The Body Project

The Body Project – Joan Jacobs Brumberg

The Body Project is a historical analysis of how the body of the American girl has transformed over the past century with the changing social mores from the repressive Victorian era to the largely uninhibited 1990s. Brumberg, a feminist historian, analyzes how the evolving concepts of sexuality and beauty impacted the female identity as a girl encountered adolescence. She traces various aspects of the body and adolescence, focusing mainly on menarche, notions of physical beauty, and the concept of “sexual activity” and how they added to the various “body projects” for adolescent girls over the past century.

Brumberg bases her book on scholarly research and excerpts from girls’ diaries and journals over the past century. This combination allows the reader to see the impact of social changes on the individual psyche. I found it very interesting to see how systemic changes, such as medical definitions, lead to new behaviors and treatment for girls. For example, while acne has never been a life-threatening disease, it was never taken seriously until WWII and later military engagements. Since acne more often affected girls than boys, doctors made no special effort to treat it, but as it increased in severity for men serving in tropical military locations, causing scarring and infections that interfered with their service, doctors began to more aggressively address this skin problem. I also found it quite interesting how bodies became more associated with specific products that, in the past, had been marketed only for adult women, but began marketing toward a specific “junior” audience as the age of adolescence decreased. Additionally, the evolution in what products were available, and how widely available they were, was something I had never really thought about before.

Throughout her analysis, Brumberg keeps track of the social movements at play over the course of the past century, but she acknowledges in her conclusion that her analysis applies mainly to middle-class white girls. Brumberg argues that neither the Victorian attitudes nor the latest sexual revolution is an obvious improvement over the other, and she points out the value and shortcomings of both eras. While the Victorian era was constituted of very modest ideas that treated girls as asexual beings, it had a built in support structure in terms of protective and nurturing female relationships. Girls today may have more freedom and more choice concerning every aspect of their body, but they lack advice and direction from role models that can lead to more informed actions. Her argument is worth considering as we move ever forward in pursuit of freedom and equality.