Female Fetishism

by Gamman, Lorraine; Makinen, Merja; Lively, Donald; Post, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780814730720
• ISBN10: 0814730728
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-03-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

The aura of passivity that has for centuries surrounded female sexuality in popular culture, psychology, and literature has, in recent years, dissipated. And yet fetishism, one of the most intriguing and mysterious forms of sexual expression, is still cast as an almost exclusively male domain. Most psychoanalytic thought, for instance, excludes the very possibility of female fetishism.The first book on the subject,Female Fetishismengagingly documents women's involvement in this form of sexuality. Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen describe a wide array of female fetishisms, from the obsessional behavior of pop fans (and pop performers such as Madonna) to fetishism in advertising to women's involvement in the world of dress clubs and fetish magazines. The authors provide provocative evidence of food fetishism among women, arguing that many eating disorders are best understood from this perspective. A latter portion of the book includes a discussion of how feminists have treated the political and cultural significance of female fetishism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
Three Types of Fetishism: a Question of Definition	p. 14
Perverse Strategies: a Look at Women	p. 51
Women and Sexual Fetishism	p. 95
Bulimia: the Fourth Fetishism?	p. 122
Food Fetishism: the Cultural Arguments	p. 145
Female Fetishism Conflated: Representations of 'Fetishism'	p. 171
Fetishism - the Postmodern Condition?	p. 213
Bibliography	p. 223
Index	p. 233
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