Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery & Women's Agency

by Diana Tietjens Meyers

Overview

Harmful, culturally prevalent imagery of feminine sexuality, beauty, and motherhood constrains women's self-determination. Gender in the Mirror proposes alternative imagery of feminine sexuality, beauty, and motherhood and advances an account of feminist discursive politics that takes on the challenge of neutralizing patriarchal imagery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195140415
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/21/2002
Series:	Studies in Feminist Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.63(d)
Lexile:	1470L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Connecticut, Storrs

Table of Contents

1. Gender Identity and Women's Agency: Culture, Norms, and Internalized Oppression Revisited2. The Rush to Motherhood: Pronatalist Discourse and Women's Agency3. Gendered Models of Social Relations: How Moral and Political Culture Closes Minds and Hearts4. The Family Romance: A Fin-de-Siécle Tragedy5. Lure and Allure: Mirrors, Fugitive Agency, and Exiled Sexuality6. Miroir, Memoire, Mirage: Appearance, Aging, and Women7. Live Ordnance in the Cultural Field: Gender Imagery, Sexism, and the Fragility of Feminist GainsNotesReferencesName IndexSubject Index

Editorial Reviews

"Gender in the Mirror is a monograph in the theory of action or epistemology; as such it will be of most interest to scholars and students (of any gender) wanting to consider the ways in which feminist philosophy contributes to these fields and to the current literature on self-knowledge and on freedom of the will."—Hypathia

"A superb interdisciplinary study that successfully integrates a lush prose, emphasizing metaphors of mirror and voice, with philosophical rigor"—Choice

"Gender in the Mirror is a brilliant, comprehensive, account of the many ways in which androcentric images of the feminine undermine women's self-esteem and block our capacity for self-definition. Meyers argues with some urgency that a culture so hostile to women's self-development must be radically transformed; more than this, she develops a theory of female agency that would allow each of us in her own way to create narratives of our past, our present, and more importantly, of our future." —Sandra Bartky, Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Ground-breaking, well-written, and accessible....Gender in the Mirror will be read by feminist theorists, gerontologists, psychoanalysts, and literary studies scholars as well as by a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate students in Women's Studies and Gender Studies programs. I also think Meyers's work will be widely discussed by non-feminist and feminist philosophers interested in the concept of autonomy."-Rosemarie Tong, Distinguished Professor in Health Care Ethics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

From the Publisher