In Fantasies of Femininity, Jane Ussher focuses on unraveling the contradictory visions of feminine sexuality: the fact that representations of the definition of woman seethe with sexuality yet for centuries women have been condemned for exploring their own sexual desires. In her quest for the sources of feminine representation, Ussher interviewed dozens of women - as well as some men - and combed popular media - from Seventeen to Cosmopolitan and Dallas to Donahue - to identify what shapes women's symbolic images of sex and femininity. Ussher argues that women have effectively resisted and subverted these archetypal fantasies of femininity, and in the process of so doing, reframed the very boundaries of sex. In this way, she exposes as myth much of what we think we know about "woman" and about "sex."

Introduction
Chapter One. The Script of Femininity: Sex, Romance and Beauty
Chapter Two. The Masculine Gaze: Framing 'Woman' in Art and Film
Chapter Three. Pornography: Denigration of 'Woman' or Exploration of Fantasy and Transgression?
Chapter Four. Sexual Science and the Law: Regulating Sex--Reifying the Power of the Heterosexual Man
Chapter Five. Violating the Sexual Body: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse and Sexual Murder
Chapter Six. Reframing Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex
Further Reading
Index

JANE M. USHER is a senior lecturer in psychology as well as research director of the Women's Health Research Unit at University College, London. She is the author of several books, including The Psychology of the Female Body and Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?