Beauty and appearance play a pervasive role in our culture, argues Nancy Friday. Here, the author of the groundbreaking and controversial bestseller My Secret Garden delves into beauty's influence on popular media and the psyche of modern women.
Combining in-depth cultural analysis with personal anecdotes, sexology, and individual case studies, Nancy Friday explores the dissatisfaction women feel about their bodies--and how it affects their sexual freedom. Her analysis is broad-reaching, examining how popular culture, advertising, stereotypes of women in the workplace, the sexual liberation of the 1960's, and the interdynamics of family relationships put pressure on women to live up to an impossible feminine ideal
First published in 1973, My Secret Garden ignited a firestorm of reactions across the nation--from outrage to enthusiastic support. Collected from detailed personal interviews with hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds, this book presents a bracingly honest account of women's inner sexual fantasy lives. In its time, this book shattered taboos and opened up a conversation about the landscape of feminine desire in a way that was unprecedented.
Today, My Secret Garden remains one of the most iconic works of feminist literature of our time--and is still relevant to millions of women throughout the world.
Nancy Friday's groundbreaking books My Secret Garden and Forbidden Flowers offered an unprecedentedly detailed and honest look at the inner fantasy lives of ordinary women. In Women on Top, Friday returns to this topic, collecting detailed sexual fantasies from over 150 contemporary women from diverse backgrounds. Based on intimate personal interviews and letters, this book updates the conversation opened in her earlier works on women's sexual fantasies, detailing how women's erotic lives have changed over the past few decades--and remained the same.
Nancy Friday's seminal works exploring female sexual fantasy have shattered taboos, exposed hidden desires, and opened up a conversation on women and sex that continues to be relevant today.