• A wide-ranging, accessible and stimulating collection of articles on topics relating to women and the body
• With the exception of two classic articles, all are recent works published within the last decade
• Touches on other dimensions of inequality such as class, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation, and includes work from an array of disciplines such as anthropology, history, law, literature, philosophy and sociology

Edited by Rose Weitz, Professor of Sociology, Arizona State University

Part 1: The Social Construction of Women's Bodies
1: Rose Weitz: A History of Women's Bodies
2: Judith Lorber: Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology
3: Sandra Lee Bartky: Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power
4: Catherine K. Riessman: Women and Medicalization: A New Perspective
Part 2: The Politics of Sexuality
5: Susan K. Cahn: From the 'Muscle Moll' to the 'Butch' Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia
6: Janet Lee: Menarche and the (Hetero)sexualization of the Female Body
7: Deborah L. Tolman: Daring to Desire: Culture and the Bodies of Adolescent Girls
8: bell hooks: Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace
Part 3: The Politics of Appearance
9: Rose Weitz: Women and Their Hair: Seeking Power through Resistance and Accommodation
10: Iris Young: Breasted Experience
11: Kathryn Pauly Morgan: Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women's Bodies
12: Eugenia Kaw: Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery
13: Marcia Ann Gillespie: Mirror Mirror
14: Mary Lowenthal Felstiner: Casing My Joints: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis
Part 4: Politics, Bodies and Behavior
15: Karin A. Martin: Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools
16: Shari L. Dworkin: Holding Back: Negotiating a Glass Ceiling on Women's Muscular Strength
17: Margo Wilson and Martin Daly: Till Death Us Do Part
18: Joy Webster Barbre: Meno-Boomer and Moral Guardians: An Exploration of the Cultural Construction of Menopause
19: Dorothy E. Roberts: The Future of Reproductive Choice for Poor Women and Women of Color
20: Katha Pollitt: Fetal Rights: A New Assault on Feminism