Appearance Of Women Research Articles

Women before the Qādī under the Abbasids

AbstractIn this article, I examine the appearance of Muslim women before the judge during the Abbasid period (132-334/750-945), both in theory and practice. The cases involving women found in law books suggest that they came freely to the court, especially for familial or marital purposes, and that the judges employed some women as court auxiliaries. However, a comparison of judicial manuals and the biographical literature shows that a woman's appearance before the judge could create a social disturbance and that not all women were allowed to appear in court. I argue that the social distinction between those who could leave their houses—and thus come before the judge—and those who could not correlated with the social hierarchy.

Understanding the Process: How Mediated and Peer Norms Affect Young Women's Body Esteem

This study examined the contribution of interpersonal and mediated perceived norms to young women's body esteem among first-year college women. In addition, we examined the role of social comparison as a mediator for the relationship between norms and body esteem. Several findings were notable. First, interpersonal norms do have a significant relationship with esteem. Young women who perceived that their peers and parents to valued thinness, and that parents made comments about body appearance, had lower body esteem. In addition, mediated norms also were related to lower appearance and weight esteem. Specifically, exposure to fashion, celebrity and fitness magazines had a negative effect on young women's appearance esteem; however, this relationship was mediated by social comparison, suggesting that comparison is the mechanism by which esteem is lowered. However, for fitness magazines, the relationship between exposure and esteem was direct and held up even when social comparison was controlled for.

Literature, Politics, and Character

Literature, Politics, and Character Oliver Conolly and Bashshar Haydar What is the relationship between literature and politics? We might interpret this question in terms of causality. For example, we might ask whether literature has any effects in the world of politics and if so how. Auden famously proclaimed that poetry makes nothing happen, while it was central to Brecht's dramaturgy that theatre has certain political effects on its audience. Conversely, we might see literature as an effect of political causes and claim that certain political environments give rise to certain types of literature, and that those political backgrounds thereby explain certain aspects of literary phenomena. Both kinds of causal relationship are at the heart of Marxist literary criticism, and of the many schools of academic criticism which share the Marxist assumption that individual consciousness, and its literary manifestations, are subordinate to political environment. These causal questions are important and interesting, particularly if approached with requisite critical tact. However, in this paper we would like to focus on the epistemological and normative questions of whether literature is suited to communicate political knowledge or insights, and whether we value, or rather ought to value, literature for such communication. These two questions are in our view intimately related. While there is no doubt that literary works can be made to communicate virtually all kinds of knowledge, from knowledge about the Big Bang to knowledge how to smuggle illegal immigrants into First World countries, these kinds of knowledge are not what we go to literature for. We go to literature and value it for giving us knowledge which it is peculiarly suited to communicate. It is natural to praise a novel for its insight into, say, character but odd to praise a novel for its [End Page 87] insight into, say, meteorology. This is because literature is suited at communicating insights into character, and is not suited at communicating insights into meteorology. The suitability of literature to explore the inner life derives from the expressive and imaginative possibilities inherent in the very medium of literature. For example, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady reveals the inner logic (or psychologic) that underlies the self-destructive behavior of its heroine, Isabel Archer, her disastrous choice of husband being dictated by a desire to prove a point to herself—that she is indifferent to his poverty relative to that of the other suitors—rather than an informed sense of her true interests.1 This is not to say that literature is the only medium in which insight into character can be communicated, but that this is one of the kinds of insight which literature is suited at communicating. The question of whether literature is suited to impart political insights is thus determinative of the question of whether its doing so counts towards its value as literature.2 This is the question to which we now turn. I The question of whether literature is suited to impart political insights presupposes an understanding of the scope of the political, and the kinds of phenomena that can properly be called political. The scope of the political can be conceived more or less broadly. The narrow view is that politics is concerned with the nature and legitimacy of the state, government, legal and other coercive institutions. The broad view is that politics is concerned with power relations between social groups that are mediated not through institutions but through attitudes. The distinction can be illustrated with reference to two kinds of feminist argument. Feminist arguments for laws on sex discrimination and equal pay, and their proper implementation, are political in the narrow sense. However, feminists may also argue, irrespective of such institutional changes, that social attitudes towards women—the attitudes of a given society, including those of women—should be changed in certain ways. For example, a generally held view that emphasizes the importance of women's appearance, their role as adjuncts to their husbands—the kinds of views that were prevalent in the 1950's, say—is open to challenge by feminists outside a narrow institutional framework. The reason this [End Page 88] stance is political is that it concerns systemic attitudes which underpin power relations between one group...

"I take the good with the bad, and I moisturize"

To examine how women in their 40s understand "middle age" in the context of sociocultural ideas about the life course. In-depth interviews were conducted with a subset of 53 volunteers (19 European American, 17 African American, and 17 Latina) from a community-based longitudinal study of premenopausal women between 40 and 48 years of age living in the San Francisco Bay area. Qualitative analysis of the interview showed that women in their 40s are less concerned about menopause and more concerned about their health, well-being, and appearance. This trend was seen across ethnic groups. Menopause was not a prominent feature in the narratives that these women told about middle age. Whereas menopause was understood as a natural event that was out of women's control, health and appearance were deemed as something that women can and should control. By taking care of themselves, the women felt that they were able to act and look younger, thereby challenging what middle age means. These women articulated a perspective about middle age as less about a chronological number and more about individual responsibility and control of one's well-being. Scholarly attention has continued to focus on menopause itself as a phenomenon and thereby fails to engage in how the meaning of middle age may be in a process of reconceptualization.

중국 여대생의 외모관리 특성과 의복구매행동

The purpose of this study was to identify Chinese university women's appearance management characteristics and clothing purchasing behavior. A self-administered questionnaire was used. Research period was 15th - 30th March. Frequencies, percent, factor analysis, cluster analysis, ANOVA, chi-square test were done. The results of study were: 1. The factors of appearance management characteristics were food management, skin care, weight control & tooth correction, nail & hair care, and use of identity kits. The factors of clothing selection criteria were outlook & appropriateness, management & service, fashion & brand, and individuality & price, and factors of information resources were marketer oriented & neutral and consumer oriented & store. 2. Chinese university women were segmented into positive appearance management group, food & skin management group, nail care & identity kits using group, and appearance management stagnated group. Positive appearance management group selected their clothing to pursuit individuality & relaxation, fashion, and conformity, considered fashion or brands more, used various information sources. Food & skin management group purchased their clothing for conformity. Nail care & identity kits using group considered management & service of clothing more, utilized consumer oriented & store information more. 3. Positive appearance management group were younger, and spent more pocket money and for their appearances. Food & skin management group were older, but nail care & identity kits using group were older. Appearance stagnated group spent less pocket money and appearance management.

Gender and Medieval Drama by Katie Normington

200 Reviews of theAlfredian frame of The Proverbs ofAlfred and its setting at Seaford, a place with known Alfredian links.The Anglo-Saxon interesthere isclear enough, although largely in the form of commonplace sententiae hardly out of place in anymedieval work. The next three chapters deal with ideas of time,place, identity,and the law in Guy ofWarwick, Beues ofHamtoun, Havelok the Dane, and Horn Childe andMaiden Rimnild. The last, perhaps rather incongruously, traces similar themes in some late medieval and earlymodern descriptions of Winchester. The titleof the book does not prepare the reader for these shiftsof genre. The argument that these romances -specially those of theAuchinleck Manu script: Guy ofWarwick, Beues of Hamtoun, Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild construct for their readers (on the basis of theAnglo-Saxon past) a coherent sense of Englishness which iswhite and Christian, notably by contrast with thepagan and dastardly Saracens ofGuy ofWarwick (Chapter 4), is fineas faras itgoes, but suffers frombeing limited only to these texts. Someone who had also read La3amon's Brut (excluded from this study for no obvious reason), inwhich the Saxons are pagan and the enemy of theChristian Arthur, would surely experience a crisis of identity. And Sir Orfeo, also inAuchinleck, whose story is set inEngland inThrace (which, we are assured, was what Winchester was then called) but in a poem composed 'in Bretayne' for 'Bretouns', cheerfully jumbles identities in a gallimaufry. The striking and long-standing ambivalence among theEnglish about whether we are English or British or both begins in thisperiod and surelymerits attention in any chapter called 'The Romance ofEnglish Identity' (p. 70). Although these romances are set (at least in some part) inEngland and in thepast, it is clear that their authors knew nothing, or almost nothing, about Anglo-Saxon England. They do not use and would probably not have recognized thephrase. They have heard of King Edgar and King zEthelstan;Winchester, so important in the Anglo-Saxon period, retains forsome of them a symbolic significance outweighing its political position in the later Middle Ages; theyhave a sense that all that isgood about English law (some ofwhich happens tobe Anglo-Saxon inorigin)must be ancient; and a greatly romanticized version of thebattle ofBrunanburh complete with obligatory giant crops up inGuy ofWarwick as just one of themany sensational events of thatnarrative. And that is about it. So it is rather surprising that the author insists throughout that this popular myth of old England isproperly to be termed 'Anglo Saxon' and also that the Matter ofEngland romances provide thebest evidence with which to refuteScragg. There is much that isof interest inRouse's exploration here of myth, particularly of place, which would have flourished betterwithout the specious implications ofAnglo-Saxonism. Or, alternatively, if Rouse really did want toengage with Scragg's position, then themany Latin chronicles written in England from the twelfthcentury onwards (byWilliam ofMalmesbury, Geoffrey ofMonmouth, Florence ofWorcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham, etc.) provide plentiful evidence of scholarly knowledge of thehistory of theAnglo-Saxon period. But one should not perhaps be too critical: this is the book of the thesis. It shares some of the failings of its type,but, at least, itdoes have ideas. NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD MARK GRIFFITH Gender andMedieval Drama. By KATIE NORMINGTON. Cambridge: Brewer. 2004. iX+ I58 pp. ?4o. ISBN 978-I-8438-4027-5. This is an informativemonograph that (partly) fills a serious gap. No other book length study deals with women-the 'gender' of the title and their representation within theentire range of latemedieval English dramatic textsand practices. Building MLR, I02.I, 2007 201 on important gender-based readings byTheresa Coletti, Kathleen Ashley, and others, it argues that 'there are three direct ways inwhich women shaped, or were shaped by, theCorpus Christi cycles: through their discourse [sic] as spectators; by their assistance with the production of the pageants; and last, through visual signals cre ated both by the appearance ofwomen characters on stage and the semiotics of stage production' (p. 3). These are broad and ambitious targets, and it is not surprising that in such a relatively short book Katie Normington isnot able todo justice toall of them. But she does a good job of synthesizing a great deal of...

The Academic Conference and the Status of Women: The Annual Meetings of the Israeli Geographical Society*

The academic conference, a site of possible changes in professional knowledge and hierarchy, is an area of academic life rarely studied. Through three main concerns this article illuminates this point for the first time with respect to the status of women and gender research at the last thirty-two annual meetings of the Israeli Geographical Society. First, although men still present the majority of the conference papers, women have increased their share and now constitute one-third of all active participants. Second, women's appearance as chairs of sessions and keynote speakers is significantly lower in proportion to their overall participation in the conference, and they are consistently more involved in its less prestigious aspects. Third, the production of geographic knowledge as reflected in conference papers is gendered, but its pattern differs from that in academia in general. The findings reveal a new facet of the gendered construction of academic life in general, and of Israeli geography in particular, and offer new avenues to revealing the impact of social exclusion on academia.

Futebol é "coisa para macho"?: Pequeno esboço para uma história das mulheres no país do futebol

Um dos aspectos menos conhecidos da história do futebol no Brasil diz respeito à inserção da mulher nesse universo eminentemente masculino. Diante de tal lacuna, este artigo propõe-se a apresentar e analisar as leituras sobre a presença do sexo feminino dentro e fora dos gramados durante a primeira metade do século XX, momento decisivo para a construção da idéia e da identidade do "país do futebol". Pretende-se, assim, discutir as formas de integração ao jogo "permitidas" às mulheres, suas manifestações proibidas e, sobretudo, os significados encerrados em tais permissões e proibições.

The Body Stripped Down

According to terror management theory, cultural beliefs and standards provide protection from fears associated with mortality by convincing individuals that their existence matters more than that of any mere mortal animal. The body threatens the efficacy of such mechanisms by reminding us that we are animals nonetheless, and therefore fated to death. I present research demonstrating that existential concerns contribute to uneasiness with the body, especially regarding sex, and also to pervasive concerns with how the body measures up to cultural standards, most obviously regarding women's appearance. These findings show that in effort to defend against threats associated with the body's physicality, people may deny themselves pleasure and endanger their health.

Media-portrayed idealized images, body shame, and appearance anxiety

This study was designed to determine the effects of media-portrayed idealized images on young women's body shame and appearance anxiety, and to establish whether the effects depend on advertisement type and on participant self-objectification. Participants were 39 female university students. Twenty-four magazine advertisements comprised 12 body-related and 12 non-body-related products, one half of each with, and the other one half without, idealized images. Preexposure and post exposure body shame and appearance anxiety measures were recorded. Appearance anxiety increased after viewing advertisements featuring idealized images. There was also a significant interaction between self-objectification level and idealized body (presence vs. absence). No differences emerged for body-related compared with non-body-related product advertisements. The only result for body shame was a main effect for time. Participants' body shame increased after exposure to idealized images, irrespective of advertisement type. Although our findings reveal that media-portrayed idealized images detrimentally affect the body image of young women, they highlight the individual differences in vulnerability and the different effects for different components of body image. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the prevention and early intervention of body image and dieting-related disorders. (

Lesbian Body Image and Eating Issues

SUMMARY Research on body-image dissatisfaction and eating issues has emphasized the impact of culture's obsession on women's appearance. This paper reviews a study that examined body image issues, eating behavior, and identification with sexual identity in a sexually diverse sample that included lesbians (n = 47), heterosexual women (n = 47), and gay men (n = 51). The degree to which women identified as lesbian did not influence their body satisfaction or eating issues. However, lesbians were less invested in their appearance and less involved in maintaining it than heterosexual women or gay men. Further, lesbians were less concerned with dieting and thinness than the two other groups. The lesbian community may be less concerned with dieting and thinness than heterosexual women. Implications of findings are discussed.

Rheumatic disease in the Australian Aborigine of Cape York Peninsula: a 1965 study

AbstractAim: To study the prevalence of rheumatic disorders in two Aboriginal populations on the western coast of Cape York Peninsula.Methods: Physical and radiological examination of 217 adult Aborigines at Aurukun Aboriginal Mission and 71 Aboriginal adults at Weipa Mission. The study was performed in October 1965.Results: Mild to moderate degenerative arthritis was not uncommon in the populations examined. However, generalised or nodal osteoarthritis was not seen. One young woman had definite sero‐positive rheumatoid arthritis. This woman's appearance suggested some Torres Strait Islander influence. No case of gouty arthritis or classical ankylosing spondylitis was encountered. An incidental finding of retrospective interest was that the calculated body mass index showed that the majority of adults were underweight by Caucasian standards.Conclusions: These findings are of historic interest given the health impacts of social, cultural and environmental circumstances of Aborigines currently reported.

Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Daily Newspaper Comics: A Time-Honored Tradition?

This study was designed to examine gender and minority roles in daily newspaper comics. Fifty comics from four daily newspapers were sampled during a month-long period. Gender roles were found to be stereotypical; women were underrepresented, more likely than men to be married and have children, and not as likely as men to have a job. More attention was paid to women's appearance, and female characters, when they did work, had lower job status than did male characters. Activities and behaviors were also divided along gender lines. Female characters did more of the domestic work such as child care and household chores, and male characters did more yard work. Female characters were more verbally aggressive, and most of the physical aggression was confined to “adult dramas” where men dominated. Minorities were basically nonexistent, save for a few strips that included or focused upon African Americans.

Exploring Feminist Women's Body Consciousness

In a qualitative investigation of young feminists' experience of body consciousness, 25 feminist women each participated in one of 6 focus groups examining the ways they experienced body image and negotiated cultural messages about women's appearance. Participants described their experience with objectification and its impact on their body image, sense of self, and relationships with other women. Although feminism provided an alternative way to understand cultural messages and reframe negative thoughts, this understanding did not necessarily affect aesthetic reactions. Participants experienced conflict between their feminist beliefs and their feelings about beauty ideals and their own appearance. This conflict is interpreted in terms of a mere exposure effect and existing gender/power relations. Suggestions of ways feminist psychologists can support young women's strategies for resisting negative cultural messages are provided.

Womans body as a color measuring text: A signification of Bengali culture

White and Black are the most frequently used colors that have dierent types of signification to human beings in terms of getting positive or nega- tive response. Among the color hierarchy, black, the darkest color from its absorption of all lights, always denotes some denial approaches to all as- pects in all societies because human beings believe that black usually eclipses all kinds of positive entities like daytime, virtue, light, etc. On the contrary, white, the lightest color from its reflection of all visible rays of light is treated as the symbol of sacredness, purity, innocence, honesty, power, etc., all over the world. These two concepts of cultural artifacts are applied to describe the human body, especially women's appearance in the Bengali community. Bengali ethnoculture, the most complex mechanism of a hier- archical structure of human ethnicity, gives social priority to man over woman and recognizes the woman entity only from the point of view of skin color. Hence, as a living text, the black color of a woman's body usually creates typical negative signification in the society, and the white color of a woman's skin semiosises conversely. As a result, Bengali people have already invented lots of 'secondary modeling systems' and introduced some beliefs of good and bad values in the society as the reflection of color dis- crimination of a woman's body that is considered a 'primary modeling system'. This article provides a brief discussion of the ethnosemiotics of Bengali culture from the point of view of color discrimination regarding women's bodies by giving emphasis to values and color concepts of Bengali people and examples of some cultural artifacts concerning prejudicial treatment on color behavior of society. Culture is a highly ambiguous phenomenon when it is defined as a 'way of life' or 'activities of human beings' because all human beings of the world from time immemorial bear the same feelings and the same basic

Body Image, Appearance Self‐Schema, and Media Images

This study examines the effects of women's appearance self‐schemas and exposure to attractive media images on body image, self‐esteem, and mood. Women's response to media images was expected to vary according to an individual difference variable, appearance self‐schema, or cognitive representations of organized information about the self in relation to appearance. College women volunteers (N = 168) were divided into two groups (schematic and aschematic) on the basis of appearance self‐schema; half of each group was exposed to photos of attractive images, whereas the other half was not exposed to any images before completing measures of body image, self‐esteem, and mood. Women who are schematic on appearance exhibited lower body image, lower self‐esteem, and more negative mood than did those who are aschematic on appearance. Neither exposure to media images in conjunction with appearance self‐schema nor exposure alone affected response on body image, self‐esteem, and mood.

Overcoming ambivalence: the challenges of exploring socially charged issues.

In this article, the author considers the challenges associated with the investigation of sensitive and socially charged issues. Drawing on a qualitative study of older women's body image and embodied experience, she discusses how societal ambivalence toward older women's bodies and appearances shapes and constrains the establishment of rapport between a young researcher and the study participants. Exploring the internalized anxiety expressed by the women, she investigates how life history narratives, multiple interviews, photographs, location of the interview, self-disclosure, information sharing, provision of assistance, student and stranger statuses, collaborative interviewing, and impression management combine to enhance rapport and ease the women's sense of discomfort.

“bumps and boobs”: fatness and women's experiences of pregnancy

The primacy of women's physical appearance in the modern Western world is well documented within the literature, but it is assumed that this is no longer significant during pregnancy. In this paper, I will argue that this supposition is based on scant empirical evidence and suggest that the reverse may be true. This paper is based on a qualitative research study, which draws on 40 in-depth interviews with 19 pregnant women in the West Midlands, UK. It explores their perceptions of fatness, weight, and body shape during pregnancy, and explores the extent to which their concerns reflect either a resistance to the asexualisation of the pregnant body or the continued oppression of women's embodiment. The paper concludes by arguing that pregnant women adopt a pragmatic approach of both selective resistance to asexualisation and selective compliance with the pressure to be slim.

Gender orientations to outward appearance in Japanese conversation: a study in grammar and interaction

This article employs `grammar and interaction' — a new strand of conversation analysis — to contribute to the debate concerning the utility of conversation analysis for feminist research by exploring methods for making gender orientations accessible for analysis. We examine mixed-sex conversations in Japanese, in which participants discuss each other's outward appearance in general, and body weight in particular. We propose that certain `breaches' of conversational organization can usefully be explained in terms of a possibly competing, normative `gender constraint' involving orientations towards a man's expanded rights to topicalize, assess, demand and dictate standards of women's outward appearance. It is further suggested that this constraint may cut across a plethora of rudimentary organizations of conversation. The proposed constraint is shown to be oriented to or resisted by participants through the contingent mobilization of grammatical, prosodic and semantic resources to constitute themselves and others as `men' or `women' vis-à-vis this constraint.

Linking Femininity, Weight Concern, and Mental Health Among Latina, Black, and White Women

Studies examining women's appearance ideals and weight concern have predominantly relied on samples of White women. This study addresses this oversight, examining the different relations among embodied femininity, weight concern, and depressive symptomatology that exist for different groups of women. Using a nationally representative sample of women between the ages of 18 and 45, bivariate analyses were conducted using three samples of Latina, Black, and White women. When sample size allowed, a multivariate model was tested (i.e., for Black and White respondents). Results confirm, as hypothesized, different patterns of relations between embodied femininity, weight concern, and depressive symptomatology for each of the samples. At the bivariate level, embodied femininity, weight concern, and depressive symptomatology were positively intercorrelated among Latina respondents. Whereas weight concern fully mediated the relation between embodied femininity and depressive symptomatology for the White respondents, the mediational model was not borne out for the Black respondents. For the latter, although embodied femininity and weight concern were related, weight concern was unrelated to depressive symptoms. Both of these patterns are discussed, as well as the need for greater empirical sensitivity to various constructions of femininity among women of different ethnicities.