The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization

Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies

by Alys Eve Weinbaum (Contributor), Lynn M. Thomas (Contributor), Priti Ramamurthy (Contributor)

During the 1920s and 1930s, in cities from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York, the Modern Girl made her sometimes flashy, always fashionable appearance in city streets and cafes, in films, advertisements, and illustrated magazines. Modern Girls wore sexy clothes and high heels; they applied lipstick and other cosmetics. Dressed in provocative attire and in hot pursuit of romantic love, Modern Girls appeared on the surface to disregard the prescribed roles of dutiful daughter, wife, and mother. Contemporaries debated whether the Modern Girl was looking for sexual, economic, or political emancipation, or whether she was little more than an image, a hollow product of the emerging global commodity culture. The contributors to this collection track the Modern Girl as she emerged as a global phenomenon in the interwar period.Scholars of history, women’s studies, literature, and cultural studies follow the Modern Girl around the world, analyzing her manifestations in Germany, Australia, China, Japan, France, India, the United States, Russia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Along the way, they demonstrate how the economic structures and cultural flows that shaped a particular form of modern femininity crossed national and imperial boundaries. In so doing, they highlight the gendered dynamics of interwar processes of racial formation, showing how images and ideas of the Modern Girl were used to shore up or critique nationalist and imperial agendas. A mix of collaborative and individually authored chapters, the volume concludes with commentaries by Kathy Peiss, Miriam Silverberg, and Timothy Burke.

Contributors: Davarian L. Baldwin, Tani E. Barlow, Timothy Burke, Liz Conor, Madeleine Yue Dong, Anne E. Gorsuch, Ruri Ito, Kathy Peiss, Uta G. Poiger, Priti Ramamurthy, Mary Louise Roberts, Barbara Sato, Miriam Silverberg, Lynn M. Thomas, Alys Eve Weinbaum

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Gender, Feminism, Academic, Grad School, Sociology

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays that highlight and talk about the phenomenon of the Modern Girl, New Woman, and how that looked around the world. There were a few minor points on which I felt an author might have been reading too much into an incident, but I overall loved this. It was interesting to see how different countries and cultures reacted to the Modern Girl in terms of working, her appearance in different cultures from the sitara to the Soviet factory worker, and how each place interpreted her presence and development. I'm oversimplifying for the sake of brevity here, but this is a really informative read.

[katie]

An interesting discussion of the Modern Girl as a figure contextualized by commodification, colonial powers, classism, and patriarchal influence.

"Commercial power usurped the reformist intellectual's guardianship of the modern woman" (Edwards).

[Teghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[rachael gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

So... In my further search for books about the history of flappers, I stumbled across this big, beautifully illustrated academic text.

Covering flappers, garconnes, mogus, and the many other breeds of 'modern girl' across the globe, I was thrilled that this book was not just a history of my favourite era, but also a good ol' feminist text.

We learn about every aspect of modern girl life, in chapters roughly divided by country. From Nazi propaganda in cosmetics adverts and race relations in Sourh Africa to inspiring business women and many fascinating case studies, I felt this book covered a huge range of topics really well. Nice and meaty but accessible enough that I could read it at 8am on the train, I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in women's history, feminism, flappers, advertising history... Great read.

[Benemint · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read some of the chapters. A useful introduction that clarifies how we should define and find the Modern Girl, and how different the phenomenon was from "westernization."