Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Catherine McCormack, "Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies" (Norton, 2021)
Description: Art historian Catherine McCormack challenges how culture teaches us to see and value women, their bodies, and their lives.Venus, maiden, wife, mother, monster—women have been bound so long by these restrictive roles, codified by patriarchal culture, that we scarcely see them. In Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies (Norton, 2021), Catherine McCormack illuminates the assumptions behind these stereotypes whether writ large or subtly hidden. She ranges through Western art—think Titian, Botticelli, and Millais—and the image-saturated world of fashion photographs, advertisements, and social media, and boldly counters these depictions by turning to the wo...