{"id":38212,"date":"2025-07-04T13:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38212\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T13:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:56:12","slug":"the-books-briefing-a-philosophy-that-sees-women-as-doers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38212\/","title":{"rendered":"The Books Briefing: A Philosophy That Sees \u2018Women as Doers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors\u2019 weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.<\/a><\/p>\n

When a woman\u2019s clothes constrict her movement, squeezing her into unforgiving shapes, or her exercise regime is a punishing ordeal meant to winnow her down to the smallest possible size, the result is all too often an alienation from her body. This week, we published two book reviews that offer a different way to think about the physical self\u2014one that replaces an obsession over surface appeal with an emphasis on functionality.<\/p>\n

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic\u2019s books section:<\/p>\n

My colleague Julie Beck\u2019s essay<\/a> on Casey Johnston\u2019s new ode to weight lifting argues for seeing your body as a working object, rather than an enemy to be subdued; so does Julia Turner\u2019s article<\/a> about Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson\u2019s new biography of the fashion designer Claire McCardell. This philosophy might seem, to some, like wishful thinking: Narrow standards of beauty, whether they dictate body size or one\u2019s fashion sense, remain powerful in many settings. But Johnston\u2019s memoir of her journey toward strength training describes how, as she built muscle, she also began rejecting a deeply ingrained internal voice warning her against gaining a single pound. Beck, who describes trading in punishing turns on the elliptical for lifting, writes that the decision transformed her relationship to her body. As she notes, lifting \u201cbuilds up instead of whittling away; it favors function over aesthetics\u201d; strength training has changed the way she walks, erased nagging pains, and allowed her to lift her carry-on into the overhead bin on airplanes with ease.<\/p>\n

Fashion, too, has tended to prioritize appearances over practicality\u2014skin-baring cuts when long sleeves might be more appropriate for the weather, high heels that are impossible to walk in\u2014to the detriment of women\u2019s well-being. In her essay on Dickinson\u2019s Claire McCardell<\/a>, Turner writes that the designer \u201chated being uncomfortable,\u201d and worked to design clothes that people could actually live in. (She is credited with adding pockets to women\u2019s clothes and moving hard-to-reach zippers to the sides of dresses.) As Turner argues, McCardell \u201csaw women as doers, and designed accordingly.\u201d Perhaps, Turner suggests, we should think of fashion less as an art and more as a kind of industrial design: practical and user-friendly, rather than beautiful to look at. Aesthetics aren\u2019t irrelevant\u2014style and sartorial creativity can be freeing and self-expressive\u2014but these books refreshingly propose that we value our bodies for what they can do, not how they appear.<\/p>\n

\"ABettman \/ Getty<\/p>\n

The Feminine Pursuit of Swoleness<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Julie Beck<\/p>\n

Casey Johnston\u2019s new book, A Physical Education, considers how weight lifting can help you unlearn diet culture.<\/p>\n

Read the full article.<\/a><\/p>\n

What to Read<\/b><\/p>\n

Be Ready When the Luck Happens<\/strong><\/a>, by Ina Garten<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lounge chair beside a pool in Florida, where I was vacationing with my family last winter, was the perfect place to devour Garten\u2019s celebration of luxury, good food, and togetherness. This memoir is a record of a life spent prioritizing adventure over prudence, indulgence over temperance. Garten buys a store in a town she\u2019s never visited, purchases a beautiful house she can barely afford, and wishes her husband well as he takes a job in Hong Kong while she stays behind. Her brio pays off, of course: That food shop was a success, and she went on to write more than a dozen cookbooks, become a Food Network star, and make pavlova with Taylor Swift. The book is escapist in the way that good, breezy reads often are. It was also, for me, inspiring: Be Ready When the Luck Happens gave me a bit of permission to imagine what I would do if I were the sort of person who embraces possibility the way Garten does. As I basked in the pleasant winter sunshine, I found myself thinking, What if we move to Florida, or to Southern California, or some other place where it\u2019s warm in January? I haven\u2019t followed through\u2014vacation fantasies have a way of fading as soon as you get back to reality. But I was invigorated by imagining that I might. \u2014 Eleanor Barkhorn<\/p>\n

From our list: The 2025 summer reading guide<\/a><\/p>\n

Out Next Week<\/b><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcda A Marriage at Sea<\/a>, by Sophie Elmhirst<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcda Becoming Baba<\/a>, by Aymann Ismail<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcda Bring the House Down<\/a>, by Charlotte Runcie<\/p>\n

Your Weekend Read<\/strong>\"BadEric Rojas<\/p>\n

The Bad Bunny Video That Captures the Cost of Gentrification<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Valerie Trapp<\/p>\n

One of the effects of gentrification, Bad Bunny proposes, is silence. Throughout the DTMF album, Bad Bunny laments how many Puerto Ricans have been forced to leave the island amid financial struggles and environmental disasters such as Hurricane Maria; this is most notable on \u201cLo Que Le Pas\u00f3 a Hawaii,\u201d in which he notes that \u201cno one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of returning.\u201d (As of 2018, more<\/a> Puerto Ricans live outside Puerto Rico than on the island; the same is true of Native <\/a>Hawaiians<\/a> and Palestinians<\/a> in their respective lands.) The DTMF short film makes their absence palpable. \u201cDid you hear that? That music!\u201d the old man says to Concho, when a red sedan drives by their front porch playing reggaeton (Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cEoo\u201d). The old man is moved. \u201cYou barely see that anymore,\u201d he says of the car moseying past. \u201cI miss hearing the young people hanging out, the motorcycles\u2014the sound of the neighborhood.\u201d Se\u00f1or and Concho, it seems, live in a community that has turned its volume down, now that most of its Puerto Rican inhabitants have left.<\/p>\n

Read the full article.<\/a><\/p>\n

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Wonder Reader,<\/a> a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight.<\/p>\n

Explore all of our newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors\u2019 weekly guide to the best in books. Sign…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-38212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114795314191728754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}