An insightful, witty, and well-written analysis of the effects of mass-media on women in late 20th-century American culture. Douglas cuts through the fluff that spews from the tube with a finely-honed sense of the absurd that can forever change (or minimally, inform) how you perceive the changing portrayals of women by the media. The only book I know of that has been given highest recommendations by Gloria Steinem, The McLaughlin Group, and Amazon.com.


From Publishers Weekly
In this insightful study of how the American media has portrayed women over the past 50 years, Douglas ( Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 ) considers the paradox of a generation of women raised to see themselves as bimbos becoming the very group that found its voice in feminism. Modern American women, she suggests, have been fed so many conflicting images of their desires, aspirations and relationships with men, families and one another that they are veritable cultural schizophrenics, uncertain of what they want and what society expects of them. A single image--Diana Ross of the Supremes, for example, or Gidget from the popular sitcom--can send mixed signals, Douglas shows, at once affirming a woman's right to a voice and cautioning her not to go too far. Thus the media is often both a liberating and an oppressive force. Douglas is particularly attentive to the ways pop culture's messages have responded to shifting social and economic imperatives, including the feminist movement itself. While she asserts that pop culture can have a profound impact on one's self-perceptions, she also stresses that women, by the example of their own lives, have changed--mostly for the better--the way the media represents them. Author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In the current reconsideration of the popular culture of the baby boomers, the cultural contribution of men is emphasized. The neglect of the cultural history of women from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s worries critic Douglas. In an engaging personal tour through the landscape of television, popular music, new media, and advertising, she retrieves that history while exploring the mixed messages the media delivered to women. She claims that popular girl singing groups like the Shirelles offered new possibilities for female assertiveness, while the television show Bewitched portrayed a woman using magic to escape dull domestic chores. Emphasizing complexity, she relates the ambivalent treatment of women in popular culture to the evolution of the women's liberation movement. Douglas, a professor of media studies at Hampshire College and author of Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 (LJ 11/1/87), translates intricate academic ideas into witty and accessible prose. This entertaining book fills a gap in cultural history and belongs in public and academic libraries.Judy Solberg, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College ParkCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times
Provocative...rollicking...peppy and indignant


From Kirkus Reviews
The author of Inventing American Broadcasting (not reviewed) takes a long, hard look at the pop culture that fed women of the baby-boom generation with images that simultaneously acknowledged a blossoming feminist awareness and reinforced sex-role stereotypes. According to Douglas, conventional cultural history says that boys were portrayed as having a serious impact as political revolutionaries and alienated rebels in films like Blackboard Jungle, while girls merely represented ``the kitsch of the 1960s'': teased hair, Beatlemania, bare breasts at Woodstock, Gidget. But there is more to this story, argues Douglas (Media and American Studies/Hampshire College). Her reexamination of popular culture shows that female baby boomers grew up hearing that they were significant and equal from sources as diverse as JFK, who encouraged them to join the Peace Corps; Helen Gurley Brown, who made being single sound exciting; and the Shirelles, who in songs like ``Will You Love Me Tomorrow'' gave voice to the issue of teenage sex and suggested that girls had choices. But while all this was going on, young women were also urged to be ``as domestic as June Cleaver, as buxom and dumb as Elly May Clampett, and as removed from politics as Lily Munster.'' Example after example demonstrates how this type of ambivalent representation helped make women the ``cultural schizophrenics'' they are today, from those who endorse many equal-rights goals but wince at the label ``feminist'' to the apparently confident souls who would ``still rather have a root canal than appear in public in a bathing suit.'' Sharp reflections on everything from Bewitched (women's power was too frightening to portray realistically) to Phyllis Schlafly (who makes ``the Wicked Witch of the West look like Mary Poppins'') ring funny and true. A witty, insightful romp through the last four decades- -especially nostalgic and enlightening for readers raised on Charlie's Angels and the Mashed Potatoes. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From the Publisher
"A first-rate analysis of the music, movies and TV imagery that helped shape female psyches."--Newsweek"A lively, clever, and illuminating book. Susan Douglas performs the culture critic's formidable task with savvy, raucous wit, and exactly the right kind of ambivalence."--Mark Crispin Miller


From the Publisher
"A first-rate analysis of the music, movies and TV imagery that helped shape female psyches."--Newsweek

"A lively, clever, and illuminating book. Susan Douglas performs the culture critic's formidable task with savvy, raucous wit, and exactly the right kind of ambivalence."--Mark Crispin Miller


From the Inside Flap
Media critic Douglas deconstructs the ambiguous messages sent to American women via TV programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reporting over the last 40 years, and fathoms their influence on her own life and the lives of her contemporaries. Photos.

ANNOTATION

Media critic Douglas deconstructs the ambiguous messages sent to American women via TV programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reporting over the last 40 years, and fathoms their influence on her own life and the lives of her contemporaries. Photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Where the Girls Are" is about the confusing and contradictory images of women in American pop culture. Media critic Susan J. Douglas looks back at the television programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reports of the past four decades to reveal the mixed messages conveyed to girls and women coming of age in America. In a humorous and provocative analysis of our postwar cultural heritage, Douglas deconstructs these ambiguous messages and examines their influence on her life and the lives of her contemporaries....It is no accident, she argues, that 'girl groups' like the Shirelles emerged in the early 1960s, singing sexually charged songs like "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?;" or that cultural anxiety over female assertiveness showed up in sitcoms like "Bewitched" whose heroines had magical powers; or that the news coverage of the Equal Rights Amendment degenerated into a spat among women, absolving men of any responsibility....And yet for all the images that reinforced a traditional view of servile and dependent women, Douglas powerfully reveals how American mass culture also undermined these images by offering countless examples of girls and women who were actors in the wider world and who controlled their own destinies.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this insightful study of how the American media has portrayed women over the past 50 years, Douglas ( Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 ) considers the paradox of a generation of women raised to see themselves as bimbos becoming the very group that found its voice in feminism. Modern American women, she suggests, have been fed so many conflicting images of their desires, aspirations and relationships with men, families and one another that they are veritable cultural schizophrenics, uncertain of what they want and what society expects of them. A single image--Diana Ross of the Supremes, for example, or Gidget from the popular sitcom--can send mixed signals, Douglas shows, at once affirming a woman's right to a voice and cautioning her not to go too far. Thus the media is often both a liberating and an oppressive force. Douglas is particularly attentive to the ways pop culture's messages have responded to shifting social and economic imperatives, including the feminist movement itself. While she asserts that pop culture can have a profound impact on one's self-perceptions, she also stresses that women, by the example of their own lives, have changed--mostly for the better--the way the media represents them. Author tour. (May)

Library Journal