The Feminization of American Culture seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era.

A speculation on the dramatic changes in American culture brought on by the fact that women are assuming more and more power in contemporary society.

Terrible Honesty is the biography of a decade, a portrait of the soul of a generation - based on the lives and work of more than a hundred men and women. In a strikingly original interpretation that brings the Jazz Age to life in a wholly new way, Ann Douglas arugues that when, after World War I, the United States began to assume the economic and political leadership of the West, New York became the heart of a daring and accomplished historical transformation.

In this collection, one of the world's leading scholars in the field of masculinity studies explores the historical construction of American and British masculinities. Tracing the emergence of American and British masculinities, the forms they have taken, and their development over time, Michael S. Kimmel analyzes the various ways that the ideology of masculinity—the cultural meaning of manhood—has been shaped by the course of historical events, and, in turn, how ideas about masculinity have also served to shape those historical events. He also considers newly emerging voices of previously marginalized groups such as women, the working class, people of color, gay men, and lesbians to explore the marginalized and de-centered notions of masculinity and the political processes and dynamics that have enabled this marginalization to occur.

Women fans have entered the traditionally male domain of the sports stadium in growing numbers in recent years. Watching professional sport is important for women for so many reasons, but their expectations and experiences have been largely ignored by academics. This book tackles these shortcomings in the literature and sheds new light on the many ways in which women become sports fans. This groundbreaking study is the first to focus on the phenomenon of the feminization of sports fandom. Including original research on football and rugby union in the UK, it looks at the increasing opportunities for women to become sports fans in contemporary society and critically examines the way this form of leisure is valued by women. Drawing upon feminist thinking and intersectionality, it shows how women from different social classes and age groups consume the spectacle of sport. This book is fascinating reading for any student or scholar interested in sport and leisure studies, sociology and gender or women’s studies.

Examines the constructions of feminine consumption in the nineteenth century in relation to capitalism and domesticity.

The Feminization of American Culture is a significant study of the domination of late nineteenth-century American culture by a feminine ethic and spirit. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless in the male-dominated industrial society, banded together to have a profound effect on the only areas still open to their influence - the arts and literature. Ann Douglas explores their impact on the best-selling novels and magazines of the day to show how women exploited their feminine image and idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, narcissism, and a disdain for competition. The result was a far-reaching social preoccupation with banal melodrama which failed to address the real issues of the day. This is a major, polemical rethinking of the American past which seeks to explain values prevalent in today's popular culture by tracing them back to their roots in Victorian times.