Why read The Spectacular Modern Woman?

Book cover of The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s

Book description

In The Spectacular Modern Woman, Liz Conor illustrates how technological advances in image reproduction transformed Western industrial societies into visual or "ocularcentric" cultures with significant and complex consequences for women's lives. With the rise of mass media, photography, and movies, a woman's visibility became a mark of her modernity, and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Spectacular Modern Woman as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tracey Jean Boisseau

Author

This might be my favorite history book, period. Conor explains how “modern womanhood” in Australia came into being and was marked by the successful managing of one’s (sexualized and objectified) public appearance, including the way “primitive woman” (aboriginal or black) was constructed as a colonialist foil for the modern (white) Australian woman—whether she was a “screen-struck” movie fan, beauty contestant, or flapper. This book makes clear how women, as the principal focus of a newly visual mass media, came to define their “liberation” in sexual as well as racial and nationalist terms.

From Tracey's list on The best books on the history of feminism and imperialism.