Where the Girls are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media (Paperback) - Common

by Susan J. Douglas

An insightful, witty, and well-written analysis of the effects of mass-media on women in late 20th-century American culture. Douglas cuts through the fluff that spews from the tube with a finely-honed sense of the absurd that can forever change (or minimally, inform) how you perceive the changing portrayals of women by the media. The only book I know of that has been given highest recommendations by Gloria Steinem, The McLaughlin Group, and Amazon.com.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Gender, Sociology, Womens, Womens Studies

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Susan J. Douglas is a prize-winning author, columnist, and cultural critic, and the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan. Her book Where the Girls Are was widely praised, and chosen one of the top ten books of 1994 by National Public Radio, Entertainment Weekly and The McLaughlin Group. In her most recent book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done (Henry Holt, 2010) Douglas continues her analysis of the mixed messages surrounding women, and the struggle she sees in the media between embedded feminism on the one hand and enlightened sexism on the other. And she takes on the myth that women “have it all” and that full equality for women has been achieved. She has lectured at colleges and universities around the country, and has appeared on The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Working Woman, CNBC's Equal Time, NPR's Fresh Air, Weekend Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, Talk of the Nation, and Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know.

She is also the author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (with Meredith Michaels, The Free Press, 2004); Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Times Books, 1999), which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture, and Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins, 1987). Douglas has written for The Nation, In These Times, The Village Voice, Ms., The Washington Post and TV Guide, and was media critic for The Progressive from 1992-1998. Her column “Back Talk” appears monthly in In These Times.

Douglas is the 2010 Chair of the Board of The George Foster Peabody Awards, one of the most prestigious prizes in electronic media, which recognize distinguished achievement and meritorious service by radio and television networks, stations, producing organizations, cable television organizations, websites and individuals. In 1999 she was also named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor for excellence in undergraduate education. She has a daughter, Ella, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, T.R. Durham.

Reviews

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sure that there are many negative reviews of this book, and I'm sure one of the main complaints is that the author can't be impartial because she's writing about her life but as a scholar. I have to say that that strikes me as total crap. This author makes no bones about her own experiences and weaves them throughout the book. Her feelings about her experiences serve to make the book richer, more emotional and more understandable. She doesn't hide her bias, she puts it right there in your face. But even better is the long list of sources that she cites throughout the book so that you know this isn't JUST her opinion. And she happens to know what she's talking about: as a woman who has lived through this and as an academic...this is her field.

What I really got from this book was a personal, emotional, first hand look at feminism from the 1930s until the 1990s. In traditional history classes the feminist movement is touched on in the 60s and 70s but its not studied in depth like the civil war or WWII. In fact, I had to fight in high school with my teacher to learn anything about something that 1) wasn't a war and 2) was after 1950. The joys of an American public school education, I guess.

Ms. Douglas really uses pop culture well. She does a great job at deconstructing the messages coming from pop culture and the mass media. I guess she should since that's what the book is about and its what she does. However, it makes it really nice to read and relate to. Some of the songs from the 60s that she argues were very feminist and have been universally panned are songs that I HATE. In fact, I hate them because they strike me as totally unfeminist and passive. My mom and I have gotten into many fights about songs like "Leader of the Pack". Luckily, she didn't mention some of the ones that really get me going or I might have set the book on fire! But she gave me a whole new perspective on what those songs and tv shows meant at the time they came out. I think I can accept both views.

But really the best thing I got out of this book was a history of what it has been to be a woman in the US. That having conflicting thoughts and roles is VERY female and pushed by our culture and the mass media. And I got a much better understanding of what it must have been like for my mom to grow up in that time. It makes me proud that my mom has never wavered in her feminism (at least outwardly) and her determination to constantly press alternative views on me.

For the record: I promise I'm going to cleanse the sentence "I'm not a feminist, but..." from my lexicon. I embrace a lot of feminist ideals, aspirations and dreams. Its ok if I don't always agree with them, or don't embrace all of them. Yes, I'm a feminist and I think there is still a lot of work to be done for women, here and across the world.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extremely fun history book to read. Using a variety of sources including magazines, movies, music, advertisements, television, and newspapers, Susan Douglas analyzes how the media has depicted women from the 1950s through the early 90s. She places her analysis within the backdrop of larger events in women/gender history in the United States. This book shows how far women's role in American society has changed since the 1950s. I am in my early 20s and after reading this book I had a stronger respect for the Women's Rights Movement and a deeper understanding of how much women have accomplished. I could not imagine life in America as a women before the Women's Rights movement. I am a history student and this book is definitely one of my favorites and a good example of a creative use of sources to make an intelligent and fun historical analysis.

[erin cosens · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly witty and exhaustive in its research. this book is also very sophisticated in its unwillingness to paint one portrait of the media and its role in women's lives.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great fun. Studies images of women in popular culture, specifically on TV, and the way they reveal the advancing liberation of the women and girls of the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. Asks subtly whether the gals on TV made it possible for the rest of us to move forward, or the other way around.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review:

An easy, breezy, interesting read. Somewhat rambling. Lots of good insights about pop culture and mass media, particularly music groups and television shows. The tone can be a little sarcastic, which, for me, can get a little tiresome. Also can be a little too judgmental without being journalistic/objective. Very enjoyable, though, and englightening about the influences of women in media, from Mary Tyler Moore to Roseanne Barr and Madonna.

Quotable quotes:

1) "The moral is clear: you can work, but if you have a career and are really good at it, if you become 'a star,' you will diminish your man and suck the very lifeblood out of his manhood and sense of self-worth. It doesn't matter how much you love him, you simply can't defy the following law of nature: become a success, you castrate your man." (p. 59)

2) "And with the rise of the civil rights movement, which by 1962 and 1963 dominated the national news, black voices conveyed both a moral authority and a spirited hope for the future. These were the voices of exclusion, of hope for something better, of longing. They were not, like Annette or the Lennon Sisters, the voices of sexual repression, of social complacency, or of homogenized commercialism." (p. 95)

3) "The character we identified with, Samantha -- most frequently referred to by her masculine nickname, Sam -- was passive and active, flouted her husband's authority yet complied with the role of suburban housewife, was both conforming and rebellious: she gave expression to traditional norms and prefeminist aspirations." (p. 133) -- Regarding "Bewitched"

4) "The standards by which something was judged newsworthy were, in fact, deeply masculine. The emphasis on conflict in the public sphere, on crime, on dramatic public events rather than behind-the-scenes processes, on the individual rather than the group, and on competition rather than cooperation all biased the news toward masculine public enterprise." (p. 156)

5) "And while some stories were shockingly derisive, others were sympathetic. Many reports were ambivalent and confused, taking feminism seriously one minute, mocking it the next. In this way, the news media exacerbated quite keenly the profound cultural schizophrenia about women's place in society that had been building since the 1940s and 1950s." (p. 163)

6) "Mary used her voice to dramatize the ongoing struggle for women to speak their minds, even after the women's movement. As soon as she raised her voice, she muted it. It was as if her vocal chords alternated between femininity and feminism." (p. 206) -- Regarding "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"

7) "As the seasons passed, however, she became less concerned about sparing people's feelings and more assertive about protecting her independence -- all diplomatically, of course. The show, then, validated the struggle of many working women to make the workplace more humane, shaped as much by traditional 'female' values of nurturing, praise, and mutual support as by traditional 'male' values of cutthroat competition, criticism, and individualism." (p. 207)

8) "Given their power, it was critical that the women be hyperfeminized with large, gravity-defying breasts and perfectly souffleed hair." (p. 219) -- Regarding "Charlie's Angels" and Wonder Woman

9) "Because of her beauty, Steinem was able to smuggle radical critiques of the status of women into mainstream discourse and gradually get them discussed and even accepted." (p. 231)

10) "The zeitgeist of the last 1970s emphasized self-improvement and personal fulfillment over political reform and the betterment of the community. Best-selling advice books like 'The Managerial Woman, 'Dress for Success,' and 'When I Say No I Feel Guilty' stressed individual strategies for indivudal women -- usually more privileged women -- to get ahead." (p. 237)

11) "What too many of us forget is that the fitness movement began as a radical reaction against the degradation of food by huge conglomerates, and against the work routines and convenience technologies that encouraged us to be passive and sedentary. The organic health food movement was, initially, at its core, anticapitalist." (p. 260)

12) "What made these thighs desirable was that, while they were fat-free, like men's, they also resembled the thighs of adolescent girls. The ideal rump bore none of the marks of age, responsibility, work, or motherhood." (p. 262)

[Sean Xavier · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes you realize that all of the recent huffs over "feminism" and "feminazis" and "anti-feminism" are not just antiquated, they are older than dirt. Older than dirt and created by a "schizophrenic" mass media that feared the revolutionary wave of women's rights in the 1960s-1970s and how to both placate and demonize this new found freedom in half the population of the United States. This book is still relevant in 2014, and that is profoundly scary--especially as social networking has taken us out of fixed networks of knowledge and introduced us to the thinking patterns of everyone else on the planet. The idea that "anti-feminist" rhetoric exists in 15, 16 year-olds in this country speaks to how good mass media (specifically nightly news broadcasts) were in presenting a unified stereotype of the feminist as an evil enemy of the domestic sphere. As much as we have changed, we still got a long way to go.

Douglas inserts her own stories into Where the Girls Are, and it honestly makes the book much more accessible to a larger population. Above all else, it uses popular texts to show that we are a mixture of our surroundings, and that the individual (like feminism) is not a monolith but a cacophony of ideas and experiences that influence and inform the present moment.

[Debra Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Of course it doesn't hurt that I am a baby boomer just like the author. The book begins with the 1950s and the ideas of what women can and should be, and moves through each decade until the 1990s. I felt like I was reliving my life! I became a teenager in the late 60s, the early 1970s were my high school years and I lived through the feminist movement and the fight for the ERA. I grew up reading Betty Freidan, Kate Millet, Germaine Greer, and watching the movement unfold on TV, in Time and Newsweek, and in the newspapers. I watched the TV shows and commercials and related to the way women were portrayed in media, and the messages that young girls and women, then and now, receive from the media. I listened to all the music the author described, and I had the same hopes and dreams for myself and my daughter that the author did. This book is laugh out loud funny- the descriptions of how men portrayed women in their own words and her biting commentary about those descriptions are hilarious. This was an excellent overview of the Modern Women's movement through mass media and I think even younger women will enjoy this book. I know my daughter did, who was assigned this book in a Women's History Class at Syracuse, and recommended it to me. After all these years, I've finally read it, and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in women's history and popular culture. Terrific read for anyone who proudly calls herself a feminist, or for anyone who wants to understand why we all should be feminists.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media - Susan J. Douglas   
Picking it up to read in 2017, I quickly realize I have read this, lo, these many years ago. As I age it seems that everything reminds me of something similar in the past. I'm this case the thing it reminded me of was itself. It's still as good, but I don't feel like I need the refresher: I took the lessons very much to heart.
Library copy

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good feminist read for class. All about the duality of womanhood and the contradictions we face every day through the lens of the media landscape. While this book is directed toward baby boomers and some of the pop culture references were lost on me, I think it all still applies. I love liberal arts woo !

[dog meat · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot of the pop culture references went straight over my head, but i respect boomer feminists. being a woman is so fascinating and horrible. men need to be born in jail and earn their way out.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book is five star, probably the best take on how the pop culture of the 50s and 60s sent incredibly mixed messages to young women, their mothers and any males who might have been paying attention, which at the time wasn't many. Douglas does a wonderful job with the girl groups, who combined beautiful sound with a conversation that put young women, in all their confusion and contradiction, at the center. I learned a lot about the evolution of television shows from an earlier period which, while not feminist, provided space for Lucille Ball and others to subvert the containment era culture that was trying to put women back in confined spaces after the Rosie the Riveter period. Similarly, she casts shows like I Dream of Jennie and Bewitched in a different light than I'd seen them in before. The keynote of the 50s, 60s and early70s sections is the ways women were given images that were fundamentally impossible to reconcile, but that the tensions were ultimately creative.

The last half of the book isn't bad, but it's got some problems that are interesting to think about. One is that, while Douglas gives the standard lip service to "feminism isn't just for white women," after The Shirelles, she pays very little attention to African American and very close to no attention to "other" women's expression. That's a shame because Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Karyn White, Anita Baker, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Leslie Silko, Maxine Hong Kingston and many others illuminate the tensions she's talking about. Once she hits the late 70s, essentially when she was establishing her academic career, Douglas' world and methodology and, most importantly, perspective narrow. The final chapters are strongly (and appropriately) feminist, but they focus relatively narrowly in a way that make me think she's probably translating her academic research for a pop audience (which is something I do a lot of myself). Where the early sections are integrated, moving effortlessly back and forth between politics, movies, music, television, advs, the later chapters tend to fixate on, for instance, women in television news or particular ad campaigns. All of it's good, but it didn't bring things together for me. The book was published in the early 90s and I understand why she was pissed off, but too much of it takes on a sort of "us-them" vocabulary that was part of the problem.

All that relates to the problem of perspective. In the early sections, Douglas is writing as more or less a smart confused young woman reflecting on the world that shaped her. As she moves into the 70s and 80s, she continues to write as the same woman--someone growing up, reevaluating, coming to some conclusions (almost all of which I agree with). What's lost is any sense of what messages girls who grew up during the 70s and 80s were getting from the culture. Douglas provides a serviceable, though not really original, take on Madonna near the end, but she doesn't bring Madonna into dialog with, say, Prince or Janet Jackson all of whom were sending out different messages. As the father of two daughters, I recognized a lot of the struggles she wrote about, but she didn't take me to deeper levels of understanding as she did in the earlier parts.

Definitely worth reading, but if you've been paying attention to pop culture of the last three decades, you can probably stop reading halfway through without missing a lot.

[Victoria (hotcocoaandbooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was actually quite bored out of my mind while reading this (but I pushed through since a friend of mine sent it to me). I think the problem was that in the beginning of this book, most of what I was reading wasn't new to me at all and were things that even I grew up around, except for the fact that I was born in the early 1980s (but my mom is the same generation as this author, so I saw all the shows mentioned and heard all the music mentioned and knew a lot of the strife and joys of that time period, such as the fact that I have seen all the Gidget episodes and movies, etc.).

As the book continued, I just found a lot of hostility that the author had towards her mom. It was kinda odd to me that she kept ridiculing her when she raised her. Then there was a load of stuff about feminism during the late 60s and upward through the early 90s when this was written, I suppose. She just wrote what she saw on T.V. and read in articles and how it encouraged or discouraged her life. That part was okay to see what influence it had on a girl growing up when feminism was more of a new thing.

Susan Douglas goes into talking about the wonderful 1980s and the sickness that women had for being narcissistic and trying to look pleasurable to a man compared to how a decade earlier, more girls were "burning their bras". She was right. I thought this was quite true because you can see the emphasis there was on the body, especially the thighs and legs in loads of 80s movies. Sadly she wrote this book back before the emphasis went into implants on a more widespread way, but the gist of advertising that she touched up on was the same.

The end of this book showed more into her own life as a mom, and I liked reading more about her personal experiences than what she watched growing up and what influenced her. It gave more insight into her world. It was good she didn't dis motherhood and didn't dis working. . she was a side of feminism that I haven't seen (as I know many women who claim they are who don't believe in the family at all and hate the idea of being "tied down to a man and kids"). Although some of my points of views are a bit different from hers, I just felt she went on and on and on and on until this part of the book when I began to enjoy reading it (but it was the last 12 pages only)!

[Hailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Where the Girls Are, the reader is taken through the eras of feminism from the 1930s through the 1990s, and the effects of the media on each. The book uses the idea of the "double standards" faced by women to create a new, positive connotation of the word "feminism," and calls for equal rights and understanding of the difficulties faced by women. A focus on the mass media's role in feminism shows how deeply ingrained it is in every aspect of our lives.

In Where the Girls Are, we liked how for each chapter of the book, it went through a different perspective. She showed the readers how the feminism protest grew through out the years. She showed some modern day things that most of us new and could compare it too. And also helped the readers decide how they felt and what their beliefs are toward the subject.

Things we disliked about the book was some of the references they made. Some we did not know, and had to do more research to understand what she was getting at. And that then made it hard to understand what she was getting at.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written over thirteen years ago, but it's not really that dated, unfortunately! That is, Douglas's critiques of the media from the 50s to the early 90s are still relevant today. I read Faludi's Backlash way back when it came out (c. 1992), so this felt like a return visit in some ways, although Douglas very early on, while clearly agreeing with some of Faludi's analysis, states that she does not believe the media is all anti-feminist all the time nor does she believe that the backlash was new in the 80s. She proves her point with insightful commentary on media images of women, news coverage of 60s and 70s feminist movement events and protests, mixed messages sent by TV shows, etc. Well written overall, and witty in many places.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really funny and really interesting. While some may deem this subject matter trivial, it actually really does matter how the mass media is portraying women, especially in this day and age when our culture is so celebrity obesessed. How are women going to grow up empowered to change the world if all they get are images of weak, materialistic, know-nothing women? Susan J. Douglas's latest, Enlightened Sexism, appears to be an updated look at this topic. I'm looking forward to reading that book as well.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Douglas argues that the skewed perception of female roles through the mass media of the 1950's onward helped spawn the second wave feminist movement. I don't fully agree with her argument, but there are some great analyses in this book, particularly the chapter where she talks about the gender ideology of "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeanie" (it's much funnier than it sounds). The book was interesting, and Douglas is a pretty funny lady, but it's kind of dated at this point.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Douglas argues that the media has a profound affect on women and girls and that this affect needs to be examined. Through a discussion of movies, television shows, music, magazines, and news reporting she illustrates the way the media creates a dual-consciousness for women. The media encourages women to be strong and independent while demonizing those who step too far outside the traditional role. Overall, her argument is very compelling and she is hilarious! Definitely worth reading.

[Kate Ditzler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helped me articulate to my partner why I am often so conflicted and contradictory on issues of women's rights and what I want out of my own life. Mostly, I wanted to read this book before tackling her follow up, "Enlightened Sexism," of which I have already read the epilogue on the Bitch magazine blog.

[Hypatia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, an interesting read. Really, the book is aimed at baby boomers, and much of the analysis pertained to TV shows or movies I'm too young to have seen. Still, I found her writing style to be quite entertaining, and the last chapter (which deals with the 80s and 90s) is still fairly relevant today, sadly.

[Annebeth Bels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does an amazing job at taking you through the 20th century, discussing the relationship between gender, feminism and popular media. The writing is smart, witty, funny and relatable, and just as relevant today as it was in the 90s. Highly recommended to lovers of popular culture with a feminist inclination :-)

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was really meant for the baby boomer generation, and i did skip a few paragraphs where the author went on and on about some tv series i'd never heard of. all in all though, it was pretty interesting and i did learn quite a bit about the women's movement in relation to the media.

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

05/2014
A very enjoyable and readable book about female baby boomers and what the mass media said and did to them. So interesting. I'm a feminist and I also just love reading about zeitgeists and the significance of pop culture

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really insightful book about the various roles of women in the media during the second half of the past century.

Sometimes a little academic and dry, but on the whole, pretty eye-opening.

[Lindsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for a class and it was about as much fun as a text book. I find it hard to believe that the media ruins every woman's life.

[Spider the Doof Warrior · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this years ago. It's extremely interesting, but I don't understand why folks insist on being so SEXIST against women for ages. More later.

[Wes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good portrait of the impact of the media and how it's been used in our patriarchal capitalist society. Easy read, not academic.

[Cary O'Dell · Rating 1 out of 5]

A poorly researched assessment of women in media history, prunes away any facts to support its flimsy thesis of female oppression via television and other media.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough and interesting look at how women have been portrayed in pop culture over time

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book. More personal than most books than analyze things. It got pretty repetitive towards the end and was longer than it needed to be. Still worth reading though.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts of this book were a bit cumbersome with the summaries and lists of facts. Overall - An interesting journey through our views of women from the 1950s-1990s as reflected by movies &TV