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    The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship
    Unavailable
    The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship
    Unavailable
    The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship
    Ebook392 pages6 hours

    The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship

    By Marilyn Yalom and Theresa Donovan Brown

    2.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Fascinating . . . The Social Sex is a paean to companionship. Share it with a bosom friend.” —NPR

    From historian and acclaimed feminist author of How the French Invented Love and A History of the Wife comes this rich, multifaceted history of the evolution of female friendship

    In today’s culture, the bonds of female friendship are taken as a given. But only a few centuries ago, the idea of female friendship was completely unacknowledged, even pooh-poohed. Only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships.

    Surveying history, literature, philosophy, religion, and pop culture, acclaimed author and historian Marilyn Yalom and co-author Theresa Donovan Brown demonstrate how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship—both female and male—from the Bible and the Romans to the Enlightenment to the women’s rights movements of the ‘60s up to Sex and the City and Bridesmaids, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history.

    Armed with Yalom and Brown as our guides, we delve into the fascinating historical episodes and trends that illuminate the story of friendship between women: the literary salon as the original book club, the emergence of female professions and the working girl, the phenomenon of gossip, the advent of women’s sports, and more.

    Lively, informative, and richly detailed, The Social Sex is a revelatory cultural history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 22, 2015
    ISBN9780062265517
    Unavailable
    The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship
    Author

    Marilyn Yalom

    Marilyn Yalom is Senior Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University and author of A History of the Wife (2001), A History of the Breast (1997), Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory (1993), and Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness (1985). Laura Carstensen is Professor of Psychology and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. She has published more than eighty articles and chapters on life-span development, marriage, and emotion.

    Read more from Marilyn Yalom

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    Reviews for The Social Sex

    2.5/5

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    • 2/5
      I received this book from GoodReads in exchange for an honest review.This is kind of a difficult book to rate. While the text is informative, the overall narrative feels as though it is lacking. Part of the issue is clearly a lack of historical texts to use in order to determine changes in female friendship. This is mostly a history of white middle class friendship with a brief look at various "other" friendships such as "Friendship in the Workplace, Third-World Style", an unfortunately flippant title. Again, this is partly due to the lack of documentation outside of the dominant group, but I think the missing pieces were crucial to this history. The historical connections to feminism were interesting, especially the chunk of the book dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt, but as a whole the book felt a bit dull. The text was broken up well into digestible pieces, but some areas were heavier than others, leaving some sections unsatisfying thin. The section on modern friendships was incredibly short with very little depth. A decent book, but the lack of concentration in certain areas left me unsatisfied as a whole.