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Title: Made Up.
Creator: Crowley, Margaret Louise, Prusa, Carol, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Visual Arts and Art History
Abstract/Description: Made Up, a body of paintings, expresses my love/loathe relationship with the beauty/fashion industries and the fantasy/deception they instill. Aging amplifies my fear of being rejected or invisible and is assuaged by being made-up. Pages torn from fashion layouts are manually distressed to become the visually striking crumpled images that are the basis for my painting. The wrinkled nature of my source communicates my frustration with aging and never being able to meet the standards of modern...
Show moreMade Up, a body of paintings, expresses my love/loathe relationship with the beauty/fashion industries and the fantasy/deception they instill. Aging amplifies my fear of being rejected or invisible and is assuaged by being made-up. Pages torn from fashion layouts are manually distressed to become the visually striking crumpled images that are the basis for my painting. The wrinkled nature of my source communicates my frustration with aging and never being able to meet the standards of modern beauty ideals. My careful repainting of the disfiguration demonstrates my desire to intimately repair and own the image. In taking my power back through painting, the defiled magazine spread becomes a layout of my ability and power as a painter to create and control the illusion. Paint enables me to accept myself through the virtuosity of its application, scale, and in the resulting illusion, in which cathartic moments of subversive humor play out.
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Date Issued: 2019
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013195
Subject Headings: Painting, Beauty culture, Aging, Feminine beauty (Aesthetics)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Postscripts to Paradise: Wonder Woman and the complexities of feminist iconography.
Creator: Schindler, Kathleen., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Abstract/Description: Since her creation in 1941, cultural critics have cited Wonder Woman as an emblem of femininity. In 1972, the American mainstream feminist movement--through Ms. magazine--officially accepted the character as a representation of feminism. When writers at Ms. criticized changes in the character, in which she abandoned her costume and superpowers, they neglected to consider Wonder Woman's history as American World War II propaganda. In doing so, they allowed the re-vamped 1973 version of the...
Show moreSince her creation in 1941, cultural critics have cited Wonder Woman as an emblem of femininity. In 1972, the American mainstream feminist movement--through Ms. magazine--officially accepted the character as a representation of feminism. When writers at Ms. criticized changes in the character, in which she abandoned her costume and superpowers, they neglected to consider Wonder Woman's history as American World War II propaganda. In doing so, they allowed the re-vamped 1973 version of the character, and her subsequent incarnations, to ignore the duality of her existence as both a feminist icon and a reinforcement of dominant American ideologies.
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Date Issued: 2008
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/77688
Subject Headings: Feminist theory, Wonder Woman (Fictitious character), Femininity (Philosophy)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Femininity on Four-wheels: How En-wheeled Women Manage Stigma.
Creator: Hargis, Rachel M., Seeley, J. Lotus, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Sociology
Abstract/Description: This thesis aims to understand how en-wheeled women engaged in hyperfemininity as a stigma management technique in order to diminish asexualization. Grounding my work in the tradition of Goffman and symbolic interaction, I argue that women who do hyperfemininity as a stigma management technique do so in an attempt to make their identity as a woman more salient then their identity as someone who is disabled. As most of the research surrounding disability focuses on masculinity and disabled...
Show moreThis thesis aims to understand how en-wheeled women engaged in hyperfemininity as a stigma management technique in order to diminish asexualization. Grounding my work in the tradition of Goffman and symbolic interaction, I argue that women who do hyperfemininity as a stigma management technique do so in an attempt to make their identity as a woman more salient then their identity as someone who is disabled. As most of the research surrounding disability focuses on masculinity and disabled women‘s heterosexuality it is imperative to continue the expansion of scholarship at the intersection of disability and gender.
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Date Issued: 2018
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013006
Subject Headings: Wheelchairs, People with disabilities--Women, Femininity, Stigma (Social psychology)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Female Beauty in Young Adult Literature: Male gaze in Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap and John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines.
Creator: Council, Nicole, Bradford, Adam C., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Standards of female beauty have long been a source of debate within Western society. Determining who dictates these standards of beauty and how these standards inform individual value seemingly become more and more determined by the individuals themselves, yet there remains a high value placed on white, thin and cisgender females. This standard, although increasingly challenged remains the default for beauty in our society and within our literary culture. This thesis works to expose two...
Show moreStandards of female beauty have long been a source of debate within Western society. Determining who dictates these standards of beauty and how these standards inform individual value seemingly become more and more determined by the individuals themselves, yet there remains a high value placed on white, thin and cisgender females. This standard, although increasingly challenged remains the default for beauty in our society and within our literary culture. This thesis works to expose two modern Young Adult texts, John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines and Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap, for the ways in which they continue to reinforce these standards of beauty in women. While presenting challenges to these stereotypes, the standards set out in these texts ultimately portray women as defined and controlled by men.
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Date Issued: 2018
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00005967
Subject Headings: Young adult literature, Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) in literature, Gaze
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Manufacturing the gentleman's girl: Beauty, class, and the adult entertainment club.
Creator: Kratz, Shannon Lee., Florida Atlantic University, Steinman, Clay
Abstract/Description: In its formulation of the classy strip club, the adult entertainment industry incorporates a discursive relationship between class imagery, especially as the industry uses this to address consumers, and aesthetics, particularly hierarchical representations of woman's beauty. For the author (a former stripper at the adult entertainment club Pure Platinum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida), this relationship shores up the industry's structure, enabling its prolific connections to and with other...
Show moreIn its formulation of the classy strip club, the adult entertainment industry incorporates a discursive relationship between class imagery, especially as the industry uses this to address consumers, and aesthetics, particularly hierarchical representations of woman's beauty. For the author (a former stripper at the adult entertainment club Pure Platinum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida), this relationship shores up the industry's structure, enabling its prolific connections to and with other cultural forms and practices, popular as well as marginal. Assuming adult entertainment occupies merely a cultural margin hinders insight into these important power relations. Grasping them and their changeability requires recognition that the industry shares material and ideological ties with forms more mainstream, such as Miss USA, Barbie, and Snow White.
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Date Issued: 1991
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14773
Subject Headings: Feminine beauty (Aesthetics), Stripteasers., Dance--Social aspects., Women entertainers.
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: “Satan in high heels”: representation of the feminine in the American popular songbook and its impact on performance, interpretation, and audience reception.
Creator: Bridwell-Briner, Kathryn E., Walters, Tim, Graduate College
Date Issued: 2013-04-12
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3361912
Subject Headings: Feminism and music, Jazz vocals, Femininity in music, Jazz vocals, Cabaret
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Naples: The mother city.
Creator: Giannini, Natalia Rita., Florida Atlantic University, Tamburri, Anthony J., Brennan, Teresa
Abstract/Description: Suspended in the corporeality of the baroque, with its emphasis on cycles and simultaneity, rather than linearity, Naples epitomizes the mother space that has been objectified and appropriated by male subjectivity and its alienating rationality, as articulated by the homogenizing discourse of psychoanalysis. This paradigmatic metropolis which actualizes its ancient Greek signification as a "mother-city"---Naples was originally named after the Homeric siren, Parthenope, and associated...
Show moreSuspended in the corporeality of the baroque, with its emphasis on cycles and simultaneity, rather than linearity, Naples epitomizes the mother space that has been objectified and appropriated by male subjectivity and its alienating rationality, as articulated by the homogenizing discourse of psychoanalysis. This paradigmatic metropolis which actualizes its ancient Greek signification as a "mother-city"---Naples was originally named after the Homeric siren, Parthenope, and associated throughout history with various feminine incarnations (the Cumaean sibyl, the Madonna)---asserts a form of reason that transcends the imposition of the Lacanian signification of the phallus and its dichotomizing paradigm of subjectivity. In Anna Maria Ortese's Il mare non bagna Napoli (1953), the phallus is revealed as a void, which subverts not only the "enlightened" knowledge of the phallus, but the debasing obliteration of the feminine as the "unsayable." In Naples, the mother signifies through the negativity, nothingness, and absence emblematic of the womb. Literally "debellied" by the modernizing impetus of a unified Italy after the cholera epidemic of 1884, Parthenope embodies a feminine grotesque aesthetic, as articulated by Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover (1992), in which the preeminence of bodily processes effects a critical interruption of Naples's transition to the "Enlightenment." The womb rejects the univocality of the phallus and arguably signifies through nourishment, which, unlike the libido, affirms a subject that emerges out of a counter-paradigmatic continuity with the mother, who can simultaneously be and endow others with being. The mother prevents the subject from imposing an artificial self-sufficiency, as evinced in Jean-Paul Sartre's Spaesamento: Napoli e Capri (2000), where the protagonist debases the maternal nourishment prevalent in Naples in order to empty it of its life-giving power. In turn, by affirming a dialectic that emerges out of the maternal body, Naples bypasses the civilizatory claims of repression and its dualistic mechanization of the psyche in terms of the conscious and the unconscious, and thereby fulfills the all-encompassing realm of the fantastical, which, as in Ortese's Il Monaciello di Napoli (1940), attains its validity through a paradoxically creative and destructive maternal reason that is both a sign of excess and containment.
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Date Issued: 2003
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12024
Subject Headings: Sex symbolism, Naples (Italy)--In literature, Psychoanalysis and literature, Femininity in literature
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Average (arithmetic mean) of women’s bodies.
Creator: Behar, Linda, Valdes, Juana, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Visual Arts and Art History
Abstract/Description: Between 1939 and 1940 the United States Government conducted a study of the measurements of women’s bodies to establish a standardized system of garment and pattern sizes. The central theme of my research is to analyze the female figure in the context of a technology-driven global contemporary society. My thesis exhibition includes a body of work that echoes the pressures that Western Society employs by standardizing women’s appearances. The focus of the work is to confront the viewer with a...
Show moreBetween 1939 and 1940 the United States Government conducted a study of the measurements of women’s bodies to establish a standardized system of garment and pattern sizes. The central theme of my research is to analyze the female figure in the context of a technology-driven global contemporary society. My thesis exhibition includes a body of work that echoes the pressures that Western Society employs by standardizing women’s appearances. The focus of the work is to confront the viewer with a visual examination, which illustrates the preconceived notion that Western Society portrays the female body as a commodity and exports those views to different cultures and societies. This calls to question: “who makes those standards endorsed by society and why women follow them?”. From the standardized measurements conducted by the United States Government, I generated a 2-D computer model of an outline of the generic female figure. Based on the 2-D representation, I constructed a series of ten 27”x36” inkjet prints and a 3-Dimensional prototype of the figurative form. The project consist on the manufacture of 14,698 molds base on the 3- Dimensional prototype -- 10% reduction of the size of the average female.
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Date Issued: 2014
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004079
Subject Headings: Advertising -- Psychological aspects, Body image in women, Feminine beauty (Aesthetics), Feminist theory, Human body -- Social aspects, Self esteem in women
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Fattitude The Movie: Theory and Praxis of Creating a Documentary that Examines Fat Representation and Fat Social Justice.
Creator: Averill, Lindsey, Caputi, Jane, Hagood, Taylor, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Abstract/Description: This dissertation explores the making of and research for the film, Fattitude, a social justice based documentary that looks to awaken viewers to the reality of weight bias in media representation. This dissertation reviews the filmmaking process and then engages with the nature of stereotypes about fat bodies. Deeply tied to feminist and fat studies theory, the work here seeks to categorize and shape the understanding of weight bias in the media by linking fat tropes to clearly understood...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the making of and research for the film, Fattitude, a social justice based documentary that looks to awaken viewers to the reality of weight bias in media representation. This dissertation reviews the filmmaking process and then engages with the nature of stereotypes about fat bodies. Deeply tied to feminist and fat studies theory, the work here seeks to categorize and shape the understanding of weight bias in the media by linking fat tropes to clearly understood images of oppression, for example the monstrous, the fool, they hypersexual and the asexual. The work also seeks to present theory on the nature of creating media representations of fatness that are not oppressive – making note of current media created by grassroots movements for body acceptance and fat positivity.
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Date Issued: 2017
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004900, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004900
Subject Headings: Fattitude., Body image--Social aspects., Discrimination against overweight persons., Feminine beauty (Aesthetics), Obesity., Body image in women., Self-esteem in women., Physical-appearance-based bias.
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A Feminist Cultural Study of Identity, Hair Loss, and Chemotherapy.
Creator: Guillerm, Celine, Scodari, Christine, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
Abstract/Description: The main aim of this dissertation is to discuss the way women negotiate the cultural meaning of hair loss, alopecia, as a result of undergoing chemotherapy, and to understand, accordingly, how cancer's cultural effects regarding women can be deeply different from those of men. Very few studies have been done about the cultural impact and resonance of alopecia. It is often regarded as "secondary" to other effects of chemotherapy. Because, in many cultures, head hair for women expresses or...
Show moreThe main aim of this dissertation is to discuss the way women negotiate the cultural meaning of hair loss, alopecia, as a result of undergoing chemotherapy, and to understand, accordingly, how cancer's cultural effects regarding women can be deeply different from those of men. Very few studies have been done about the cultural impact and resonance of alopecia. It is often regarded as "secondary" to other effects of chemotherapy. Because, in many cultures, head hair for women expresses or manifests attractiveness and power, to be bald is to be deprived of the ability to fit into society, whether in the public or private sphere. The study examines the representation of such women in the media, audience/subject responses to these representations, and interrogates women's identities and representations in terms of Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze. Women who have experienced chemotherapy-induced alopec ia were interviewed in this regard. Other contributive feminist, cultural and/or media studies works, such as those by Suzanna Walters, Susan Bordo, Naomi Wolf, Donna Haraway, Stuart Hall, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Judith Butler, help facilitate the analysis. From these perspectives, a historical analysis takes into consideration the symbolic dimension of hair, especially women's head hair, within Western cultural history, particularly in France and a multicultural America. In addition, a textual analysis looks at women, cancer, and hair loss as represented in popular culture characters and personalities. The study insists on the necessity for women to resist to the culture industries and deconstruct the male gaze, as well as the female gaze, which can both contribute to, and perpetuate women's objectification.
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Date Issued: 2015
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004502, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004502
Subject Headings: Baldness -- Psychological aspects, Body image, Cancer -- Psychosomatic aspects, Cancer -- Treatment -- Complications, Feminine beauty (Aesthetics), Identity (Psychology), Self esteem in women
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Betty Friedan and "The Feminine Mystique": An example of rhetorical exclusion.
Creator: Carney, Ann Maire., Florida Atlantic University, Mulvaney, Becky
Abstract/Description: One of the key catalytic feminist works of our time is The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Although acclaimed as a well researched artifact designed to help "American women" recognize and understand how and why they were being manipulated via a social phenomenon Friedan terms a "feminine mystique," upon close examination of this work we find that the preponderance of inductive examples Friedan uses to persuade her implied audience excluded another audience, specifically black women. The...
Show moreOne of the key catalytic feminist works of our time is The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Although acclaimed as a well researched artifact designed to help "American women" recognize and understand how and why they were being manipulated via a social phenomenon Friedan terms a "feminine mystique," upon close examination of this work we find that the preponderance of inductive examples Friedan uses to persuade her implied audience excluded another audience, specifically black women. The effect of this "rhetorical exclusion" (and other means of segregation) has been the disaffection of most black women from the contemporary women's movement. This study, therefore, provides a critical analysis of specific inductive examples found within The Feminine Mystique, demonstrates how such examples affected both Friedan's implied and excluded audiences, and suggests how such forms of "rhetorical exclusion" can be avoided in the future.
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Date Issued: 1994
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15102
Subject Headings: Friedan, Betty--Criticism and interpretation, Friedan, Betty--Feminine mystique, Feminism--United States, African American women--Social conditions
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The domestic Sybil: Feminist concerns in P. L. Travers's "Mary Poppins" and "Mary Poppins Comes Back".
Creator: Revtai, Donna M., Florida Atlantic University, Collins, Robert A.
Abstract/Description: Certain elements in P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (1934) and Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935) depict concerns that feminist critics deem important, such as mother figures, females as artists, women who exert power or lack it, female self-concepts, matrilineal connections and mother/child relationships. Travers sometimes treats these subjects ambiguously or ambivalently, but her attention to them indicates a riveting interest at the time. Her creative process whereby she projected childhood...
Show moreCertain elements in P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (1934) and Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935) depict concerns that feminist critics deem important, such as mother figures, females as artists, women who exert power or lack it, female self-concepts, matrilineal connections and mother/child relationships. Travers sometimes treats these subjects ambiguously or ambivalently, but her attention to them indicates a riveting interest at the time. Her creative process whereby she projected childhood fantasies onto her ideal nanny, Mary Poppins, with whom she identified herself and others, relates to a feminine psychology. Travers's cyclic and web-like plots may link her to feminist aesthetics as currently being explored.
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Date Issued: 1997
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15512
Subject Headings: Travers, P L--(Pamela L),--1906---Criticism and interpretation, Travers, P L--(Pamela L),--1906---Mary Poppins, Domestics in literature, Femininity in literature
Format: Document (PDF)

FAU Theses and Dissertations (10)	+ -
FAU Graduate Student Research (1)	+ -
Honors Student Theses (1)	+ -

Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) (5)	+ -
Femininity in literature (2)	+ -
Feminist theory (2)	+ -
Self esteem in women (2)	+ -
Advertising -- Psychological aspects (1)	+ -

African American women--Social conditions (1)	+ -
Aging (1)	+ -
Baldness -- Psychological aspects (1)	+ -
Beauty culture (1)	+ -
Body image (1)	+ -
Body image in women (1)	+ -
Body image in women. (1)	+ -
Body image--Social aspects. (1)	+ -
Cabaret (1)	+ -
Cancer -- Psychosomatic aspects (1)	+ -
Cancer -- Treatment -- Complications (1)	+ -
Dance--Social aspects. (1)	+ -
Discrimination against overweight persons. (1)	+ -
Domestics in literature (1)	+ -
Fattitude. (1)	+ -
Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) in literature (1)	+ -
Femininity (1)	+ -
Femininity (Philosophy) (1)	+ -
Femininity in music (1)	+ -
Feminism and music (1)	+ -
Feminism--United States (1)	+ -
Friedan, Betty--Criticism and interpretation (1)	+ -
Friedan, Betty--Feminine mystique (1)	+ -
Gaze (1)	+ -
Human body -- Social aspects (1)	+ -

Electronic Thesis or Dissertation (10)	+ -
thesis (1)	+ -

Florida Atlantic University (10)	+ -
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters (6)	+ -
Department of Visual Arts and Art History (2)	+ -
Averill, Lindsey (1)	+ -
Behar, Linda (1)	+ -

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