A superb interdisciplinary study that successfully integrates a lush prose, emphasizing metaphors of mirror and voice, with philosophical rigor. * Choice *
In this innovative, elegantly written investigation, Diana Meyers invites her readers to reflect on, and devise ways of resisting, the ubiquitous yet varied imagery of 'woman' that saturates the social-political western world, thwarting women's efforts to achieve autonomous self-hood. Ranging widely across pronatalist messages, psychiatric practice, the health-beauty industry, and subtly conveyed inducements to remake the female body, she shows how women ingest normalizing images that they must struggle to expel if they are to affirm an authentic sense of self. This is a hopeful book, for Meyers is convinced that feminist women can indeed liberate themselves from the pressures such imagery exerts. * Lorraine Code, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, York University *
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 *
In this innovative, elegantly written investigation, Diana Meyers invites her readers to reflect on, and devise ways of resisting, the ubiquitous yet varied imagery of 'woman' that saturates the social-political western world, thwarting women's efforts to achieve autonomous self-hood. Ranging widely across pronatalist messages, psychiatric practice, the health-beauty industry, and subtly conveyed inducements to remake the female body, she shows how women ingest normalizing images that they must struggle to expel if they are to affirm an authentic sense of self. This is a hopeful book, for Meyers is convinced that feminist women can indeed liberate themselves from the pressures such imagery exerts. * Lorraine Code, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, York University *
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 *
