View source for The Modern Girl Around the World

{{Infobox book
| name			 = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author         = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher      = Duke University Press
| pub_date       = 2008-12-03
| pages          = 448
| isbn           = 0822343053
| image          =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}} 

Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What if these influences appeared to be global in nature? If these questions are true, then what are the implications of this identity creation? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders.  Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how more fields can come together to generate more effective content for readers.

Another benefit of The Modern Girl Around the World is its ease of access online. Duke University Press has the book available in an e-reader format on its website. It is accessible for anyone with university access. The formatting is well-done, with the reader able to search within the text for keywords, as well as skip to specific page numbers and chapters.Unlike other online versions of books, the page numbers online coincide with the page numbers in the paperback, which makes it wonderful to pick up reading online where you left off. 

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar. From a scholarly perspective, The Modern Girl Around the World is a well-researched piece of literature.By using interdiscuplinary study into a global trend, the book shows how consumerism, questions about modernity, and mass globalization allowed the modern girl to flourish across the globe. It was a true phenomenon, a creation unique to its time. By studying the modern girl, its appearance in media, and its lingering effects on women’s roles and culture, we can see how different societies dealt with the rapid changes taking place in the early twentieth century.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]