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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
What's in a breast? That depends on who's asking, says Marilyn Yalom, author of this scholarly, illustrated treatise on the breast in Western society. "Babies see food. Men see sex. Doctors see disease. Businesspeople see dollar signs." Breasts have been denounced as wanton, or idealized as givers of power or life in images of Egyptian goddess Isis nursing pharoahs; sturdy, maternal Mother Russia; or the more eroticized, bare-breasted symbol of republican ideals in France. Psychologists, religious leaders, advertisers, and pornographers have rhapsodized over, vilified, and used breasts to sell everything from war to Cadillacs. And, finally, women have seen in them pleasure, power, sustenance, fear, or failure to measure up.
From Publishers Weekly
The image of the nurturing Madonna, invented in 14th-century Italy, resurrected an earlier tradition of big-breasted Paleolithic figurines representing fertility or nursing goddesses, Yalom claims. But beginning in the Renaissance, she says, the breast, stripped of its relation to the sacred, became the playground of male desire, taking on in the West a predominantly erotic meaning that it has not possessed in other eras and cultures. According to Yalom, writings on the breast by Rousseau, Freud, Jung and novelist Philip Roth reflect a male-centered, sexist worldview. With wit and dispassionate scholarship, Stanford researcher and feminist scholar Yalom decodes the social constructions of the breast as political symbol of liberty in the French Revolution, idealized domestic comforter in the Dutch golden age, modern advertising commodity and source of titillation in the arts, entertainment, erotica and pornography. She charts women's increasing involvement in the sexual politics of controlling their bodies and breasts, from 1960s bra-burning to today's growing concern about breast cancer. Intriguingly and amply illustrated with reproductions of paintings, sculpture, prints, posters, ads and photographs, this enlightening, often surprising cultural history will compel men and women to think differently about the breast.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
What's in a breast? That depends on who's asking, says Marilyn Yalom, author of this scholarly, illustrated treatise on the breast in Western society. "Babies see food. Men see sex. Doctors see disease. Businesspeople see dollar signs." Breasts have been denounced as wanton, or idealized as givers of power or life in images of Egyptian goddess Isis nursing pharoahs; sturdy, maternal Mother Russia; or the more eroticized, bare-breasted symbol of republican ideals in France. Psychologists, religious leaders, advertisers, and pornographers have rhapsodized over, vilified, and used breasts to sell everything from war to Cadillacs. And, finally, women have seen in them pleasure, power, sustenance, fear, or failure to measure up.
From Publishers Weekly
The image of the nurturing Madonna, invented in 14th-century Italy, resurrected an earlier tradition of big-breasted Paleolithic figurines representing fertility or nursing goddesses, Yalom claims. But beginning in the Renaissance, she says, the breast, stripped of its relation to the sacred, became the playground of male desire, taking on in the West a predominantly erotic meaning that it has not possessed in other eras and cultures. According to Yalom, writings on the breast by Rousseau, Freud, Jung and novelist Philip Roth reflect a male-centered, sexist worldview. With wit and dispassionate scholarship, Stanford researcher and feminist scholar Yalom decodes the social constructions of the breast as political symbol of liberty in the French Revolution, idealized domestic comforter in the Dutch golden age, modern advertising commodity and source of titillation in the arts, entertainment, erotica and pornography. She charts women's increasing involvement in the sexual politics of controlling their bodies and breasts, from 1960s bra-burning to today's growing concern about breast cancer. Intriguingly and amply illustrated with reproductions of paintings, sculpture, prints, posters, ads and photographs, this enlightening, often surprising cultural history will compel men and women to think differently about the breast.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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