The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. 250 pages; hardcover; $23.00

Obession with makeup. Fanatical dieting. Exercise intended to create a physique of steel. Incessant self-criticism. Even surgery.

"Girls today," says Cornell University historianJoan Jacobs Brumberg, "make the body into an all-consuming project in ways young women of the past did not." Forget art projects, school projects, volunteer projects. Consumer culture, Brumberg warns, has transformed the contemporary adolescent girl's body into her only project.

According to Brumberg, "The Body Project" began at the turn of the century when businesses conspired to make money from the insecurity of adolescents by offering them "cures" for figure flaws, complexion flaws, and hair flaws. As a basis for understanding this shift, Brumberg examines diary excerpts and compares girls' lives during the past century.

Eventually, public schools and the medical community joined the fun and created "needs" for such things as foundation support, cosmetics, and "sanitary products." Schoolgirls in the 1950s were shown "educational" films, such as "Figure Forum" and "Facts About Your Figure" (made by the Warner Brassiere Company). The corporate-sponsored Disney film, "The Story of Menstruation" (1946), has been seen by 93 million American women. Noting that "neither sexuality nor reproduction is mentioned in that influential film," Brumberg points out that the cult of sanitation changed the way women look at menstruation forever, making it "a hygienic crisis rather than a maturational event."

Because of the efforts of corporate forces, "The Body Project" has become more elevated and intense, the ideal (a muscular and toned 5'7", 110 pound body) harder to obtain than ever. And as it is now, "girls make the trip from menarche [the first period] into adulthood without either knowledgeable guides or appropriate protective gear."

By "protective gear," Brumberg means the "protective umbrella" under which Victorian middle-class girls thrived: a plethora of girls' clubs, active church activities, and girls' schools. The "knowledgeable guides" are mothers, female relatives, and older girls who serve as leaders. A world of protective gear and knowledgeable guides sounds good, yet Brumberg does not get specific about what this umbrella might consist of for girls not of the leisure class. One might guess that the economic support of the nation would come into play, but Brumberg barely mentions this, as if she is afraid of a conservative backlash. Is it too radical to point out that organizations that form a protective umbrella today would require a nation's serious economic investment? A shift away from girls-as-commodity would mean a lot to us girls, not just in America, but around the world.

Brumberg ignores existing foundations on which to build the sort of support she dreams of: girl scouts, sports, dance, volunteer organizations. Brumberg seems especially blind to these already open umbrellas when she says of Title IX legislation (which made discrimination on the basis of sex illegal), "This long-awaited gain, which opened up new areas of education, employment, and sports, meant that efforts to protect and nurture girls in special ways now seemed old-fashioned, if not reactionary." Though she does not get any more specific than this, I am surprised at her words--Title IX means girls actually do have special protection. Title IX means that there is more money, more time, for leadership for girls in sports and all sorts of other activities. In the world of sports, for example, under the watch of parents and other mentors, girls learn to work collectively, to value teamwork, character, physical skills--and for a while, at least, emphasis on beauty and sexuality is put away. And this is just what Brumberg is calling for. Further, Brumberg neglects to mention the umbrellas that have been snatched away recently, in the form of divestment in social programs, including education, child care, and welfare.

Another problematic aspect of "The Body Project" is Brumberg's vague use of terms such as "character." At the end of this book, I am not even sure what character means. To the Victorians, wasn't "character" just another set of girl-skills that would make girls more marketable and marriageable? For us, character in a girl is likely to mean something about her independence and faith in herself. And Brumberg's focus on only the middle-class Victorian era is problematic, too. The term "Victorian" encompasses a lot of people. Thus, it's a bit irresponsible to say that the Victorians "were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their adolescent daughters to do the same." Similarly, Brumberg has to make a pretty big leap to say "today's teens shop for thong bikinis on their own, and their middle-class mothers are likely to be uninvolved until the credit card bill arrives in the mail." Which teens are these? Perhaps Brumberg has a point, but readers need more evidence to support these claims. Can we really apply a study of middle-class girls to all girls? Can we equate middle-class girls with most girls?

Brumberg's book raises more questions than it answers, but it is still a necessary read for adolescent girls, women, and parents of girls. Brumberg is obviously a feminist with a real concern for girls (the first-hand accounts of girlhood lovingly gleaned from girls' diaries are beautiful to read). The point is well-taken: girls are vulnerable, they do need guides and mentors, and the unrelenting march of consumer culture is an appalling crime against them, against us all.

    Wendy L. Smith, once an adolescent girl, now teaches English at San Diego Mesa College.