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Review
If anyone doubts the need to protect girls from the toxic, hyper-sexualised, disempowering environment they're now growing up in, they should read LIVING DOLLS (Maggie Hamilton, author of WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR GIRLS? )
** 'In LIVING DOLLS, Walter makes a compelling case that we need feminism more than ever...this book makes a disturbing, passionate and compelling case for revisiting our notions of equality...Everyone who cares anything about the kind of society we are curre (Sunday Business Post )
** 'Walter does a brilliant job of demolishing their (scientists') arguments (Mail on Sunday, Susie Orbach )
** 'Required reading for everyone who cares about our humanity, and that means all of us (Katherine Sheridan, Irish Times )
** 'In LIVING DOLLS, Walter makes a compelling case that we need feminism more than ever...this book makes a disturbing, passionate and compelling case for revisiting our notions of equality...Everyone who cares anything about the kind of society we are curre (Sunday Business Post )
** 'Walter does a brilliant job of demolishing their (scientists') arguments (Mail on Sunday, Susie Orbach )
** 'Required reading for everyone who cares about our humanity, and that means all of us (Katherine Sheridan, Irish Times )
Book Description
* A controversial and much needed look at our highly sexualised culture, available now in paperback - 'A must-read' Viv Groskop, Guardian
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
129 of 132 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Feminism and the sexual revolution was intended to give women choices about their lives so that they didn't have to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Natasha Walter's controversial book shows women have instead been placed in a straightjacket which dictates how they look, how they behave and what ambitions they have. The first half of the book is taken up with extracts from interviews she had with teenagers, sex workers, people at the top of the glamour magazine and film industry and with a user of pornography. Was female empowerment meant to be about behaving like a man - and the worst type of man at that?
To me the thoughts of the teenagers she talks to make tragic reading. They are only interested in how many men they can sleep with and what they look like. The contrast between them and the few girls she talks to who don't want to win fame and fortune by posing nude in a lads' magazine is stark. Walter also recounts conversations with young women who earned money while at university as escorts and prostitutes. Some see nothing wrong with it and regard it as a simple and fun way to earn enough money to support themselves. Others had clearly thought deeply about the work and felt it was not the best way to deal with a financial crisis. Is becoming a prostitute or a pole dancer really how female empowerment looks today?
The second half of the book deals with the trend in the media to exaggerate sex differences and to point to studies showing men and women have different capabilities because of their gender. As Walter points out there are many studies which show there is very little difference in the capabilities of men and women but these are rarely reported. General interest books which highlight and exaggerate gender differences sell in their thousands but books citing scientific evidence that there is little difference usually sink without trace. Are the media bent on emphasising gender differences and promoting conventional stereotypes? This book shows they are.
`Living Dolls' is well written and the author's own reaction to the way our culture is changing for the worse as she sees it is clearly evident. This however does not prevent her from quoting research which is both for and against the theory that people are individuals and should not be stereotyped. I found it engrossing reading, with many references to follow up for more information. There is an index and comprehensive notes to each chapter - though no separate bibliography. There is also a list of women's organisations which are continuing the fight for equality.
Anyone who thinks our capabilities are biologically determined at birth needs to read this book as it shows clearly how gender stereotypes are promoted in a subtle and insidious way in everything we see, hear and read from an early age. If you don't want to be pigeon holed as a glamour model with a large chest or as a 1950s housewife in a Cath Kidston apron baking cupcakes then this is the book for you.
To me the thoughts of the teenagers she talks to make tragic reading. They are only interested in how many men they can sleep with and what they look like. The contrast between them and the few girls she talks to who don't want to win fame and fortune by posing nude in a lads' magazine is stark. Walter also recounts conversations with young women who earned money while at university as escorts and prostitutes. Some see nothing wrong with it and regard it as a simple and fun way to earn enough money to support themselves. Others had clearly thought deeply about the work and felt it was not the best way to deal with a financial crisis. Is becoming a prostitute or a pole dancer really how female empowerment looks today?
The second half of the book deals with the trend in the media to exaggerate sex differences and to point to studies showing men and women have different capabilities because of their gender. As Walter points out there are many studies which show there is very little difference in the capabilities of men and women but these are rarely reported. General interest books which highlight and exaggerate gender differences sell in their thousands but books citing scientific evidence that there is little difference usually sink without trace. Are the media bent on emphasising gender differences and promoting conventional stereotypes? This book shows they are.
`Living Dolls' is well written and the author's own reaction to the way our culture is changing for the worse as she sees it is clearly evident. This however does not prevent her from quoting research which is both for and against the theory that people are individuals and should not be stereotyped. I found it engrossing reading, with many references to follow up for more information. There is an index and comprehensive notes to each chapter - though no separate bibliography. There is also a list of women's organisations which are continuing the fight for equality.
Anyone who thinks our capabilities are biologically determined at birth needs to read this book as it shows clearly how gender stereotypes are promoted in a subtle and insidious way in everything we see, hear and read from an early age. If you don't want to be pigeon holed as a glamour model with a large chest or as a 1950s housewife in a Cath Kidston apron baking cupcakes then this is the book for you.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have never reviewed a book before, but I felt I had to with this. I feel this book encompasses everything I have been saying to people I know for years. It's both reassuring and worrying to know that you're not the only one, and other people notice these things too.
I wish the issues in this book were highlighted more, so girls know that it's not right to judge one's whole self worth on the way they look.
Thank you so much Natasha Walter!
I wish the issues in this book were highlighted more, so girls know that it's not right to judge one's whole self worth on the way they look.
Thank you so much Natasha Walter!
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book amazed me. It totally challenged my idea that we finally live in an equal world.
I am a living doll - I diet, I bleach my hair, I wear makeup. And all this makes me feel more valid in society... why is it ok for me to feel like I have to do this to feel like I have achieved? I have two masters degrees, lots of friends and a great job...
Read this book if you have ever felt guilty about eating a cookie, or bought a new handbag to cheer yourself up. IT will change the way you wee the western world!
I am also enjoying 'the equality illusion' which takes these ideas further.
I am a living doll - I diet, I bleach my hair, I wear makeup. And all this makes me feel more valid in society... why is it ok for me to feel like I have to do this to feel like I have achieved? I have two masters degrees, lots of friends and a great job...
Read this book if you have ever felt guilty about eating a cookie, or bought a new handbag to cheer yourself up. IT will change the way you wee the western world!
I am also enjoying 'the equality illusion' which takes these ideas further.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Very interesting
When I first picked this book up I was concerned that it was basically just a British rehash of Ariel Levy's 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' (that is to say, an extended criticism of the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Missy
Pink Stinks!
This is very well-written, readable journalism and started a good discussion at my book club. A couple of members found it depressing, because the author concludes that despite... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Hope
Living Doll: return of the new sexism by Natasha Walter
Great book. It disturbed me in parts by its brutal honesty and probing into how women are objectified today and how this objectification permeates through the hole of are... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Keith Robertson
Society's structures uncovered
I've really enjoyed this book! It's very interesting, well-researched, easy to read yet not too basic. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Pannie Moss
A State of the Nation address on sexism
I found it interesting that the subtitle of this book is "The Return of Sexism" as I believe, and the book seems to demonstrate, that sexism has never gone away - it has just... Read more
Published 11 months ago by CuteBadger
A sometimes depressing but uplifting book
This is an important book which eloquently describes the return to gender stereotyping which began in the 1990s and has unfortuneately only exacerbated since then. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Clare
The return of sexism...but by whom?
This is more of the same that whining feminists, and some men, have been doing for decades.
Of course any thinking man or woman abhors sexism, or the notion that men or... Read more
Of course any thinking man or woman abhors sexism, or the notion that men or... Read more
Published 11 months ago by will
Sexism?
The return of sexism? What's the weather like on the writer's planet?
There will always be people who believe women are less than. It's the way some people are. Read more
There will always be people who believe women are less than. It's the way some people are. Read more
Published 12 months ago by ellen300
Must Read
I wouldn't call myself a feminist, that's not to say I don't want rights for women (I mean which woman wouldn't? Read more
Published 13 months ago by Lucybird
Unexpectedly hard to put down
Confession - I read this whilst researching my dissertation, and didn't expect it to be particularly interesting. How wrong could I be. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Rachel J. Turner
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