Stitched Up : Who Fashions Women's Lives? Stephanie Vermeulen

This feisty and inspiring treatise blames the destructive cultural myth of female self-sacrifice for the desire for breast implants, the conservative insistence on family values, and the general cultural attitude that prevents women from supporting one another’s accomplishments. Using everything from psychological analysis to clever fairy-tale parodies—called “fairer tales”—the author promotes an ideology for women that is neither bra-burning feminism nor passive conservatism, but rather a belief in self-development.