Rating: 
Summary: Unfair review by uniformed republican from Alabama
Review: I have read some of this book, and I know what writer Susan Douglas means when she talks about how the media unrealistically portrays women. Take, for example, today's commercials. Even though we are already in the 21st century, the commercials I see on TV look like they never left the 50s. Just about every commercial for food, baby, cleaning, and other products portrays women as wives and mothers. These commercials constantly say, "Moms know...", "Moms need...", or "Mama's got the magic...". These commercials give the impression that every woman out there is a wife and a mom. Needless to say, that's TV, not reality. Not every woman in real life is a mom or wife. Some, like me, are neither. In addition, a lot of us (even the married ones with kids) work outside the home. We women know what we're really like, and we don't buy those unrealistic images.
Rating:
Summary: Women Portrayed Unrealistically on TV
Review: I have read some of this book, and I know what writer Susan Douglas means when she talks about how the media unrealistically portrays women. Take, for example, today's commercials. Even though we are already in the 21st century, the commercials I see on TV look like they never left the 50s. Just about every commercial for food, baby, cleaning, and other products portrays women as wives and mothers. These commercials constantly say, "Moms know...", "Moms need...", or "Mama's got the magic...". These commercials give the impression that every woman out there is a wife and a mom. Needless to say, that's TV, not reality. Not every woman in real life is a mom or wife. Some, like me, are neither. In addition, a lot of us (even the married ones with kids) work outside the home. We women know what we're really like, and we don't buy those unrealistic images.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this with your mother!
Review: I picked this book up a couple of years ago, and it's become
one of my most recommended books to friends. Douglas writes
with both hilarity and authority on the interaction between
the women's life during the last few decades and the ways in
which the media has made its re-presentation. I read most of this book aloud to my mother. The laughter we shared
helped make the pangs of truth-realized a bit more bearable.
Rating:
Summary: Fun & Fabulous...you won't realize you're learning
Review: I spent countless hours reading books for my thesis. I read until my eyes felt like were going to fall out and I wanted to cry. And then my advisor told me to read *another* book. This one...and I felt revatalized afterwads.Douglas managed to make me laugh on the subway...and in Boston, you don't laugh on the subway when reading. I went around quoting her for weeks on end (and still do). And I was able to pull out of my thesis/senior slump. Why? Douglas portrays and relates the experiences of the american woman and her relationship (at times comfy, most often at odds) with the media. Relating her own experiences of seeing stay at home moms on tv and watching her mom go to work are only the beginning. She disects Disney with a rapier wit and keen vision. She points out that I dream of jeannie was not fluff, but subversive. She tells us "why the shirelles matter". Her book is mostly free of academese, and if you are neither a historian, nor a women's studies major you can easily understand what she's saying, which is often not the case. She's fun to read and she's brillant. Even if you're not of the baby boom generation (as I am not) or even if you're not a woman, you NEED to read this book. It's fun (first of all) and you'll never look at the tv you mindlessly ingest the same way again (or the magazines or the billboards or the....)
Rating:
Summary: Great to use if teaching gender psychology...
Review: I teach gender psychology to 12th graders and found that this was an enjoyable and thought provoking read. My only complaint is that it was a bit too much "fluff" and not enough true evidence and research.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of insightful fun!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is both a scholarly and fun read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in women's issues and/or sociological issues.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of insightful fun!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is both a scholarly and fun read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in women's issues and/or sociological issues.
Rating:
Summary: This book will change your perception of the feminist world.
Review: I was assigned this book in a gender studies class last year and am re-reading it, cover-to-cover, presently. If you are looking for a fascinating base of feminist theory and history, Susan J. Douglas's work is for you. She writes with a personal, fun voice, yet she really hits hard and makes some compelling arguments while presenting the history from the perspective of a baby boomer living it. I forget sometimes that she's writing all of this from a 90's perspective, some of it seems as if she's really living the drama of the 50's and 60's. A very quick read, and a true outlook changer. Highly recommended for anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Socialism disguised as feminism
Review: I'm not a member of Douglas' target audience. That much is obvious as soon as the book opens. Nevertheless, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I don't consider myself to be a sexist, though I wouldn't label myself a feminist, either. I'm sympathetic to some of the goals of the feminist movement: equal pay for equal work; non-discrimination in employment; basically, equal rights across the board. What Douglas advocates in her book, however, is not equal rights. It is special rights, and I believe that women like Douglas are the reason the feminist movement often gets such a bad rap. Government-funded child care, taxpayer-supported abortions, national health insurance, Social Security for homemakers, and many other socialist policies are proposed as solutions to what were predominantly cultural issues, not legal impediments to equality (though I'm not denying that they existed, and still exist in some cases today). She often uses her book to make ad hominem attacks against anyone further right on the political spectrum than Ted Kennedy, at one point calling Walt Disney a "right-wing reactionary" for his support of Barry Goldwater in 1964. She further declares that Richard Nixon's election in 1968 convinced her that "America was not a democracy at all" and that "the status quo was inhumane and monstrous." She uses her book as a forum to protest the Vietnam war, lend support to black radicalism, and basically do anything she can to distract attention from the fact that the feminist movement was extremely radical and that perhaps the ERA went down to defeat because people truly did understand what was at stake and chose to reject it. As for the main subject matter of this book, any movie, TV show, or song which did not depict women getting the best of men had deleterious effects on the female psyche and made her feel worthless as a person. The most absurd moment, for me, came when Douglas felt the need to refer to all sorts of phallic symbols in various westerns. I'm sorry if it offends her, but the cowboys' "shiny metal oblongs" were not designed to oppress women, they were designed to shoot small oblongs at other cowboys with oblongs. It's one thing to see a sexist message in I Dream of Jeannie; it's quite something else to be pig-headed for its own sake. Douglas' failure to remain objective makes this book an unenjoyable read for anyone whose politics are not those of the extreme left. ...
Rating:
Summary: Socialism disguised as feminism
Review: I'm not a member of Douglas' target audience. That much is obvious as soon as the book opens. Nevertheless, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I don't consider myself to be a sexist, though I wouldn't label myself a feminist, either. I'm sympathetic to some of the goals of the feminist movement: equal pay for equal work; non-discrimination in employment; basically, equal rights across the board. What Douglas advocates in her book, however, is not equal rights. It is special rights, and I believe that women like Douglas are the reason the feminist movement often gets such a bad rap. Government-funded child care, taxpayer-supported abortions, national health insurance, Social Security for homemakers, and many other socialist policies are proposed as solutions to what were predominantly cultural issues, not legal impediments to equality (though I'm not denying that they existed, and still exist in some cases today). She often uses her book to make ad hominem attacks against anyone further right on the political spectrum than Ted Kennedy, at one point calling Walt Disney a "right-wing reactionary" for his support of Barry Goldwater in 1964. She further declares that Richard Nixon's election in 1968 convinced her that "America was not a democracy at all" and that "the status quo was inhumane and monstrous." She uses her book as a forum to protest the Vietnam war, lend support to black radicalism, and basically do anything she can to distract attention from the fact that the feminist movement was extremely radical and that perhaps the ERA went down to defeat because people truly did understand what was at stake and chose to reject it. As for the main subject matter of this book, any movie, TV show, or song which did not depict women getting the best of men had deleterious effects on the female psyche and made her feel worthless as a person. The most absurd moment, for me, came when Douglas felt the need to refer to all sorts of phallic symbols in various westerns. I'm sorry if it offends her, but the cowboys' "shiny metal oblongs" were not designed to oppress women, they were designed to shoot small oblongs at other cowboys with oblongs. It's one thing to see a sexist message in I Dream of Jeannie; it's quite something else to be pig-headed for its own sake. Douglas' failure to remain objective makes this book an unenjoyable read for anyone whose politics are not those of the extreme left. ...
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