Small Town Wren » reading http://www.smalltownwren.com Moving Home Again Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:50:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Picking Up The Beauty Myth Again http://www.smalltownwren.com/2009/11/picking-up-the-beauty-myth-again/ http://www.smalltownwren.com/2009/11/picking-up-the-beauty-myth-again/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:51:34 +0000 Wren Roberts http://www.smalltownwren.com/?p=131 I first picked up The Beauty Myth three years ago. I was writing a paper for a class, for The Anthropology of Gender & Sexuality taught by Nia Parson. It was a great class, and the first time where I was inspired enough to engorge myself on outside sources for a final paper.  I ended up writing a treatise on intersection, third wave feminism, and abortion rights. It was a great paper. I shared it with the group of shamans I was observing later in the year when they started getting grumpy about the right to choose.

The only problem is I never finished it.

Some books have that problem with me: I just can’t get them read. American Gods is a book I’ve started at least a dozen times and as much as I love reading the first 100 pages, something always comes up and I can’t finish it.  With The Beauty Myth, life happened. A series of catastrophic events in early 2008 left me unable to do much else but cry and feel sorry for myself.  I had read what I needed for the paper with the intention to finish it at my leisure during the following semester. It has languished on my shelf ever since.

No more. While generally I would say I have never bought into the monolithic beauty myth, I think I am at a point in my life where I need to read it again (and actually finish it). It’s an important text and it will be good for me and the goals I am working toward right now. The whole strong woman thing.  And, in general, I need some non-textbook reading to happen in my life.

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