Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged women's bodies

I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore

My grandmother was a nurse. She's retired now, but I remember how she used to chastise her grandchildren, scolding us about washing our hands, eating certain foods, and getting exercise. Above all, she was straightforward about our bodies.

In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (8/29/2010)

“Please turn off anything that beeps, buzzes, or vibrates.” And with that comic admonishment to the audience, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer Sarah Ruhl’s play about the advent of vibrators began. The setting is Dr. Givings home, where his living room is located next to, and within earshot of, the “surgical theater.” Here, Dr. Givings (played by Eric Hissom) treats hysteria, a “medical ailment” dating back to about 300 BC, when Hippocrates thought women’s madness stemmed from their womb.

Picture Me

There is a moment in Picture Me, a documentary about the fashion industry, where model Sara Ziff’s father recalls hearing his daughter’s look described as the girl next door. The camera closes up on Ziff in a two page Tommy Hilfiger ad. “I guess that depends where you live,” her father quips, flippantly alluding to the exclusive world of high fashion.

Hide Your Face(book) in Shame: Facebook and The Censorship of Female Sexuality

A lot can happen in ten minutes. You can make your morning commute to work. You can do twenty sit-ups. You can have an orgasm. If you are business owners Molly Adler and Matie Fricker of Albuquerque's Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, ten minutes can be all the time you need to inform people about the hazards of labiaplasty.

Utera Maxima Giant Uterus Plushie

My uterus and I have a complicated relationship. Recently, I had elective surgery and did away with her ability to ever carry a child. She responded by stressing out and not sloughing off anything for an extra month, making me slightly panic that instead of being forever sterile, I’d become unintentionally pregnant.

The Bathers

A collection of striking black and white stills, The Bathers is not just about the theme of bathers, but more importantly about the way women are portrayed and perceived.

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

When researching medical or social history, one of the things that often becomes apparent is the level of mystery that surrounded women’s bodies and bodily functions. This mystery and speculation is the subject of Randi Hutter Epstein’s Get Me Out. As the title suggests, Hutter Epstein, a medical journalist, presents an overview of ideas related to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth spanning from antiquity to the modern day.

The Ravenous Audience

I’ve always thought that at its best, art in some way disturbs us: out of complacency, ignorance, or innocence that has become a liability. The Ravenous Audience by Kate Durbin is a deliciously disturbing collection of poems that delivers a sensory-emotional feast ripe with smells, sounds, and flavors of the sacred and the profane.

Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950 – 1980

In 2004, at the age of twenty-three, I entered my gynecologist's office to request permanent sterilization. My doctor repeatedly refused my request, and would not honor my alternate request for an IUD. I tried changing doctors, but still encountered severe resistance to my wish to be permanently sterilized.

Bitchin' Bodies: Young Women Talk About Body Dissatisfaction

Another day, another book exploring women and their bodies is published. The media is saturated with literature surrounding the female figure—just take a look inside any Barnes and Noble and prepare to be overwhelmed. And sure, we've read them all, so what could possibly be so appealing about Bitchin' Bodies? How can an author tread ground that is already so well-worn? Is this book even worth bothering with?

Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America

I expected to write a strongly positive review for this book and am disappointed that I am unable to do so. The main strength of this book is its acknowledgment—in a single volume—of the many and layered aspects of women's reproductive health.

Cheryl Ann Webster: Beautiful Women Project (3/20/2008)

When I initially heard about the Beautiful Women Project, I was engaged by the apparently simple nature of its message. I thought of the work as conveying many feminist interpretations of the relationship between feminine constructions of body image and media. On speaking to the artist and viewing the collection, I was struck at the memories it brought up for me.

Gaining Ground: A Tool for Advancing Reproductive Rights Law Reform

Any act, implicit or implied, that limits or refuses a woman reproductive self-determination is a violation of her human rights. Countries have begun to move forward on this issue via the reformation of existing laws and the implementation of new ones. While progress appears to be afoot, many women remain without access to a safe pregnancy and childbirth, the right to a legal abortion, the right to use birth control and the right to equal partnership within a marriage.

That Those Lips Had Language

Filled with surprising turns and bursts of imagery and imagination, That Those Lips had Language is an ambitious book of poetry. Blonstein seems awed by language itself, and she pushes its limits to upset readers’ expectations.

The Resurrection Trade

The Resurrection Trade is a collection of poems that details early anatomical research performed on female corpses from the point of view of the author, Leslie Adrienne Miller, who also provides glimpses of her own life as a daughter, a wife and a mother.