Press Coverage: New Feminist Books for Your Collection
By Christine Cupaiuolo — May 1, 2007
Check out these titles for some good reading:
Full Frontal Feminism: Interviews with Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing.com and author of the new “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters,” ran last week at AlterNet, Salon and New York magazine.
Huffington Post is running a book excerpt, along with Valenti’s touching explanation for why the book is dedicated to “Miss Magoo.” And Valenti’s six-point manifesto for becoming a feminist is posted at The Guardian. In it she writes:
“I wanted to write the book I wish I’d read as a teenager. A book that would cut through the nonsense stereotypes and tell it like it is. A book that would talk about how amazing it is to be a feminist. And how necessary. Because I truly do believe that feminism is necessary for women to live happy, fulfilled lives — especially given the society we live in, which constantly and consistently tells women that we’re just not good enough.”
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: Courtney Martin, a contributor to Feministing.com and other media outlets, is getting lots of press for “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.”
Writing in The New York Times, Holly Brubach calls it, “a smart and spirited rant that makes for thought-provoking reading.”
“She opens with some sobering statistics,” continues Brubach, “seven million American girls and women with eating disorders, and up to 70 million people worldwide.”
Brubach goes on to quote from the book: “Ninety-one percent of women recently surveyed on a college campus reported dieting; 22 percent of them dieted ‘always’ or ‘often.’ In 1995, 34 percent of high-school-age girls in the United States thought they were overweight. Today, 90 percent do.”
How Sassy Changed My Life: Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer, co-authors of “How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time,” appeared on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” last week to discuss the magazine described on the program as the “antithesis of the homecoming queen, please-your-boyfriend culture. It published articles about suicide and STDs while Seventeen was still teaching girls how to get a boy to notice you.”
NPR has also published an excerpt from “How Sassy Changed My Life.” More at Media Bistro.
