Enlightening perspectives on femininity and sexualization

Foregrounding the body, this remarkable collective work explores the sexualization of women's bodies, charting the complex interplay of social, political and cultural forces which produce a normative "femininity." A series of projects which focus on concrete instances of sexualization (hair, legs, the slavegirl stereotype, women's gymnastics) lead to a broader examination of the relationship between power and sexuality, the social and the psychological. Placing themselves at the crossroad where feminism and socialism meet, the contributors move seamlessly between the autobiographical and the analytical, questioning the diversion between personal and political, mapping the knot of memory and desire at the heart of the gendered body. Vitally, these accounts do not present sexualization as a passive inculcation of social norms: the individual is presented as taking an active role in the construction of gendered identities.