women's bodies

I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore

tina — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

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. When we were too shy to put on our swimsuits in the changing room at the pool, she used to say, "We all got the same thing you got.” Another time she scolded me for cringing at a violent scene in a crime show, "Well, we all have to go sometime, sweetheart."

Because of her, I have always associated nurses with a sort of grandmotherly sass and frankness about the human body. This immediately came to mind when I picked up Anne Perdue's I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore and I can honestly say I was not disappointed by the book. With episodes ranging from dental self-surgery to an accident involving a vat of wax, Perdue's plots often revolve around physical crisis. Her stories are not for the squeamish. Perdue uses unhesitating honesty for her descriptions of people and their bodies, offering up characters that are flawed and deeply compelling. The result is a collection that shows us the painful—and often darkly funny—conflicts of friendship, marriage, and parenthood.

Perdue's stories typically begin by introducing us to a common scenario: a couple on vacation or a family at dinner, but then she shows us how the character’s smoldering inner desires and regrets build up into a violent climax. In "Inheritance," a Botox-injected car salesman fantasizes about his youthful dreams of becoming a musician while building a deck for his house. As he’s working his children torment and disobey him, but we are privy to his inner thoughts. The story culminates in a relative's fall, a lost tooth, and a backyard grill tragedy. "Inheritance" introduces two of Purdue's common themes; one is regret. Characters in I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore lament a youth subculture ("Theories of Relativity"), bad marriages ("CA-NA-DA," "Inheritance"), and failed careers in musical theater ("The Dry Well"). The other common theme is parenthood. There are some sympathetic parent-child relationships in these stories, but parenthood in I'm a Registered Nurse is often more painful than it is fulfilling: Children are distant and unappreciative, defying their parents' efforts at reconciliation.

Perdue's prose is crisp and direct, presenting fresh ways to describe our physical selves ("Bodies aren't a whole lot different from houses. They're made of matter and they crack and tear and sometimes things grow in them that shouldn't") and reinventing old clichés ("If we are what we eat, Leona was oxidized, fused to the vegetable crisper, ripe for fruit flies"). She writes engaging dialogue, transferring from one character's head to another with a sometimes absorbing and sometimes vertigo-inducing speed. Perdue is at her best when she stays with one or two characters throughout a story, as in my favorite piece from this collection, "Pooey." "Pooey" follows the relationship between Jackie, a single woman pursuing artificial insemination, and her sick and aging mother, Leona. "Pooey" masterfully blends pathos and dark humor—you cringe as Leona takes a drunken fall on her seventieth birthday, as Jackie falls over the punch bowl at a bridal shower—but you root for these women all the way. In "The Dry Well," the marriage between new homeowners Heather and Keith slowly unravels as the house around them floods and falls apart. The story transitions between Heather’s and Keith's thoughts, using crawling mice, leaking roofs, and sinister repairmen as the backdrop for the story.

At times I wanted to know more about the victims of the violent outbursts in these stories, about the world after the catastrophe. Perdue's structure can feel a bit redundant—near the end of I'm a Registered Nurse, Not a Whore I found myself patiently waiting for the fire, the fistfight, or the flood that would come and sweep the story away. But these stories also give us splendid moments of release, moments where the passion of inner life mirrors the explosive and painful physical action of the stories. Perdue's stories are edgy and fresh, providing just the right dose of sympathy and satire.

Written by: Barbara Barrow, January 30th 2011

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

annette — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Washington, D.C.

“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. Meanwhile, back on stage, the good doctor’s wife (Katie deBuys) wonders why patients come in with symptoms of anxiety and leave, only anxious to come back again—and soon.

Above the noise of “oh-ooh-oooh,” Dr. Givings himself groans about the bygone days of manual stimulation: “It was like a child’s game–trying to rub the head and the stomache at the same time.” Why, the procedure could take up to an hour! With the electric massager, “paroxyms” can be had within three to five minutes time and, if they don’t, um, come, Dr. Givings hands the tedious task over to his competent assistant Annie (played by Sarah Marshall).

While patients such as Mrs. Daldry (Kimberly Gilbert) and a male patient named Leo Irving (Cody Nickell) make it clear their emotional needs are not being met–Mrs. Daldry cannot have children and Mr. Irving cannot find the passionate love that his creative soul desires—the doctor steadfastly believes their symptoms can be treated with the latest technology of the day, the electromechanical vibrator for her and the anal dialater for him.

So the new device makes patients happier—so happy that Mrs. Givings breaks into the room and tries it out herself for her own hysteria–feeling unfulfilled in her marriage and inadequate in nourishing her newborn—but, alas it’s not fixing the problems.

Aside from having unmet emotional needs, women’s sexuality is still not recognized and even feared, as the men highlight in their joke about a friend that thought women looked like marble statues you see in a museum—and then ran like a mad man from his wife when he saw she had beastly hair “down there.” Only the wet nurse Elizabeth (played by Jessica Frances Dukes) hired to feed Dr. and Mrs. Givings’ baby, understands the connection between the vibrator and sexual pleasure. Otherwise, the technological wonder is thought to produce a confusing mixture of pain and pleasure. So confusing it brings them back daily to figure out if they like it or not!

Behavior like this and many other comedic opportunities make director Aaron Posner’s In the Next Room a humorous, but not insensitively so, play about the history behind the medical use of vibrators. It subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly highlights the utter lack of knowledge and understanding of women’s physical bodies, sexual desires, and emotional needs. It beautifully portrays women’s roles, relationships, and subordination to men during Victorian times and reminds us that even today, we still grapple with some of these issues. However, the play about vibrators will make an historical imprint itself—made many years after we laughed about the link between masturbation and mental illness in men-and will stimulate discussion of female sexuality for years to come.

Written by: Joan Dawson, September 22nd 2010

Picture Me

brittany — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Sara Ziff, Ole Schnell

Strand Releasing

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. Filmed largely by Ziff and then boyfriend Ole Schnell, Picture Me documents Ziff’s developing modeling career from her first trip to Paris at eighteen to her eventual burn out at twenty-three and, along the way, exposes the human side of an industry built on solely on image.

Picture Me began as a homemade video diary and it maintains that feeling throughout. Adorable, sometimes cynical, animation by The Boos punctuates the various themes of the film. The visuals of notebooks and grade-school graffiti offer a consistent reminder of disrupted youth and the choice to forgo education; many of these models are simply schoolgirls, invited into this world as young as twelve and aged out by their mid-twenties.

I commend Ziff’s bravery for sharing her personal experience; however, I was disappointed by the lack of attention given to the privileged position she was in, especially in regards to physical appearance. “Modeling just happened to me,” Ziff states as she recounts being approached on the street as she walked home from school on day. Yeah, it happened to you because you’re tall, skinny, and blonde and you were walking down the street in New York City. Turns out Ziff’s ambivalence is rooted in deeper emotional issues such as putting off college. She also struggles with the age-old dilemma of using her body as a commodity by comparing modeling to stripping and when shortly into her career she begins to out earn her father, a college professor, Ziff wonders why she should make so much money for being “pretty and on time.”

This film is rife with contemporary social issues, especially around work and women’s bodies. Most interesting were the admissions by the models who share everything from being sexually assaulted by photographers to being told they are fat in a host of different languages. The models interviewed are cognizant of the way they are being treated, like a “robot” or a “prop” but are unaware of how to resist or respond. Ziff offers many of the most poignant insights herself—“Skinny is power. And it’s the one thing you can control.”—and her relationships with the other models are refreshingly sincere and drama-free. Unfortunately, the filmmakers missed an opportunity to connect their story to a broader social context and the many feminist issues are either ignored or under-developed.

Nonetheless, Picture Me is an excellent platform for discussion and would serve well as an educational tool, especially for media entrenched teens.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, September 12th 2010

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

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Self Serve

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.

Also known as female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS), labiaplasty is a controversial elective medical procedure that involves the surgical re-shaping of labia in order to make a woman's vulva look more “appealing.” A 2007 statement about FCGS, issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), read as follows: "Women should be informed about the lack of data supporting the efficacy of these procedures and their potential complications, including infection, altered sensation, dyspareunia, adhesions, and scarring."

In true sex-positive, DIY spirit, Adler and Fricker, along with Alee Ross-Raymond, put together a YouTube video called You Don't Need Labiaplasty. According to Matie Fricker:

“We created a video that included pictures of vulvas from Betty Dodson’s genital art gallery. So many women have body dysmorphia, and seeing unedited photos of healthy diverse genitalia is important. The video also included an impassioned plea to love your body. We had posted two versions of the video on YouTube. One of the video's start screens had Molly’s face on it, and [the other] was a full frontal vulva in an unaroused state. The video with the vulva on it got ten times as many hits.

“I posted the video on our Facebook page with the vulva because it was clear from our experience on YouTube that people wanted to see the female body. I posted the video on our Facebook page and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Many women thanked us and confessed to insecurities they had long carried.

“One of the comments was negative. Of our 1,300+ fans we lost one. I spoke to Molly about it the next day... and we decided we were going to post our next status update asking what our community felt was appropriate. The only people who saw the video were people who had self-selected to be our fans. We had decided we would ask our fans what they wanted to see and adjust accordingly.”

Before the women could act on their decision, Self Serve’s page and all of their administrative pages had been removed from Facebook.

Molly Adler sent off a message to a representative in Facebook's User Operations department seeking the reactivation of all accounts. On August 2, 2010 Adler was told that all of the personal accounts belong to Self Serve administrators were reactivated, but that the Self Serve page itself would not be reinstated due to terms of use violation.

Would Facebook have banned the Self Serve account had it not used that screen shot, but still used images of vulvas throughout the video? Would Facebook have banned the account had the video been posted completely devoid of any genital images? Why does Facebook consider a vague notion of safety and an honest discussion about the very real hazards of female genital modification to be at odds with one another?

These questions are not just “what-ifs.” Sadly, they're also rhetorical. At the time of this writing—over a month after the banning of Self Serve's page—the administrators of the Self Serve account never heard got a reply to their last e-mail, and their account is still suspended.

Self Serve isn't the only women-owned sexuality boutique to have its Facebook page banned. Chicago's Early2Bed also lost their page. E2B founder Searah Deysach started her feminist sex shop in 2001 because she “love[s] sex toys and wanted to create a safe space for people to buy and explore them.” Deysach started a company Facebook page about two years ago. According to Deysach, while it existed, the page was warmly received with around 500 followers.

And then one day, the Early2Bed Facebook page simply disappeared. “No specific reason was given so I read the rules and the only thing we could have possibly violated was the obscenity clause, but we had... nothing more 'obscene' than the other sex shops that have pages.”

Like Self Serve, E2B was notified about the account's banning by email. Like the owners of Self Serve, Deysach contacted Facebook to find out what could be done. Unlike Self Serve, however, no reasons were given for the E2B account disappearance. Deysach went on to say that she has received “no responses to our many emails.”

So what's the deal with Facebook? Why are they so freaked out by lady parts and the sex-positive women who seek to celebrate them?

In order to get some sort of answer out of Facebook regarding their position on this issue, I went to the source itself—specifically, to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and to the Facebook Principles. Please keep in mind that Facebook claims that the former is “derived” from the latter.

Section 3 of the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, labeled “Safety,” states: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” Here, Facebook lumps sex and violence together, putting them on par with one another. Not only that, but they are apparently also willing to consider nudity synonymous with pornography. Herein lies one of the (many) problems.

Section 4 reads as follows: “If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.” That's all well and good, but how can a former user get permission to create a new account when representatives stop responding to their emails?

Further along, section 4.5 states that no one under the age of thirteen can have a Facebook account. How can Facebook hide behind the argument of “safety” as a justification for censoring images of women's genitalia? The United States is the company’s biggest market. By age thirteen, most children educated in U.S. public schools are already learning sex education. Granted, it's likely an “abstinence-only” curriculum, but children are still being exposed to anatomical representations of the human genitals by that point in their lives. Furthermore, Facebook has its own “Safety Center,” including a sub-section labeled “Safety For Parents.” The information provided includes ways that an account's privacy settings can be modified to block those profiles that users do not want to see.

Section 5 is “Protecting Other People's Rights.” SRR Secs. 5.3 and 5.4 state that “We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. If we remove your content for infringing someone else's copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.” I find the language of this section particularly contentious, as it seems that “protection of other people's rights” in the Facebook world extends only to the possibility of intellectual property infringement; it has nothing to do with the right to free speech. In fact, it doesn't just seem that way; it is that way.

Let's move on to selections from the unintentional hilarity that is “The Facebook Principles.” From Principle 3, “Free Flow of Information”: "People should have the freedom to access all of the information made available to them by others. People should also have practical tools that make it easy, quick, and efficient to share and access this information."

Yes, they should. But when people are denied access to that information by: a. dictating what is acceptable speech; and then b. banning accounts belonging to individuals or organizations who try to share important information that you have nonetheless deemed “unacceptable,” a company proves itself to be stunningly ignorant and embarrassingly hypocritical all at once.

From Principle 7, “Fundamental Service”: "People should be able to use Facebook for free to establish a presence, connect with others, and share information with them. Every Person should be able to use the Facebook Service regardless of his or her level of participation or contribution."

Unless Facebook deems that the information you're trying to share is “pornographic” rather than, y'know, informative (not to mention supported by the American medical establishment), in which case you get the boot.

From Prinicple 8, “Common Welfare”: "The rights and responsibilities of Facebook and the People that use it should be described in a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which should not be inconsistent with these Principles."

It would be nice were this the case, but sadly, it's not. The SRR is inconsistent with the supposed Facebook Principles. You can try to spin it otherwise, but the proof is in right there online, plain as day for everyone with the most basic critical analytical skills to evaluate.

From Principle 9, “Transparent Process”: "Facebook should publicly make available information about its purpose, plans, policies, and operations. Facebook should have a town hall process of notice and comment and a system of voting to encourage input and discourse on amendments to these Principles or to the Rights and Responsibilities." Facebook will not, however, respond to e-mail pleas from otherwise conscientious users with noble intentions and loads of supporters.

It was extraordinarily savvy of Facebook's PR team/bevy of lawyers/Department of Cognitive Dissonance to start pretty much every sentence of its "Facebook Principles" with the phrase "People should have..." Yes, people (and groups and organizations and businesses, et al) should have all of those things Facebook has delineated among their supposed principles. But a quick perusal of the SRR, combined with the reality of their actions in relation to supposedly "objectionable" content, clearly indicates that this is simply not the case. It's as though they're saying, "You totally should have these things–but you don't. And you won't. Because we're not gonna let you."

The larger question is this: How do sex-positive individuals, businesses, and organizations combat this sort of societal resistance to–and censorship of–female sexuality?

In response, Molly Adler and Matie Fricker at Self Serve told me, “We can continue to try following the rules, terms etc., and challenging this notion that all sexual information and all images of the human body are obscene. That notion is obscene! The more space and voice sex positive feminists are given to speak for shame-free, guilt-free positive sexuality, the more perhaps our culture will steer in that direction.”

Searah Deysach added, “We need to continue to be vocal and fight censorship when we can! We need to band together to be a louder voice. We need to keep promoting sex positive imagery and ideas wherever we can. Facebook is huge, but there are lots of other venues out there.”

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, September 3rd 2010

Utera Maxima Giant Uterus Plushie

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Vulva Love Lovely

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.

Since then, I’ve been drinking uterine tea with cramp bark, trying to soothe her and let her know we’re still pals. She seems to appreciate it.

Being intentionally childfree is not without complication. I would love to have a “no baby” shower, at which people could give me decidedly not-child-friendly gifts that are dangerous, scary, or obscene. Most of my friends will have children; why can’t I get in on the compulsory gift registries just because I have no maternal instinct toward producing humans? But because such a party might offend certain people, I got myself a gift instead: a Utera Maxima Giant Uterus Plushie from Vulva Love Lovely. I named her Maxine.

Maxine the Uterine Plushie is roughly the same size I am. She takes up one half of the sofa and acts more as a body pillow than a small, tossable cushion on which one might lay her head. Her enormous fallopian tubes, each the same length as one of my arms, can act as a suitable dance partner if a person is unavailable. Bright magenta, she looks especially nice on my green couch and as you can surely imagine, she’s quite the conversation starter.

Jessica Marie, the designer behind this amazing doll-like pillow, makes and sells all sorts of body-positive goodies in her online store. I already have a handmade self-portrait vulva necklace, some vegan lip balm, and full set of her specialty leak-proof Red Dress cloth pads, which have revolutionized my periods. With my Utera Maxima on the couch and new stash of tea in my cupboards, I’m full speed ahead into accessorized childfree bliss. Even if you’re a mama or crave a few biological kiddos, you can join me in loving your body, inside and out, with some vulva-friendly products from an unabashedly feminist craftster.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, September 2nd 2010

The Bathers

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:59:00 +0000

By Jennette Williams

Duke University Press

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. Winner of the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography, Jennette Williams states that her initial project was: “to photograph without sentiment and objectication (sic) women daring enough to stand before [her] camera.” The photos illustrate that there is no doubt that she has achieved her goal. Despite being a volume of photographs of the feminine body (all except one shot), this oeuvre compounds in one tome the exact opposite of what most modern-day mainstream media presents of the objectified female figure.

In William’s lauded collection of photos, the female forms are shown in all their plump softness, reflecting the reigning ambiance of the collection: a peaceful reflection that can be seen not only in the visages of the women represented but also in the muted colours of the platinum prints. In the faces of these Hungarian and Turkish women, we find the same gaze that existed in Auguste Renoir’s early twentieth century paintings of “his” bathing subjects. It is probably this mysterious contemplation that explains artists’ fascination for bathers as subjects: a dream-like placidity and sense of inner calm. The prominence of rolls, folds, dimples, body hair, bellies, and nipples is natural although sometimes veiled by the often-foggy images; William also manipulates light and shadow expertly; one can almost feel the cocooning humidity of the public baths.

The representation of this serenity contrasts with the modern stereotypical depiction of the female body, the Tyra Banks-coined squint–or “smizing”–and purely angular (sometimes skeletal) silhouettes that are so coveted by most of the globe’s population. There are few shots in Williams' collection that do not display flesh in a way that is completely foreign to North American media (birthplace of the Playboy Bunny!). These “Cosmo-type” bodies are rare in the book, and even so-called “imperfect” bodies such as the very controversial silhouette of “plus-sized” (U.S. size 12-14!) are few. Most of the women have strong rounded figures that stand out in the stark detailing of the photographs. You’ll remember twenty-year-old model Lizzie Miller’s charmingly rounded tummy from a recent issue of Glamour magazine, yet the magazine’s most recent issue still provides us with advice on how to dress ten pounds thinner.

This attractive volume is thought-provoking because it defies stereotypical gender norms and photo enthusiasts will also find it to be a very stunning collection of images.

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, February 6th 2010

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

admin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Randi Hutter Epstein

W.W. Norton

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. While it is easy to laugh at some of the mistaken notions from the past (and some of them are, indeed, hilarious and/or terrifying), Hutter Epstein also makes sure to note the unknowns that still surround these processes today.

One thing that Get Me Out makes very clear is the way in which pregnancy and childbirth—and, therefore, women’s bodies—have continuously been the subjects of experimentation. This has sometimes been to women’s benefit, but all too often to their detriment. Early medical texts were written by monks who were not only excluded from the delivery room due to their gender (only women were allowed to attend childbirth) but were also likely completely unfamiliar with women’s bodies, leading to a lot of guesswork. Hutter Epstein describes disturbing experiments on female slaves that did eventually produce positive results, but at unknown cost to the women experimented upon. Another type of experimentation Hutter Epstein recounts is pain suppression during childbirth. Get Me Out describes the contradictory views of women towards drug use during childbirth over time: from these drugs being a part of women’s liberation to the drugs being a tool of subjugation.

The key strengths of Get Me Out are the fascinating nature of the information it provides and the book’s readability. Get Me Out is incredibly engaging. As Hutter Epstein notes in the title, this is a history; she does not attempt to tell the history. This approach allows her to describe some of the high (or low) points of ideas and processes from antiquity to the nineteenth century in the first few chapters, and then focus the rest of the book on the twentieth century. Even with the volume of material presented, I appreciated that Hutter Epstein did not rigidly confine herself to the topic at hand. The book is peppered with footnotes that provide additional, often tangential, information. At one point, the author uses a footnote to discuss the differences in the sperm trade between humans and thoroughbred horses. It is clear that Hutter Epstein has a very curious mind, which has led to her creating an interesting, funny, illuminating, enjoyable book.

Written by: Erin Schowalter, December 27th 2009

The Ravenous Audience

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Kate Durbin

Akashic Books

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. I was enchanted by the visual and visceral quality of the collection and was thoroughly engaged by Durbin’s command of language.

The book is divided into four Scenes (sections), and many of the poems are inspired by the works of other artists, including films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. One section contains a thirty-page poem originally published as a chapbook. The poems vary greatly in form and include orderly stanzaed quatrains and couplets among other, less obviously ordered free verse. Deliberate spacing and line structure provide emphasis and cadence, while some poems span several pages, making effective use of white space and the pause as the reader turns the page.

One of my favorite poems in the collection is "36 Fillette." Taking its title from Catherine Breillat’s 1988 film, the poem's lines are taken from the film's dialogue. As the page-long poem progresses, repetition increases, lines lose their punctuation and merge, and by its end the poem has picked up such speed that I was completely drawn into the cyclone of experience it creates.

The Ravenous Audience also brings to life several mythic and iconic women of the early twentieth century (Amelia Earhart, Clara Bow, and Marilyn Monroe), and Durbin gives a fresh voice to these women of troubled lives and tragic destinies. Exhaustive research informs an imagined interview with Marilyn, a listing of the worldly possessions she left behind, and a final-days journal of the wrecked, stranded, and menstruating Amelia Earhart.

Focusing on the shock factor of much of the thematic material in The Ravenous Audience would be to overlook how well this collection reflects the overall experience of being a woman and boldly embracing the messiness of corporeal life. The raw descriptions of bodily juices, incest, transgressive sex, and violent objectification punctuate a collection of poems that bears unflinching witness and plays with and annihilates boundaries. The carnality and grossness of life are not ignored, but included simply as part of the whole.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, December 16th 2009

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

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:09:00 +0000

By Rebecca Kluchin

Rutgers University Press

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. Now that the IUD I did eventually obtain will be ready to come out at age thirty, my doctor has still indicated that she will not perform the procedure.

After reading Rebecca Kluchin's Fit to Be Tied, I am left wondering if my doctors' refusals to honor my wishes are, consciously or not, vestigial traces of America's bleak history involving positive and negative eugenics—separate categories for "fit" and "unfit" women. From the turn of the twentieth century to the late 1970s, social, legal, and medical authoritarianism and paternalism combined with white anxiety over losing social dominance in America to result in extraordinarily skewed, disparate policies of reproductive "rights" for white middle class women and poor women of color.

In the post-WWII era, concerns were raised about the population "explosion" and the resulting fear that poor, uneducated immigrants and people of color were "outbreeding" the white middle and upper classes. Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing contraception for married couples, would not be decided until 1965, and few if any women had access to contraception at all. The solution put into effect by medical and legal authorities was to adopt a policy of eugenics: the undesirable minorities, often unwed, sunken into poverty, and with little to no recourse, were aggressively encouraged and often forced into unwanted sterilizations. Women were deceived, lied to, and even legally sentenced to sterilization under the white- and male-dominated cultural paradigm. The worst of these forced sterilization cases were known colloquially in the South as "Mississippi appendectomies," in which women deemed "unfit" to reproduce by physicians entered hospitals for routine surgeries (such as appendix removal) only to later find that their ovaries and uterus had been taken out as well.

Meanwhile, advances in sterilization procedures made the operation quite attractive to middle class white women who wanted to take control of their reproductive destiny. These women appealed to physicians and hospitals in order to obtain tubal ligations, only to find themselves rebuffed. Educated white women of privilege were denied sterilization because it was believed that they should give birth to as many children as possible, despite their own feelings on the matter. Many hospitals developed what was known as the "120 rule" of age/parity: if a reproductively "fit" woman's age multiplied by the number of children she had added up to 120, a sterilization was provided.

Sterilization for men is also touched upon in Fit to Be Tied. Infuriatingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, vasectomies have historically been provided on demand for men with little to no trepidation on the part of medical professionals.

On another personal note, I discussed this book with a friend of mine, who said it sounded interesting but "suspect." He did not know that eugenics was practiced openly in America for many decades, and believed that Kluchin's book was essentially feminist conspiracy theory. This sort of troubling ignorance of history only deepens the importance and necessitates the knowledge of medico-legal authoritarianism over women in America's past. Kluchin's work is straightforward, factual, academic, and exhaustively researched, but not intimidatingly so. It is a highly absorbing read and an incisive, grim but eminently necessary look into pre-Roe v. Wade America.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, October 11th 2009

Bitchin' Bodies: Young Women Talk About Body Dissatisfaction

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:12:00 +0000

By Terri L. Russ

StepSister Press

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? The answer may surprise you.

Bitchin' Bodies explores the various mindsets and struggles of young women with ease. Terri Russ, the author, writes with remarkable clarity that informs without coming across clinical. To put it frankly, Russ makes a topic that has become borderline trite feel fresh. It is almost impossible not to devour this book.

Through interviews with numerous college-aged women, Russ illustrates the issues that impact the thinking of nearly every women in today's culture. Every chapter focuses on a different aspect of body dissatisfaction, from internal food struggles to the effects of the male gaze on the female perspective. Each page is like a reflection of the reader's private thoughts, as if Russ has identified an interview technique illuminating the trends in the collective mind of the 18-24 female demographic.

Even the appendixes offer helpful activities designed to help the reader develop a more positive body image through personal reflection and journaling. While the initial idea of Bitchin' Bodies may present itself as lackluster, sitting down with this book is probably one of the best literature-based decisions a woman (or man) can make. I know this text will be a staple on my bookshelf for years to come.

Written by: Corey Janssen, March 20th 2009

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

admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

By Jeanne Flavin

NYU Press

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. Part of that acknowledgment includes a recognition (if generally tacit) of the impossibility of separating all white women from all women of color; of separating all economically advantaged women from all economically disadvantaged women, etc. Though not the first volume to explore the breadth of health and social justice issues that must be included in a robust definition of reproductive health, this volume situates itself uniquely within the sphere of criminal justice, and so sets itself apart from some of those other, earlier volumes.

That being said, those other, earlier volumes are better written. Although Flavin does an adequate job of recognizing discrepancies in treatment, the conclusions she draws may end up hurting her overall argument because of her faulty reasoning. I lost count of the number of times she employs slippery slope reasoning in an attempt to demonstrate to her reader the self-evident nature of her conclusions. Further, her position is unclear in ways that can be confusing to the reader. She deplores both the medicalization of abortion and its distance from mainstream medical practice—but what does she propose as a viable alternative?

Flavin does not have to convince many feminists and advocates of feminism that our concept of reproductive health is not nearly broad nor strong enough to be of great service to most women. Further, arguing that the criminal justice system in America doesn't help with that is not news to many of the same feminists (though her facts and stories are interesting). I worry that her non-feminist critics will throw out the baby with the bathwater of the poor argumentative abilities demonstrated in Our Bodies, Our Crimes.

Written by: kristina grob, February 13th 2009

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

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Downtown Arts Centre

Hamilton, Ontario

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. Looking at the varied torsos of other women aged nineteen to ninety-one, I reflected on my girlhood and all of the physical changes I have experienced in my adulthood and realized that, like many women, I had been critical of every permutation of my appearance.

Cheryl Ann Webster is a visual artist. She works in a variety of media, including metal and clay. Though she initially saw this project (inspired by her daughter’s comment that a friend was saving for breast implants) as personally healing, she eventually came to see the growing collection as having the potential to create a provocative yet accessible body of work which could inspire dialogue—in the vein of Kathe Kollwitz, one of her favorite artists.

Initially, Cheryl Ann had thought to leave the torsos undecorated, but decided embellishment prevented the exhibit from being visually uniform. The varied clay surfaces on the torsos are evocative of real bodies and remind the viewer that the casts are molded on individual women’s bodies and depict varied life experiences. With it’s bright direct imagery and brief narratives about women who are either at odds or have made peace with their bodies, the Beautiful Women Project is an effective catalyst for generating discussion on body image, a topic which is relevant not only for women and girls, but increasingly for all of us.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, April 2nd 2008

Gaining Ground: A Tool for Advancing Reproductive Rights Law Reform

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:44:00 +0000

Centre for Reproductive Rights

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. The Centre for Reproductive Rights, however, does not condemn countries in their publication, Gaining Ground: A Tool for Advancing Reproductive Rights Law Reform. Instead, they focus on achievements and identify what can be done to ensure future successes.

The book examines nine areas in reproductive rights law from a human rights framework and gives nods to countries that have taken measures to prevent abuse towards women and grant them access to proper healthcare. It is acknowledged, however, that legal reform alone, even when accompanied with severe punishment, will not sufficiently grant women universal access to self-determination. Deep-rooted religious and social beliefs on the status of women can hinder progress substantially. This is exemplified through Mali, where, despite government initiatives to eradicate female genital mutilation, has a population in which 80% of circumcised women believe the practice should continue. Reproductive rights reform then, is not only about legal advocacy. It is a complex issue that needs to be tackled alongside sexist ideals. By focusing on positive achievements rather than condemning countries that have been lax on granting women reproductive rights, Gaining Ground creates a platform for open discussion and makes explicit the challenges some women face.

Founded in 1992, The Centre for Reproductive Rights remains true to their vision to restore “human dignity, self-determination, and equality” to all women with this book. Gaining Grou_nd is honest, compelling and clearly lays out the foundation for establishing reproductive rights reform in all nations. While _Gaining Ground might not be your ideal beach read, it is definitely worth looking into this summer.

Written by: Cheryl Santa Maria, July 5th 2007

That Those Lips Had Language

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:02:00 +0000

By Anne Blonstein

Plan B Press

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. Placing titles at the ends of poems, employing unorthodox punctuation and obscure vocabulary, and using primarily lowercase letters indicate that the author is challenging readers to approach these poems with a non-traditional point of view, to allow themselves to have a unique, perhaps transformative, experience.

A concern with the female body and its experiences is pervasive and compelling here, as well as a constant turning from abstraction to concrete imagery and back, as if Blonstein searches for a way to express those experiences, but realizes the impossiblity of such a task. Turning to puns and rhyme for inspiration, she writes of a “waisted world of light” where ghosts’ “desire is entropy renaunting/ space (boundary of violets instead of a face).” Her pairings of abstract and concrete imagery are often stunning: “will: a chandelier of orange music,” and “the high sea sounds like/ a ruffled blue in exile.” Thankfully, no matter how far Blonstein ventures into the conceptual, each poem provides a grounding moment of the tangible. She knows these moments are necessary to dispell a reader’s anxiety of the unknown and keep her reading.

Blonstein’s perspective is unquestionably feminist here; though the poems touch on overt politics only a few times, one understands that every unorthodox use of grammar and image asks us to rethink our comfortable and cliché’d schemas. The book combines this questioning of the dominant paradigm, characteristic of “language poets,” with a desire to create a real, sensual world for the reader. Perhaps Blonstein describes her goal with these lines from “babelique”: “she regenerates words to verify the world/ because what has always been forgotten/ is like arms starfish sacrifice to survive.”

Written by: Sarah Hudgens, April 7th 2007

The Resurrection Trade

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:44:00 +0000

By Leslie Adrienne Miller

Graywolf Press

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. There are over 44 poems in this collection, and taken together they create a rich tapestry about “the resurrection trade,” which is “the business end of trafficking in corpses,” and Miller’s experience in writing about it.

Miller conducted extensive research of historical documents and medical illustrations in studying this process, and she includes a multitude of resources in the notes section that were used in writing the poems. (Visiting the notes section is highly recommended while reading through the book.) All of this research lends a weight and authenticity to the poems that reminds the reader at every turn that the bodies, the people described, actually existed. At the same time, the reader is made aware of the way that women’s bodies were objectified in this process.

One poem, the title poem, is divided into stanzas that describe mezzotints, colored prints, Miller viewed. The most difficult poem to get through due to the graphic nature of the topic; this poem depicts corpses in different poses and at different stages of “undress.” For example: “She entire, arm raised, profiled looking left,--unwrapped entirely of skin except for two--breasts, neck and one greeny cream of shoulder.” Miller highlights how the bodies of women are still sexualized in death and dissection.

Equally disturbing but fascinating is “Mother and Son,” in which Miller makes comparisons between the bombing of the twin towers and a mother’s diseased body to help a son understand impermanence. “He’d seen the footage at school that day,--heard the talk meant to help him ‘process,’ and yet,--he couldn’t help himself: he had to ask his mother—to put her body up.”

The poem “Parous in Paris” brings together the reality of studying corpses and Miller’s life. She writes, “I’ve left my only child--home in another country for this walk--into a history of the body of woman--in labor,…the coppery scent of formaldehyde--sticking in my throat, I fight down--the unthinkable news delivered--at dawn via e-mail: someone else--is in my marriage bed,…”

[The Resurrection Trade(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1555974635?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1555974635) is a revealing look at the one of the ways women’s bodies have been constructed over time through the eyes of men. The book remains grounded through Miller’s writing of her present day experiences that contain the humanity that is lacking in the tinted prints she has studied.

Written by: Shelby Smith, March 10th 2007