Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture [Paperback]

Emily Jenkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0805057013 | ISBN-13: 978-0805057010 | Edition: 1st

A smart, humorous exploration of bodily thrills and paranoia from aerobics to acupuncture, strip shows to sensory deprivation.

Your perception of your body will change when you read this book. You will be pulling on your boxer shorts or your black lace bra, and suddenly consider why you decorate yourself the way you do. You will shake up your martini, kiss your beloved, read a dirty magazine, go for a jog, and think about what your bodily behavior says about your soul. And what it is doing to your soul. You will notice the defenses you erect for yourself. Perhaps a tube of lipstick. Perhaps an addiction.

Testing the boundaries between fear and temptation, Emily Jenkins takes us on a journey from ordinary physical experiences (going to the dentist, putting on stockings) to extreme ones (snorting heroin, shaving her head). She interviews people whose bodies are radically different from hers and enters communities where people share unusual ideas about physicality. Sometimes you will recognize your own habits. Other times you'll be shocked or repulsed. Always you will find yourself questioning the ordinary things you do, rethinking your relationship to your body.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Emily Jenkins isn't ashamed of her insecurities, but she isn't throwing away her preconceptions, either. Tongue First can be reassuring to anyone who has felt embarrassed about disrobing in public or wonders about being more adventurous, as Jenkins unleashes her wit on topics from sensory deprivation to tattoos to afternoon naps. All sorts of things get tasted in this book: scary things, exciting things, fun things, banal things. Somehow, Jenkins portrays them as all OK--or, at least, just as OK as anything else.

This catalog of emotions and experiences categorizes body decoration as celebration, explores what people do to control rebellious bodies (or to flout the convention that says they should), shows how getting a tattoo isn't all that different from the search for the perfect shade of red lipstick, and gives us a good look at the inside of Jenkins's head (and, in the chapter in which she shaves it, the outside as well). Her catty wit can sometimes occlude her message; when she slams an outré practice, then demonstrates that it's just like what ordinary people do, the reader may well ask if Jenkins is kidding or making social commentary, particularly since her criticisms rarely get more judgmental than a resounding "not for me, thanks." --Cheryl Trooskin

From Publishers Weekly

"Adventures" is not a misnomer: trying everything from sleep deprivation to sniffing heroin, Jenkins, a graduate student and author of a children's novel titled The Secret Life of Billy's Uncle Myron, serves as her own lab rat, all in the interest of exploring "how the body is both a prison and a vehicle for adventure." Can it be escaped, or at least briefly transcended? An unpretentious guide who doesn't indulge in fashionable bad-girl posturing or pat herself on the back for her daring, the author explores posh spas and grimy strip joints with sharp wit and a good dose of common sense. She tries to follow sex manuals, gets a tattoo, gets Rolfed, goes to a nude beach?she draws a line, however, at colonic irrigation. Strangely, Jenkins finds one of the simplest experiments?shaving her head?proves to be the most disturbing: it forces her to "look down in shame when an acquaintance passes me on the street, to hesitate going to a party because I feel so ugly, to choose clothes that render me invisible." While the book comes to no conclusions and settles on no single method of self-knowledge ("I am no convert, only a dabbler," the author admits), it closes with a wry?and characteristically ambiguous?vision of everyone's ultimate destiny at a Florida retirement community: "the invisible scarring caused by the sun reminds me of its presence with a persistent itch. Here is a taste of the physical changes that will come with age. My tan is telling me the future."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; 1st edition (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057013
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057010
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,636,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write stories for children and adults. Picture books, middle-grade books, and novels. And a long time ago, personal essays.

I can be reached on the web at www.emilyjenkins.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars disappointed, disappointed, disappointed!, January 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture (Paperback)

I thought this book was going to be eye-opening to things that I knew I would never try. Instead the author spent more time discussing (or boring us with) her opinion on the subject matters then actual time being involved in the events. If I had known that it was a book of opinions I would have never purchased it. Everyone has an opinion on these subjects, we wanted to know what it was like to experience them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars T.F. shows that body fetishism is ubiquitous, not weird., September 22, 1998

By 

R is for reader (Lincoln, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture (Paperback)

The strength of this book is its straightforward, conversational style; Jenkins demonstrates that even the simplest bodily rituals and practices (wearing makeup; using public locker rooms; sleeping) are tied into body fetishisms that mainstream culture casts as deviant (or at least daring, now that tattoos have hit the suburban mall).

Jenkins does not use abstract theoretical jargon (though as a PhD student at Columbia, she surely could); nevertheless her readings of popular culture (and her own place in it) are clearly influenced by a wide range of readings in gender theory and cultural studies. _Tongue First_ can therefore introduce the theoretical concepts of drag, performance, spectacle, and fetishism to an audience that would never pick up a book of theory.

Perhaps this makes the book less theoretically rigorous than, say, Judith Butler's _Gender Trouble_. But it sure is a lot more fun to read. To complain about its light tone (as some reviewers have) is to miss the point; _Tongue First_ does not aspire to being a philosophy textbook, but an engaged, humorous, and above all personal look at our cultural notions of the physical through the medium of Jenkins's own body.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating, irreverent, eminently readable, September 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture (Paperback)

Emily Jenkins looks at things a little more closely than most of us, and takes risks we only think about. Thanks to TONGUE FIRST, I now know what it's like to shave one's head, get a tattoo, snort heroin, and go to the 10th Street Baths -- among many other things. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity and making me think, too.