Beauty and appearance play a pervasive role in our culture, argues Nancy Friday. Here, the author of the groundbreaking and controversial bestseller My Secret Garden delves into beauty's influence on popular media and the psyche of modern women.
Combining in-depth cultural analysis with personal anecdotes, sexology, and individual case studies, Nancy Friday explores the dissatisfaction women feel about their bodies--and how it affects their sexual freedom. Her analysis is broad-reaching, examining how popular culture, advertising, stereotypes of women in the workplace, the sexual liberation of the 1960's, and the interdynamics of family relationships put pressure on women to live up to an impossible feminine ideal
The publication of the groundbreaking expose on women's sexual fantasies, My Secret Garden, ushered in a revolution in women's sexual freedom of expression. In Forbidden Flowers, Nancy Friday reveals even more erotic, wild, and explicit fantasies expressed by women all over the world, from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Like My Secret Garden before it, Forbidden Flowers is a celebration of the depth, potency, and imaginative breadth of women's inner erotic lives. By giving female readers a glimpse into the ordinary and often extraordinary fantasies of other women, it offers to some an exhilarating freedom from the guilt and shame so often associated with sexual fantasy—and to others, provides fascinating insight into the psychology of female sexual response.
First published in 1973, My Secret Garden ignited a firestorm of reactions across the nation--from outrage to enthusiastic support. Collected from detailed personal interviews with hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds, this book presents a bracingly honest account of women's inner sexual fantasy lives. In its time, this book shattered taboos and opened up a conversation about the landscape of feminine desire in a way that was unprecedented.
Today, My Secret Garden remains one of the most iconic works of feminist literature of our time--and is still relevant to millions of women throughout the world.
