New York Times Bestseller - An NPR Best Book of the Year “Sharp and prescient… The appeal of Valenti’s memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it…Sex Object is an antidote to the fun and flirty feminism of selfies and self-help.” — New Republic Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation. In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, this literary memoir is sure to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work and enthrall those who are just finding it.

The declaration that a work of art is “about sex” is often announced to the public as a scandal after which there is nothing else to say about the work or the artist-controversy concludes a conversation when instead it should begin a new one. Moving beyond debates about pornography and censorship, Jennifer Doyle shows us that sex in art is as diverse as sex in everyday life: exciting, ordinary, emotional, traumatic, embarrassing, funny, even profoundly boring. Sex Objects examines the reception and frequent misunderstanding of highly sexualized images, words, and performances. In chapters on the “boring parts” of Moby-Dick, the scandals that dogged the painter Thomas Eakins, the role of women in Andy Warhol's Factory films, “bad sex” and Tracey Emin's crudely evocative line drawings, and L.A. artist Vaginal Davis's pornographic parodies of Vanessa Beecroft's performances, Sex Objects challenges simplistic readings of sexualized art and instead investigates what such works can tell us about the nature of desire. In Sex Objects, Doyle offers a creative and original exploration of how and where art and sex connect, arguing that to proclaim a piece of art “about sex” reveals surprisingly little about the work, the artist, or the spectator. Deftly interweaving anecdotal and personal writing with critical, feminist, and queer theory, she reimagines the relationship between sex and art in order to better understand how the two meet-and why it matters. Jennifer Doyle is associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is coeditor, with Jonathan Flatley and Jos Esteban Muoz, of Pop Out: Queer Warhol.

The United States is obsessed with virginity - from the media to schools to government agencies. This panic is ensuring that young women's ability to be moral agents is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing.com and author of Full Frontal Feminism and Yes Means Yes, addresses this poignant issue in her latest book, The Purity Myth. Valenti argues that the country's intense focus on chastity is extremely damaging to young women. Through in depth analysis of cultural stereotypes and media messages, Valenti reveals that powerful messages - ranging from abstinence curriculum to ''Girls Gone Wild'' commercials - place a young woman's worth entirely on her sexuality. Morals are therefore linked purely to sexual behavior, as opposed to values like honesty, kindness, and altruism. Valenti approaches the topic head-on, shedding light on chastity in a historical context, abstinence-only education, pornography, and public punishments for those who dare to have sex, among other critical issues. She also offers solutions that pave the way for a future without a damaging emphasis on virginity, including a call to rethink male sexuality and reframing the idea of ''losing it.'' With Valenti's usual balance of intelligence and wit, The Purity Myth presents a powerful and revolutionary argument that girls and women, even in this day and age, are overly valued for their sexuality, and that this needs to stop.

Monographic study of the working conditions and trade unionisation of woman worker airline flight attendants in the USA - covers job satisfaction, management attitudes, occupational safety, occupational health, passenger safety, etc.

The author of landmark manifesto Whipping Girl exposes the violent ways we are all sexualized–then offers a bold path for resistance Feminists have long challenged the ways in which men tend to sexualize women. But pioneering activist, biologist, and trans woman Julia Serano argues that sexualization is a far more pervasive problem, as it’s something that we all do to other people, often without being aware of it. Why do we perceive men as sexual predators and women as sexual objects? Why are LGBTQ+ people stereotyped as being sexually indiscriminate and deceptive? Why are people of color still being hypersexualized? These stereotypes push minorities farther into the margins, and even the privileged are policed from transgressing, lest they also become targets. Many view sexualization as a mere component of sexism, racism, or queerphobia, but Serano argues that liberation from sexual violence comes through collectively confronting sexualization itself.

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.

Drs. Lindsay and Lexie Kite know firsthand how hard filtering out media influence is when it comes to self-image. Both struggled as young women to overcome the expectations of body size and shape, but were able to learn to love, appreciate, and reclaim their own bodies, eventually earning their PhDs in body image resilience. The twin sisters founded the nonprofit Beauty Redefined and have made it their mission to help other women see themselves without societal expectations distorting their self-perception. More than a Body is a self-help book focused on going beyond body positivity, showing how a mindset focused on appearance sets women up for insecurities and self-judgement. In this book, they offer an action plan for readers to combat that mindset, and instead learn how the body can be "an instrument, not an ornament," with practical, actionable steps to take when consuming media, exercising, practicing self-reflection and self-compassion, and finding a purpose in life.

The book is designed to be of interest to women's studies students wishing an introduction to a specifically philosophical analysis of the problem of sex objectification, as well as to philosophers interested in the contemporary moral issues of sexism and sex stereotyping.