Becoming Women

In a culture where beauty is currency, women’s bodies are often perceived as measures of value and worth. The search for visibility and self-acceptance can be daunting, especially for those on the margins of conventional Western notions of beauty.

Becoming Women offers a thoughtful examination of the search for identity in an image-oriented world. That search is told through the experiences of a group of women who came of age in the wake of second- and third-wave feminism, and focuses especially on voices from marginalized and misrepresented groups.

Carla Rice pairs images from popular culture with personal narratives to expose the “culture of contradiction” where exhortations for body acceptance have been matched by even more restrictive feminine image ideals and norms. Drawing on insights gained from her advisory role with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, Rice exposes the beauty industry’s colonization of women’s bodies, and examines why “the beauty myth” has yet to be resolved.

Carla Rice is the Canada Research Chair in Care, Gender, and Relationships in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph. She has more than twenty years of experience as a clinician, researcher, and media consultant on body image and beauty culture.