Vanity: 21st Century Selves (Hardcover)

It has become something of a cliche that Western culture is obsessed with celebrity, glamour, and the opportunities ordinary people are now given (reality television, social networking sites, blogging) to become famous. These new engagements between fame and obscurity have been accompanied by energetic debates about the self, image and vanity. Similar debates are also underway in a domain apparently quite different from this digital realm - the corporeal domain of health, fitness, beauty and anti-ageing. Vanity, it seems, can account for both our least and most bodily modes of making the self. Despite these growing areas of debate, little or no sociological or cultural studies research on vanity has been conducted to date. This book sets out to remedy this. Exploring a range of sites of social and cultural production - from Helen Mirren's red bikini to The Biggest Loser reality weight loss show, from suffragists to Viagra, from anti-ageing medicine to Facebook - the book takes an engaging, sophisticated and wide-ranging look at new ideas and practices of vanity. How are contemporary subjects to cope with concurrent pressures both towards self-absorption and away from it? Taking an explicitly gendered approach to these questions, Vanity: 21st Century Selves conducts a broad analysis of a key concept shaping contemporary Western societies and their ways of understanding the self.

General

Imprint:	Palgrave Macmillan
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	February 2013
First published:	2013
Authors:	C. Tanner • J. Maher • S. Fraser
Dimensions:	216 x 140 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	210
ISBN-13:	978-0-230-27218-7
Categories:	Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Media studies Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Gender studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore > Costume, clothes & fashion
LSN:	0-230-27218-5
Barcode:	9780230272187

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!