New Releases by Amy Erdman Farrell

Locating the origins of the cultural denigration of fatness in the mid 19th century, Amy Erdman Farrell argues that the stigma associated with a fat body preceded any health concerns about a large body size. Farrell draws on a wide array of sources, including political cartoons, popular literature, postcards, advertisements, and physician's manuals to explore the link between our historic denigration of fatness and our contemporary concern over obesity. She explores the ways that those who seek to shed stigmatized identities, whether of gender, race, ethnicity or class, often take part in weight reduction schemes and fat mockery in order to validate themselves as "civilized."--[book cover].

In this book, Amy Erdman Farrell traces Ms. from its pathbreaking origins in 1972 to its final commercial issue in 1989. Drawing on interviews with former editors, archival materials, and the text of the magazine itself, Farrell examines the role Ms. played in popularizing feminism and explores the complexities and contradictions created by a publication that sought to forge an oppositional politics within the context of commercial culture. An engrossing and objective account, Yours in Sisterhood illuminates the significant yet difficult connections between commercial culture and social movements. It reveals a complex, often contradictory magazine that was a major force in the contemporary feminist movement.