Women Shame

The female body, with its history as an object of social control, expectation, and manipulation, is central to understanding the gendered construction of shame. Through the study of 20th-century literary texts, The Female Face of Shame explores the nexus of femininity, female sexuality, the female body, and shame. It demonstrates how shame structures relationships and shapes women's identities. Examining works by women authors from around the world, these essays provide an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective on the representations, theories, and powerful articulations of women's shame.

DIVFrom a highly respected thinker on race, gender, and American politics, a new consideration of black women and how distorted stereotypes affect their political beliefs/div

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and GOODREADS • A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street. It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

This book brings together the research findings of contemporary feminist age studies scholars, shame theorists, and feminist gerontologists in order to unfurl the affective dynamics of gendered ageism. In her analysis of what she calls “embodied shame,” J. Brooks Bouson describes older women’s shame about the visible signs of aging and the health and appearance of their bodies as they undergo the normal processes of bodily aging. Examining both fictional and nonfiction works by contemporary North American and British women authors, this book offers a sustained analysis of the various ways that ageism devalues and damages the identities of otherwise psychologically healthy women in our graying culture. Shame theory, as Bouson shows, astutely explains why gendered ageism is so deeply entrenched in our culture and why even aging feminists may succumb to this distressing, but sometimes hidden, cultural affliction.

Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision in Daring Greatly that encourages us to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly and courageously. 'It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly' -Theodore Roosevelt Every time we are introduced to someone new, try to be creative, or start a difficult conversation, we take a risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - we strive to appear perfect. Challenging everything we think we know about vulnerability, Dr. Brené Brown dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that vulnerability is in fact a strength, and when we shut ourselves off from revealing our true selves we grow distanced from the things that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Daring Greatly is the culmination of 12 years of groundbreaking social research, across the home, relationships, work, and parenting. It is an invitation to be courageous; to show up and let ourselves be seen, even when there are no guarantees. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. 'Brilliantly insightful. I can't stop thinking about this book' -Gretchen Rubin Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her groundbreaking work was featured on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday, NPR, and CNN. Her TED talk is one of the most watched TED talks of all time. Brené is also the author of The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't).

Feminist scholarship has looked extensively at the perception of the body as a flexible construction of cultural and social dictates, but head hair has been often overlooked. Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair brings new focus to this underrepresented topic through its intersections with contemporary socio-cultural contexts. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines investigate private and public meanings associated with female head hair, problematising our assumptions about its role and implications in the 21st Century. Readers are invited to reflect on the use of hair in popular culture, such as children’s television and pop album artwork, as well as in work by women artists. Studies examine the lived experiences of women from a range of backgrounds and histories, including curly-haired women in Israel, African American women, and lesbians in France. Other essays interrogate the connotations of women’s head hair in relation to body image, religion, and aging. Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair brings together cultural discourses and the lived experiences of women, across time and place, to reveal the complex and ever-evolving significance of hair. It is an important contribution to the critical feminist thought in cultural studies, fashion studies, media studies, African American studies, queer theory, gerontology, psychology, and sociology.

Shame strikes at the heart of human individuals rupturing relationships, extinguishing joy and, at times, provoking conflict and violence. This book explores the idea that shame has historically been, and continues to be, used by an oftentimes patriarchal Christian Church as a mechanism to control and regulate female sexuality and to displace men’s ambivalence about sex. Using a study of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries as a historical example, contemporary feminist theological and theoretical scholarship are utilised to examine why the Church as an institution has routinely colluded with the shaming of individuals, and moreover why women are consistently and overtly shamed on account of, and indeed take the blame for, sex. In addition, the text asks whether the avoidance of shame is in fact functional in men’s efforts to adhere to patriarchal gender norms and religious ideals, and whether women end up paying the price for the maintenance of this system. This book is a fresh take on the issue of shame and gender in the context of religious belief and practice. As such it will be of significant interest to academics in the fields of Religious Studies, but also History, Psychology and Gender Studies.