cruelly, calling her “fatgirl” and “buttgirl” (her·next movie role is Batgirl) and “more Babe than babe.” Our idolatry of the trim, tight body shows no signs of relinquishing its grip on our conceptions of beauty and normality.
In the universe of mass culture, there is a world and a counterworld, in constant conversation with each other. One world is glossy. In posed fashion spreads and slick celebrity features, the glossy world feeds our eyes and focuses our desires on creamy skin, perfect hair, bodies that refuse awkwardness and age. It delights us like visual candy, but it also makes us sick with who we are and offers remedies that promise to close the gap — at a price.