Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Paperback)

~ (Author) "What's the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don't hold back, now..." (more)
Key Phrases: repro rights, frontal feminists, New York, United States, Girls Gone Wild (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Feminism isn't dead. It just isn't very cool anymore. Enter Full Frontal Feminism, a book that embodies the forward-looking messages that author Jessica Valenti propagates on her popular website, Feministing.com.

Covering a range of topics, including pop culture, health, reproductive rights, violence, education, relationships, and more, Valenti provides young women a primer on why feminism matters.

Valenti knows better than anyone that young women need a smart-ass book that deals with real-life issues in a style they can relate to. No rehashing the same old issues. No belaboring where today's young women have gone wrong. Feminism should be something young women feel comfortable with, something they can own. Full Frontal Feminism is sending out the message to readers — yeah, you're feminists, and that's actually pretty frigging cool.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (March 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580052010
• ISBN-13: 978-1580052016
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,743 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #5 in	Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory
  #57 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Gender Studies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Primer, September 28, 2007

By	J. Aragon "Feminist Educator" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is one of many new books on the market that offer a primer on feminisms. I found this book just as interesting as Megan Seely's book.

Valenti offers a strong foray into a preliminary history of feminisms in the US. Her writing is clean and at times sarcastic, which I enjoyed for the most part. There are certain sections where I felt she needed to expand on some points to give a clearer view of the issue.

The audience for this book is a lay audience or university audience new to feminism or women's studies.

I found that the list of sources at the end of the book to be the most useful. However, I do think that Seely's information at the end of each chapter was more helpful for someone new to feminisms.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff., November 14, 2007

By	M. Perez "M. Perez" (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am a fan of Valenti's blog and was turned on to her book via her site. As a senior women's studies major I found that the book was a great introduction to feminism. I wouldn't recommend it to older, well seasoned feminists but its a great intro to feminism/women's studies. It covers a wide range of issues and I found it useful as a reference for some of my assignments.

148 of 197 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Feminist Review blog on FFF, April 27, 2007

By	Feminist Review blog "various writers" (worldwide) - See all my reviews

Jessica Valenti is a part of the feminist blogger elite, and for good reason. The blog that she was part of establishing, Feministing.com, gets a lot of traffic and is well-known among internet savvy, young, hip feminists. Full disclosure: I read Feministing on a somewhat regular basis. Having read Valenti's writing on the blog - which tends to be oversimplified and, quite frankly, bratty - I was hoping her analysis in book form would show at least a tad more depth. Unfortunately for Valenti, there's a downside to fame; it opens you up for public criticism.

If Full Frontal Feminism is supposed to be the spark that ignites young women to identify as feminists and hop on the movement train, then women are in deep trouble. Valenti writes like a feminist version of Ann Coulter, and let's face it, Ann Coulter is hardly known for her intelligence. Flamboyant and egotistical, much of Valenti's commentary is trite, at best. She makes sweeping generalizations ("When you're a feminist, day to day life is better. You make better decisions. You have better sex."), repeatedly calls her opponents juvenile names [...], confuses "truth" with "opinion," and has apparently done very little actual research to prove her claims, as there is little to no citation of her assertions. At times, she doesn't feel the need to make an assertion at all, responding to the opposition with a facile yet grandiose "Puke," a deliberately ironic "Yeah" or a pithy and useless "Terrifying", as though she has made her case. And despite hackneyed attempts every now and again to mention other marginalized groups, the truth is that this book overwhelmingly reflects the viewpoint of its white, middle class, (primarily, if not entirely) heterosexual, entitled, American, liberal feminist writer.

Valenti doesn't give her readers credit that they can do the thing she most wants them to do: think, analyze, and be critical. This is apparent in the fallacious style by which she presents her perspectives. My personal favorite - taken straight from the right wing, talk radio instruction manual - is when Valenti uses the "straw man," a common misleading bait-and-switch tactic, to "prove" her point (e.g., contending that anti-abortion advocates simply hate sex). A close second is when she uses the most extreme cases as though they weren't the exception to the rule (e.g., making the case for all women to have access to Emergency Contraception because rape victims should have access to it).

Perhaps Valenti believes that young women won't be moved unless they're completely scared to death. Fear is a powerful motivator, but it belittles the audience in the process. Oh, and did I mention that she uses the book as a forum to talk public trash about petty tiffs she's had with other bloggers? If fear doesn't sell you on feminism, apparently Valenti believes taking her side in some inane, personal dispute will.

Full Frontal Feminism is written in sound bytes, each chapter being comprised of smaller (usually) page-long explanations of a given issue: sex education vs. abstinence only, virginity pledges, expensive weddings, unattainable beauty standards, and other typical feminist fare. Apparently, the television has taken its toll (or so Valenti thinks) on the public because there is no sense of organization or logic to the structure of the book. And solutions? Those must have been left for someone else to tackle because you won't find them here, at least not outside of the standard volunteer, give money, and vote.

Now I know I've pretty much run this book into the ground, but I do want to say that I get what Valenti is trying to do here. And it's a really smart idea. She wants to reach out to young women who don't yet identify as feminists and let them know that it's okay, cool even, to be down with the F-word. She wants to tell them that they already believe in feminist ideals and have benefited from the women's movement. She wants to encourage them to continue in that tradition and kick some misogynist ass. That's a really honorable goal that, unfortunately, was a victim of poor execution.

If you're truly looking to find out why feminism matters, you'd be better served to flip to the booklist in the back of Full Frontal Feminism and read some of the titles listed there - including Colonize This!, Listen Up: Voices from the Next Generation, To Be Real, and The Fire This Time - because cool packaging is really great, but if there's nothing of substance inside then what you are selling is just the packaging.