Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Irish Examiner
Girls behave badly. If they're not obscenity-shouting, pint-swigging ladettes, they're narcissistic, living dolls floating around in a cloud of self-obsession, far too busy twerking to care. And this is news.
In this witty and wonderful book, Carol Dyhouse shows that where there's a social scandal or a wave of moral outrage, you can bet a girl is to blame. Whether it be stories of 'brazen flappers' staying out and up all night in the 1920s, inappropriate places for Mars bars in the 1960s or Courtney Love's mere existence in the 1990s, bad girls have been a mass-media staple for more than a century. And yet, despite the continued obsession with their perceived faults and blatant disobedience, girls are infinitely better off today than they were a century ago.
This is the story of the challenges and opportunities faced by young women growing up in the swirl of the twentieth century, and the pop-hysteria that continues to accompany their progress.
Professor Carol Dyhouse
Carol Dyhouse is a social historian. Her research has focused on gender, education and the pattern of women's lives in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. Her books include Girls Growing Up in late Victorian and Edwardian England (1981); Feminism and the Family in England, 1890-1939, (1989); No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities (1995); and Students: A Gendered History (2006). An interest in clothing and material culture, and the ways in which these relate to changing ideas about femininity, led to work on the subject of glamour, its controversial status within feminism, and its meanings to women in history. Carol Dyhouse is currently a Research Professor in History at the University of Sussex.
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Reviews for Girl Trouble
4 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dyhouse tells the history of the attitudes towards young women as well as the feminism in general. By focusing on the concern for young women and their effect on society, Dyhouse offers a slant that's a little different from most histories of feminism. She seems to be a pro-feminist author, but her viewpoint is subtle and not the focus of the book. Most of the history is presented from an informational view with explorations of the different social factors feeding into the views of women.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was excited to get this book through Early Reviewers - a look at the history of young women in the past century or so? Yes, please! Dyhouse is a British social historian, so it was also interesting to look at the progress made by girls & women from a slightly different perspective. Having read a lot about women's history, a lot of this was familiar to me, still it was an interesting read and Dyhouse did a good job both providing a broad overview and interesting anecdotes. I bet she's a great teacher!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girl Trouble by Carol Dyhouse covers a wide swath of history of the Women's Movement as it pertains to girls and young women in England. She starts at a time when people claimed the death of a female student from tuberculosis "was caused by over-education" and ends at the present when young women are out-performing young men at university. I was very interested in this book, but ultimately found myself a little disappointed. The scope of the book sounds focused, but when you think about it, it really is taking on a huge subject matter. She starts with education and the perception and role of women. She discusses sexual violence towards women, real versus overblown, and the stifling effects of protection. It covers the war economy, the shift from women who would marry to women who could not marry because so many men had been killed in the trenches. Then we get to Marianne Faithful, the sexual revolution, pornography, Kate Moss, body image. This book covered so many topics that ultimately I felt like I'd been slipping around in a bunch of interesting facts, unable to put them together. I would've been happier if the book had taken an even narrower focus, such as the progress of women in regards to education.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Girl Trouble looks at the history of feminism in Britain and the backlash women and girls faced as they gained more independence. From the late-Victorian era to modern times, the author explores the various moral panics and cultural backlashes that have sprung up in reaction to female independence. The book is well-paced, informative, and interesting. It offers an interesting look at the obstacles girls have faced over time, even as they gain new freedoms.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Controlling the behavior of girls and young women has been the concern of societies from the beginning of recorded history, and this entertaining social history of British women in the 20th Century demonstrates that despite giant strides that women have have made in the past 100 years, there are still biases and prejudices that die hard.Told with illustrative examples from popular literature, films and television. This book is an easy fascinating read. It's interesting to see the parllel tracks that the fight for women's right has tken in both the US and in Britain.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. Girl Trouble is a very thoroughly researched history of women's behavior and the perception of women dating from the late 19th century to the present day. The author touches on topics such as promiscuity, sexual violence, education, and body image. I felt as though the book takes topics generally addressed academically in women's studies courses and presents it well to a non-academic audience. Very interesting, well researched, and yet not at all difficult to read.