MUS 106-10 AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC 4 1. Describe the importance of Memphis in early Rock and Roll with a specific example. (1 point) Memphis has a long history of music influence; being along the Mississippi, it had its own brand of music. The famous Sun Records was founded here and a African American radio station was the first of its kind. 2. Describe the impact of television on popular music in the 1950s. Be specific with an example. (2 points) It spread the music quickly; it combined music and dance and started a movement of variety shows. 3. Regarding Elvis Presley, textbook author Campbell says that he was a symbol of rock and roll, giving rock and roll a sound and a look which immediately set the style apart from anything that had come before. (Campbell, 175-177) Describe one characteristic of Elvis’ musical style and one characteristic of his look in the 1950s that would explain this statement. Be specific. (2 points) Musical style (sound); a mix of country, a little bit of gospel and rock and roll. Look (appearance/stage persona) He originally came across as clean cut country boy, but his persona became the sexy rock star particularly when he appeared on TV and swung those hips, which many people found offensive. 4. Explain one way that Elvis Presley achieved mega-star status. (1 point) MATCH: 5. _I____ Pat Boone A. Bill Haley’s group 6. ___D__ Col. Tom Parker B. McKinley Morganfield, R&B singer and guitarist 7. ___A__ Comets C. early successful girls’ group 8. ___G__ Carl Perkins D. Elvis’ business manager and agent 9. __J___ Sam Phillips E. Buddy Holly’s group 10. ___H__ Everly Brothers F. R&B, Rock and Roll singer/pianist from New Orleans 11. ___F__ Fats Domino G. member of Sam Phillips’ “million dollar quartet” 12. __C___ Shirelles H. group known for novelty playlets 13. _B__Muddy Waters I. major cover artist of R&B songs 14. ___E__ Crickets J. owner of Sun Records 15. ____K_ Chords K. doo-wop group of the 1950s “Sh-Boom” 16 Explain twodifferent criticisms of Rock and Roll in the 1950s. Be specific with examples of who and what, and the impact. Choose controversies about race,religion, music, or other topic (consider music, lyrics, stage persona, etc.). (4 points) 1. Topic___________________: 2. Topic __________________: 17. In your opinion, which performer of 1950s rock and roll would you have wanted to see/hear perform live, and why? Be specific. (1 point) Presley because of his charisma, looks, style of playing and his intro of dance style within the age of rock and roll. 18. __d___ Louis Jordan A. Texan who blended rock and roll with new ideas 19. __g___ Alan Freed B. producer who coined the phrase, “rhythm & blues” 20. __f___ Little Richard C. performed “Rocket 88” recorded at Sun Studio 21. _K____ Dick Clark D. leader of a popular jump band 22. __a___ Buddy Ho ...

1. MUS 106-10 AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC
4
1. Describe the importance of Memphis in early Rock and Roll
with a specific example. (1 point)
Memphis has a long history of music influence; being along the
Mississippi, it had its own brand of music. The famous Sun
Records was founded here and a African American radio station
was the first of its kind.
2. Describe the impact of television on popular music in the
1950s. Be specific with an example. (2 points)
It spread the music quickly; it combined music and dance and
started a movement of variety shows.
3. Regarding Elvis Presley, textbook author Campbell says that
he was a symbol of rock and roll, giving rock and roll a sound
and a look which immediately set the style apart from anything
that had come before. (Campbell, 175-177) Describe one
characteristic of Elvis’ musical style and one characteristic of
his look in the 1950s that would explain this statement. Be
specific. (2 points)
Musical style (sound); a mix of country, a little bit of gospel
and rock and roll.
Look (appearance/stage persona)
He originally came across as clean cut country boy, but his
persona became the sexy rock star particularly when he
appeared on TV and swung those hips, which many people
found offensive.
4. Explain one way that Elvis Presley achieved mega-star status.
(1 point)
MATCH:

2. 5. _I____ Pat Boone
A. Bill Haley’s group
6. ___D__ Col. Tom Parker
B. McKinley Morganfield, R&B singer and guitarist
7. ___A__ Comets
C. early successful girls’ group
8. ___G__ Carl Perkins
D. Elvis’ business manager and agent
9. __J___ Sam Phillips
E. Buddy Holly’s group
10. ___H__ Everly Brothers
F. R&B, Rock and Roll singer/pianist from New Orleans
11. ___F__ Fats Domino
G. member of Sam Phillips’ “million dollar quartet”
12. __C___ Shirelles
H. group known for novelty playlets
13. _B__Muddy Waters
I. major cover artist of R&B songs

3. 14. ___E__ Crickets
J. owner of Sun Records
15. ____K_ Chords
K. doo-wop group of the 1950s “Sh-Boom”
16 Explain twodifferent criticisms of Rock and Roll in the
1950s. Be specific with examples of who and what, and the
impact. Choose controversies about race,religion, music, or
other topic (consider music, lyrics, stage persona, etc.). (4
points)
1. Topic___________________:
2. Topic __________________:
17. In your opinion, which performer of 1950s rock and roll
would you have wanted to see/hear perform live, and why? Be
specific. (1 point)
Presley because of his charisma, looks, style of playing and his
intro of dance style within the age of rock and roll.
18. __d___ Louis Jordan
A. Texan who blended rock and roll with new ideas
19. __g___ Alan Freed
B. producer who coined the phrase, “rhythm & blues”
20. __f___ Little Richard

4. C. performed “Rocket 88” recorded at Sun Studio
21. _K____ Dick Clark
D. leader of a popular jump band
22. __a___ Buddy Holly
E. incorporated Latin rhythms in R&B and rock and roll
23. __c___ Ike Turner
F. “architect of rock and roll,” set the electric guitar style
24. __j___ Johnny Cash
G. DJ who coined the phrase, rock and roll
25. ___h__ Chuck Berry
H. flamboyant piano-playing rock and roll singer
26 .__e___ Bo Diddley
I. DJ bribery for airplay of recordes
27. __b___ Jerry Wexler
J. member of Sam Phillips’ “million dollar quartet”
28. ___I__ Payola
K. host of American Bandstand on television
29. Name the American city where the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame is located. (1 point)

5. Cleveland
30. Explain what a “cover” is in the music recording business.
(1 point)
When another artist plays a famous song, recently covered:
Bridge Over Troubled Water originally by Simon and Garfunkel
now being song by
31. Why did some recording companies want some R & B and
doo-wop songs “covered” by white artists in the 1950s? (1
point)
Wider acceptance of the music
32. What did the success of cross-over hits by the mid 1950s
indicate about the audiences of Billboard’s R&B, C&W, and
Pop charts? (1 point)
That as far as music, black or white didn’t matter
33. ___G__ Gospel
A. outlandish piano pounding rock and roll performer
34. ___A__ Jerry Lee Lewis
B. Elvis Presley’s back-up vocal group
35. ___B__ Jordanaires
C. rhythmic devise inserted between beats in slow doo-wop
36. __I___ Carole King
D. doo-wop group of the 1950s
37. __D___ Flamingos
E. man’s unnatural high voice, “head” voice

6. 38. __K___ Rockabilly
F. record format for early rock and roll
39. __E___ Falsetto
G. religious music with free-style singing
40. __L__ Ed Sullivan
H. Broadway musical about Sam Phillips’ studio
41. __H___ Million Dollar Quartet
I. songwriter on staff in the Brill Building
42. ___C__ Triplet
J. new social/economic class of the 1950s
43. ___J__ Teenagers
K. blend of country and R&B
44. __F___ 45 RPM
L. television host of a variety show introducing music
45. Describe the piano playing style of Little Richard and Jerry
Lee Lewis. (1 point)
Little Richrad played boogie woogie; Jerry Lee Lewis: a
pumping style
46. Describe how early rock and roll was different from Tin
Pan Alley music in a general sense in two areas. (4 points)

7. Tin Pan Alley
Rock and Roll
singing style
crooning style
call and response
instruments more horns and a big band sound
small band, guitars, drums piano
47. __K___ Overdubbing
A. repeated sections of music with new lyrics
48. __C___ Sun Studio
B. style of solo singer and back-up groups with nonsense
syllables
49. __A___ Verse form
C. R&B and early rock and roll recording location
50. __I___ Cover version
D. scaled-down big band ensemble
51. __H___ Rock ballad
E. slow blues featuring the electric guitar
52. ___J__ Boogie-woogie
F. style of singing with breaks between syllables, well = we-ell
53. __B___ Doo-wop

8. G. song popular on more than one Billboard chart
54. __F___ Hiccup
H. slow song with rock rhythm
55. __D_ Jump band
I. new recording of a previously recorded song
56. __J___ Riff
J. piano style of repetitive bass figures
57. ___E__ Electric blues
K. adding parts onto an existing recording
58. ___G__ Cross-over
L. short melodic/rhythmic idea at the beginning of the song
59. Describe what is meant by this thought. Be specific and
give an example. (1 point)
“In the Tin Pan Alley era, the song reigned supreme. In the
Rock and Roll era, the
performer reigned supreme.”
Tin Pan Alley heighted the music, the song, not the performer,
the songwriter but not necessarily the singer would become
famous.
Whereas in Rock and Roll, it was the name: Elvis, Johnny Cash,
have your heard ….
60. Explain what happened to the following
performers/promoters of early Rock and Roll that left the
movement leaderless by 1960. Be specific. (6 points)
Elvis Presley died at the early age of a drug overdose
Little Richard still alive and has/had a great impact on many

9. genres of music
Jerry Lee Lewis had a great career but it faltered after he
married a 13 year old cousin and it was nearly impossible to
regain the level of fame he had due to the scandal.
Chuck Berry pioneer of rock and roll; career stopped by a
prison sentence after his release he settled into married life and
worked at an assembly plant. In the 50s rose to an established
star, nightclub owner, but again sentenced to jail for
transporting an under age girl over state lines
Buddy Holly died in a plane crash
Alan Freed his career was destroyed by the Payola Scandal.
Listen to the following selections and answer the questions:
61. “Roll ‘Em, Pete” p. 102 (1 point) What instrument do
you hear?
Piano
62. Describe two differences between “Hound Dog” performed
by Willie Mae Thornton (R&B) and Elvis Presley (Rock and
Roll) that we listened to in class (and found on YouTube).
Consider the following characteristics of instruments, singing
style, and lyrics. (4 points)
Willie Mae Thornton
Elvis Presley
1. Blues style, moaning type singing style, sang as a bawdy
song, written for a “big bad woman”
Use of piano and drums
2. Elvis turned it around and made it sound like he was a
disappointed lover with his woman. Classic band sound
63. In your opinion, why do you think that Willie Mae

10. Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” had limited appeal and
Elvis Presley’s version had wider appeal? Be specific. (1
point)
The version was different, the instrumentation was different and
Elvis had established himself and he had broader appeal.
64. “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” p. 162 (1 point)
How does the instrumentation of this jump band differ from
the swing big band of the 1930s?er
In the earlier version use of more horns, this one more piano
65. “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man” p. 166 (1 point)
What is the musical term for the interruption of the beat you
hear in this selection? Stop time
66. “Move On Up a Little Higher” p. 105 (1 point)
Explain how the gospel singing style of Mahalia Jackson in
this recording influenced R&B. Be specific.
67. “Rock Around the Clock” p. 174 (2 points)
Why is this song often considered the first Rock and Roll
record? Bill Haley brought this song and his style to the world
on a European tour. The first song described as rock and roll.
In your opinion, what makes this song memorable? Because
it became a hit in both the U.S. andEurope
68. “Mystery Train” p. 176 (2 points)
How has this song been influenced by the blues? The lyrics
are sad, delivery and style was backed by a dance beat.
Give an example of “hiccup” singing in this song. Be
specific with words that feature the “hiccups.”.
Lo-ong; sixteen coaches long. An intake of air; train coming
around the bend (be end)
69. “Golden Gate Gospel Train” p. 104 (3 points)
“Sh Boom” p. 167

11. “I Only Have Eyes For You” p. 186
Which one of these three songs is performed a cappella?
Golden Gate Gospel Train, sang a cappella
Explain the influence of gospel music on doo-wop.
Doo-wop used the improvisation of voices as sounds or
instruments like they did in gospel
What is one difference between “Sh-Boom” and “I Only Have
Eyes for You?” the tempo and beat were totally different. Sh-
boom more doo-wop; the other a slow easy dance song being
crooned.
70. “Johnny B. Goode” p. 181 (2 points)
What instruments are used on this recording? Lead guitar,
bass guitar, drums, saxophoone
Give an example of call and response technique in this song.
Be specific. The interplay between his voice and the band.
71. Watch and listen to Buddy Holly on YouTube performing
“That’ll Be the Day” or “Peggy Sue” and list the instruments
that became the standard rock combo. (1 point)
Two guitars, a bass and drum
72. “Lucille” p. 180 (1 point)
Describe the singing style. Blues made famous by BB King
73. “Jailhouse Rock” p. 178 (1 point)
Describe the singing style. Made famous by Elvis Presley
had a rock and roll beat with a blues twist to it.
74. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” p. 192 (2 points)
Describe one way that this recording represented the closing
gap between black and white
people in music and society. This song was written by two
white songwriters, Carole King being one and song by a black
girls group.
Refer to the article “Girl Groups, Young Songwriters, and
Celebrity Producers” and indicate one

12. difference between the girl groups and most doo-wop groups
(mostly male).
Doo wops were mostly song without musical background
Girl groups had
75. Describe two differences between the versions of “Blue
Moon” performed by Ella Fitzgerald (Tin Pan Alley) and the
Marcels (Rock and Roll) that we listened to in class. Consider
the characteristics of dynamics, rhythm, instruments, singing
style, melody, and lyrics.
(4 points)
Fitzgerald’s Tin Pan Alley versionMarcels’ Rock and Roll
version
1. Full strings, slow dance song; big band
Song as a doo wop song
2. crooning, single singer
Lyrics were song totally different
beat, melody song by single singer

13. *** BONUS ***
1. Name the swing big band in which Louis Jordan first made
his mark as a saxophonist.
Tympany Four
2. What was the name of Alan Freed’s first stage show
featuring R&B artists? Moondog House
3. What R&B Louisiana radio station did Buddy Holly hear in
west Texas that influenced his rock
4. and roll style?
5. In what movie was Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”
used that propelled it to a big hit? BlackBoard Jungle
6. Around the CLock
7. What was the original name of the girls group, the Shirelles?
The puquellos
Instructions
Choose ONE essay to respond to: FItoAW Pascoe, McIntosh p.
536, OR Lipkin p. 595
The introduction to chapter 14 in From Inquiry to Academic
Writing asks an important question: “What could the world look
like, if we make the effort to become scholarly ‘myth-busters’
ourselves?” What are the problems the author sees in terms of
what behaviors are normalized vs. those that are “othered”?
Formulate an evidence-based argument to analyze ONE of the
articles you read. Where do you stand on the issues she/he
raises and the conclusions she/he draws? Which evidence is
compelling and why? (and/or which evidence is questionable?
Does the author fall victim to any fallacies (or does the author's
opposition fall victim to any fallacies?) Do you agree or
disagree with the author's claims, and why?
****Use the vocabulary from class (ethical, emotional, and

14. logical appeals, kinds of evidence, [anecdotal, statistical,
historical, cause and effect], and fallacies, references to how the
article is structured in terms of the classical arrangement,
refutation, concessions, etc.) in your essay. This will help you
explain why you agree/disagree with the claims.
· Though the majority of your essay is focusing on ONE article,
you may refer to the other articles and texts from the class so
far in your essay.
·
·
·
·
· Essay #5
English 1A: Essay #5
Criteria
Ratings
Pts
Response to the topic: Does the essay respond to the topic with
insight, depth and originality, while clearly meeting the terms
of the assignment?
Meets expectations
10 pts
No Marks
0 pts
10 pts
Introduction: Does the introduction include a specific hook
and/or summary of controversey? Does this opening transition
fluidly to the thesis statement? Thesis Statement: Is the thesis
statement clearly focused and develop a compelling argument
and advance the ideas of the topic with individual insight?
Meets expectations
20 pts
No Marks
0 pts

15. 20 pts
Body/ Support for Claims: • Does the body of the essay explain
your analysis and rationale of the argument completely? • Do
these explanations make sense? Are the details relevant? • Does
the argument go beyond class discussion using exceptional
analysis? • Does the confirmation provide specific support for
claims, including effective use of paraphrase and quotations that
integrate those writers’ words with your own?
Meets expectations
40 pts
No Marks
0 pts
40 pts
Structure/ Paragraphs: • Are the paragraphs organized and long
enough to respond thoroughly to the prompt? • Has the writer
provided enough specific support to prove that you read the
essay(s) completely? • Does the essay follow the guidelines of
the assignment (amount/type of sources, etc.) • Does the essay
transition between ideas fluidly? Does the order of the argument
make sense?
Meets expectations
40 pts
No Marks
0 pts
40 pts
Conclusion: Does the conclusion address: Why is the issue
important? What are the implications of the article? Why should
the reader care?
Meets expectations
10 pts
No Marks
0 pts

16. 10 pts
Language Usage and Mechanics: Does the essay exhibit superior
control of language, including diction, phrasing, syntactic
variety, and an ability to paraphrase accurately? Does the essay
avoid serious errors in mechanics and usage? Is the writing
grammatically, spelling and punctuation correct?
Meets expectations
10 pts
No Marks
0 pts
10 pts
Format: MLA; typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, Times New
Roman, 1-inch margins, pages numbered, proper heading,
completed within two hours and promptly copied/uploaded from
testing section
Meets expectations
10 pts
Book: From Inquiry to Academic Writing
Elline Lipkin
From Girl’s bodies, Girl’s selves: Body Image, Identity, and
Sexuality
Elline Lipkin is a scholar who also writes poetry and nonfiction.
Since 2008, she has held the position of Research Scholar at the
Center for the Study of Women at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA). This excerpt is from her book, Girls’
Studies (2009), which examines the his-tory and theories of
studying girls’ lives. “Girls’ Studies” is a growing field within
research on gender, as scholars focus on the way our earliest
expe-riences shape lifelong expectations of ourselves and our
place in society. As Lipkin says, “A girl’s body, almost from
birth (when her first weight is taken), often reflects cultural

17. expectations and conventions — in how she dresses, how she is
allowed to use her body, how she presents it to the world, and
how comfortable she feels within it” (para. 5). As you read, you
might consider how her examples and arguments might apply to
boys’ bodies and cultural expectations, too.In this piece, Lipkin
draws extensively from the research of cultural historian Joan
Jacobs Brumberg, whose book The Body Project: An Inti-mate
History of American Girls (1997) was one of the first to
examine the body — particularly the female body — as a
“project” in which every part of the body might come to be seen
as a “problem” that needs to be solved (often with products).
Lipkin notes of “body projects” ranging from hair-removal and
weight-loss to makeup and cosmetic procedures, “the effect on
the owners of the bodies means often feeling a disquieting angst
that they are never good enough as they are, that they are
forever being mea-sured and found lacking” (para. 13). Lipkin
offers an overview of Brum-berg’s argument that this
problematizing of girls’ bodies is hardly a new phenomenon; for
hundreds of years, consumer culture has inspired anxi-ety about
and “cures” for the female body. While Lipkin notes that many
beauty standards are set by “Endless images of alluring,
flirtatious, slender, usually white, and presumptively
heterosexual young women” (para. 2), be sure to read carefully
for ways girls of different races and ethnicities are affected by
— or resist — these standards. What other examples can you
think of that affect girls of all kinds? (The long section on
eating disorders offers some useful statistics.) What other
examples can you think of that demonstrate how girls of all
kinds resist them — often in quite creative ways, using social
media or other technology? While a focus on beauty culture may
seem frivolous, Lipkin draws on Brumberg’s research to argue
that our fundamental sense of ourselves as healthy and sexual
beings is affected by cultural “norms” that often are harmful
physically and psychologically. As you consider the long
history of this trend, consider what it would take to change it.
How might research, reading, and writing be part of that

18. change?
T he signs are everywhere — literally. Look up at a
billboard in any major American city and what’s being sold
isn’t just the newest soft drink or face wash. It’s usually also an
attractive woman, most often below the age of twenty-five,
smiling or posing suggestively. Movies, television shows, music
videos, magazines, video games, and ads for products varying
from clothing to toothpaste to cell phones feature young women,
and in Ameri-can culture, a certain look for these girls and
women — slender body; flaw-less (and more often than not
white) skin; delicate, even facial features, enhanced by makeup;
carefully coifed hair — is ubiquitous. This often isn’t even
cause for comment — but the images are absorbed and
“normalized” by viewers at almost every turn.“Children are
born anthropologists,” girls’ historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg
writes in her foreword to photojournalist Lauren Greenfield’s
2002 exposé Girl Culture , “able to expertly deconstruct and
mimic what culture offers them, especially in terms of gender
roles. Before they even abandon their teddy bears, contemporary
girls embrace the erotic. They also understand that their power
as women will come from their beauty, and that beauty in
American culture is defined, increasingly, by a certain body
type displayed in particular ways.” For the most part,
advertising, media, and other cultural vehicles reflect certain
physical “standards” for girls and women — that thinness is
attractive, that clear skin and cer-tain kinds of Caucasian
features are beautiful, that heterosexuality is the norm. Endless
images of alluring, flirtatious, slender, usually white, and
presumptively heterosexual young women imprint as “normal”
and desirable “standards” of feminine appearance into girls’
(and others’) minds, without those viewers necessarily realizing
how these values have infiltrated.Greenfield’s images in Girl
Culture paint an alarming portrait of how different girls respond
to this cultural focus on the female body: One eighteen-year-old
is shown being “blind weighed” with her back to the scale at a
treatment center for eating disorders (implying that she can’t

19. face the disheartening result); a five-year-old girl picks out
clothing in an upscale Beverly Hills boutique; and college girls
in bikinis strut by hoot-ing men at spring break competitions,
some seeming self-confident, others seeming uncertain.The girls
in Greenfield’s photos often see themselves as too thin, too fat,
not stylish enough, too trendy, attractive or ugly or desirable or
hid-eous. Comfort with one’s body appears all but nonexistent.
“I don’t know a girl who’s happy with her body,” states
eighteen-year-old Ashlee in text accompanying pictures of the
debutante Cotton Ball in Chattanooga, Ten-nessee. Ashlee, a
vegan who says she dislikes wearing makeup and dress-ing up,
attended the ball and participated in its rituals, including
shaving her armpits, to appease her family. “I just don’t
understand shaving every day,” she says. “I like my armpit hair.
My boyfriend likes my armpit hair, too. People just buy into the
unattractiveness of unshaven armpits. My whole family cheered
when I shaved.”
A girl’s body, almost from birth (when her first weight is
taken), often reflects cultural expectations and conventions — in
how she dresses, how she is allowed to use her body, how she
presents it to the world, and how comfortable she feels within
it. When she is younger, her body is measured against standards
of health and growth, as it would be for any child. But near
adolescence, a girl’s growing breasts, widening hips, and
changing skin become the site for many other standards. Her
breasts are not just a physical aspect of her body, but a way in
which others will perceive her as a teenager rather than as a
child — custom will dictate that it’s time to wear a bra, parents
might deem her old enough to handle more priv-ileges and
responsibilities, and she might receive more sexual attention
from acquaintances and strangers. Adolescent girls find
themselves on the receiving end of increasingly sexualized
expectations — from peers who cast a critical eye on girls’
appearance and behavior, from parents who might either assume
girls will date or fear that girls will date too soon, and from a
culture that is often uncomfortable with women who don’t

20. embody certain sexualized stereotypes. A changing body means
other changes in a girl’s life — some that she might be
emotionally able to meet, and some that she resists. But there is
no doubt that as she moves from childhood to adolescence, an
overlay of expectations — sexiness, attractiveness, availability
— can blanket a girl’s individual pacing of her desire to venture
into womanhood.While boys and men are increasingly presented
with images that also stray far from the reality of the average
male body, the use of male models to sell mundane products
isn’t as pervasive, and the presence of a con- ventionally
attractive or sexualized male body isn’t considered as strictly
standard to sell a product or tell a story. When women are
consistently objectified — that is, used as vehicles to sway
public view through their sexuality or projected attractiveness
— it sends girls a clear message. The onslaught of images of
impossibly perfect-looking, sexually contextualized female
bodies reinforces the idea that physical “perfection” and sexual
attractiveness are both normal and expected of women, and by
endlessly recreating scenarios that reinforce traditional gender
roles, advertisers simultaneously teach girls and women a set of
lessons about what it is to be female in America.
The Body as Battleground
In the 1997 book The Body Project: An Intimate History of
American Girls , author Joan Jacobs Brumberg traces the history
of how teenage girls within America have made different body
parts into “projects.” Examining historical views of aspects of
girls’ bodies — such as menstruation, body hair, skin
conditions, weight — Brumberg delineates the ways that girls
(and parents, doctors, and advertisers) have conceptualized
those aspects as “problematic” and devised ways of addressing
each one. Recollecting a discussion in which her female
college-age students discuss the “neces-sity” of bikini-line
waxes, Brumberg realizes that yet another body part has become
a “project” for girls to attend to, mold to a standard, and then
maintain. Asking herself why these students were adding
another area to manage to the long litany of bodily concerns

21. they already had, she rec-ognizes that girls are now sexualized
at a far younger age, and that con-cern with their bodies is yet
more pervasive and rampant, with advertisers eager to instruct
on depilation, control, and constant maintenance.Examining the
diaries of girls before World War I, Brumberg explains that the
girls whose diaries she finds and reads (most hailing from
middle-class families) were often praised for lack of attention to
their bodies: Feminine virtue was found in a kind of unself-
consciousness in which vanity about one’s body was considered
immoral or wrong. From decades later, the girlhood diaries that
Brumberg collects and reads cite numerous instances of self-
consciousness; by the 1950s, girls felt the need to improve their
hair, skin, teeth, and weight, among other “body projects” that
required honing and then maintenance in order to hew to
acceptable standards.Throughout her book, Brumberg considers
how girls’ bodies (and specific physical issues such as having
clear skin, maintaining virginity, or hiding menstruation) have
been commodified and valued as ways in which physical
perfection (or the attempt at its attainment) becomes a class-
based goal. As print media began to circulate more widely after
the turn of the twentieth century, through magazines,
newspapers, and books, advertisers also had an opportunity to
sell girls (and their parents) prod-ucts intended to improve
overall beauty and health, contributing to anxiety about not
meeting a standard of “normalcy,” which, as Brumberg shows,
historically has altered but has never left American cultural
consciousness.In her chapter “Sanitizing Puberty: The American
Way to Menstru-ate,” Brumberg writes, “In the effort to sell
products, menstruation finally burst out of the closet in the
1920s when popular magazines, such as the Ladies’ Home
Journal and Good Housekeeping , began to run ads for Kotex.
These advertisements constituted the first real public
acknowledgement of menstruation.” She writes that later, in the
1930s and 1940s, “Newly estab-lished educational divisions
within the personal products industry (i.e., Kimberly-Clark . . .
Tampax, Inc. . . .) began to supply mothers, teachers, parent-

22. teacher associations and also the Girl Scouts with free, ready-
made programs of instruction on ‘menstrual health.’ ” Postwar,
“marketing strat-egists understood that sales to the baby-boom
generation — soon to be the largest cohort of adolescents in
American history — could turn menstrual blood into gold.”
With menstruation, as with other functions and features of the
female body, Brumberg shows how marketing strategists and
cul-tural scripts intertwine until the messages girls receive are
impossible to separate out and are just accepted as part of an
overarching gender code.In her chapter “Perfect Skin,”
Brumberg looks at the history of teenage acne, noting that as far
back as 1885 a physician at New York Hospital realized that
girls were three times more likely than boys to seek help for
their skin. “Although boys surely suffer from the stigma of
acne,” Brum-berg writes, “girls’ pimples get more cultural
attention. Because of cultural mandates that link femininity to
flawless skin, the burden of maintain-ing a clear complexion has
devolved disproportionately upon women and girls. . . . Skin
care was really the first of many body projects endorsed and
supported by middle-class parents for their adolescent
children.” In Brumberg’s accounting, a girl’s face was a key to
her future: a good mar-riage (i.e., a marriage that put her into
the same or an even higher social and economic position than
she was in). As twentieth-century advances in dermatology also
made acne treatment more available, families could “invest” in
a daughter with skin issues so that her visage wasn’t marred.
Brumberg mentions a Victorian-era skin-care product called
Kosmeo that was advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog with
this copy: “When a man marries, nine times out of ten he
chooses a girl with a pretty complexion.” Brumberg’s research
concludes, “In order to avoid an unhappy future as a spinster,
thousands of American girls ordered Kosmeo, and then rubbed
earnestly with camel’s hair brushes and Turkish towels in order
to increase friction and improve blood circulation to the
face.”Another historical shift Brumberg notes involves girls’
response to makeup. She writes, “In the effort to look like the

23. attractive women they saw in movies and magazines, American
women in the 1920s put aside long-established objections to
face makeup and began to purchase and use a wide range of
cosmetics.” Brumberg details products marketed spe-cifically to
African American girls and women to lighten their skin, and she
recounts the “hierarchy of hue in the African American
community”; describing 1950s magazines’ range of ads for
lightening products, she elab-orates, “Until recent times —
probably the 1960s — the color of a girl’s skin was central to
her sense of self, as well as her place in the community of
people of color. Although skin bleachers are still sold today,
they generally are not used by the current generation to bleach
the entire face, the way older generations did, before the Black
Pride movement of the 1960s and 1970s.” Reflecting, again, on
how commerce intersects with “standards” that girls are told
they must adhere to in order to be pleasing, or attractive, she
writes, “The fact that skin bleachers and fade creams sold so
well is a painful and compelling reminder of how much class
and racial anxiety has been invested in skin in American
society, particularly among groups who suffer from exclusion
and bigotry.”What makes the female body such a battleground?
The claims that parents, advertisers, and culture make on girls’
bodies are dizzying — body odor must be banned, underarm
hair removed, breasts lifted to a certain perk, skin made clear
enough to touch, hair made glossy and enticing. The effect on
the owners of the bodies means often feeling a disquieting angst
that they are never good enough as they are, that they are
forever being measured and found lacking. Contemporary “body
projects” that girls today might undertake include the ones that
Brumberg shows have lasted for decades in girls’ awareness:
weight, skin, haircut and color, among oth-ers. But consider
how many other “body projects” are also undertaken in the
twenty-first century: eyebrow grooming, development of fuller
eye-lashes, chemical peels and dermabrasion, tattooing, nail art,
“bikini line” maintenance, colored contacts or Lasik surgery,
tooth whitening, use of push-up bras or minimizers,

24. contemporary “smoothers” to cover up panty lines, cellulite
erasure, and skin buffing. And the list could go on.Body weight
and body shape come up consistently in Brumberg’s history as
factors to be controlled. In the chapter titled “Body Projects,”
under the subtitle “The Century of Svelte,” Brumberg gives a
brief history of the cult of thinness in America, and she also
shows how trends in and expectations about girls’ body shapes
have changed, demonstrating again how subject the female
figure has been to cultural trends and demands. She cites 1920
as the first time that “teenage girls made systematic efforts to
lower their weight by food restriction and exercise” as
adolescent girls “were motivated by a new ideal of female
beauty that began to evolve around the turn of the century.”
New fashion trends that emphasized a trim silhouette replaced
more voluptuous Victorian hourglass figures, with small waists
and large hips. Instead, the American woman migrated toward
the look of the “flapper” — flat chested, long limbed, and
decidedly slender. Brumberg writes that girls around this period
(starting around 1908 and progressing through the 1920s and
1930s) “bade farewell to cor-sets, stays, and petticoats, and they
began to diet, or internalize control of the body.”The changing
fashions of girls’ breasts (whether their owners are try-ing to
appear flat or large chested) is another point Brumberg explores
by looking at the evolution of the training bra and
undergarments sold to girls and women, especially around
teenage anxiety about “developing” too quickly or too slowly.
Different decades dictated that breasts either be disguised or
enhanced, but the focus on controlling one’s weight remained a
constant, as it still seems to be. Another historical trend
Brumberg traces is the focus on female legs: “Americans have
talked about glamorous ‘gams’ ever since the Rockettes made
good legs a requirement back in the 1930s,” she writes. “But
American taste in legs has changed considerably in the past
half-century.” She notes that whereas the Rockettes had
“shorter, chunkier limbs than today’s long-stemmed, lean
favorites,” changes in fashion have accounted for an emphasis

25. on “tight, narrow thighs.” After miniskirts became popular in
the 1960s, girls and women felt more empha-sis put on their
legs — particularly their thighs, which were meant to be as trim
and cellulite free as possible. The phrase “thunder thighs,”
notes Brumberg, entered the American lexicon “in the early
1980s both as short-hand for female anxiety about the body and
as a misogynistic slur.” Dis-cussing the cellulite avoidance
industry, through use of thigh creams and liposuction, she
concludes, “Our national concern about ‘thunder thighs’ says a
lot about what Americans value. . . . Not surprisingly, there is
more self-hatred [of the body] among women than men, and
women tend to be especially dissatisfied about the lower body
— the waist, hips, thighs, and buttocks. . . . This sad reality
needs to be factored into our understanding of girls and the way
in which they develop their sense of self.”Without question,
being thin is widely held up in American culture today as an
ideal to be achieved. Cultural differences play a large role in
these perceptions; what’s considered a “normal” body shape in a
rural Midwestern community might look very different from
what is considered “standard” in Manhattan. A Latina girl might
have a fuller, larger frame presented to her as positive, as might
an African American girl. But no matter a girl’s cultural
background, what is seen within American society at large is a
narrow standard that’s often in direct opposition to the bod-ies
of most real women. And from the scores of models who
advertise the “waif look” alongside whatever product they are
hawking to the scores of slender television and film stars, the
image of the thin woman is every-where. And recent teen pop-
culture icons varying from the Olsen twins to Destiny’s Child,
Lindsay Lohan, and Miley Cyrus tend to embody the same
extremely slender stereotype.Why value thinness? The concept
that women’s presentation matches the status they hold within a
patriarchal culture — meant to be diminu-tive, shrinking, not
taking up excessive space, and standing in contrast to a larger
male form — is one possible explanation. There are many other
via-ble responses as to why women are told through cultural

26. code that being thinner and smaller is better, including the fact
that most women do have smaller body sizes than men do. But
the pervasive glorification of taking up less space with one’s
body, and the idealized feminine body shape being slight rather
than large, is a widely accepted tenet of American culture,
sometimes with drastic consequences.The media literacy
organization Mind on the Media reports, “Eighty percent of ten-
year-old American girls diet. The number one magic wish for
young girls age eleven to seventeen is to be thinner.” The media
are most often cited as the instigators of pressure to be thin. In
many sources the height of the average American women is
listed as five feet four inches, and her weight is listed as
approximately 140 pounds. In a more recent study by the
National Center for Health Statistics, the average American
woman’s weight is now listed as 163 pounds and her height is
listed as just under five feet four inches. The height of the
average fashion model, on the other hand, is approximately five
feet nine inches to above six feet tall, and her average weight is
approximately 117 pounds. This means that fash-ion models are
on average significantly thinner and taller than the major-ity of
the female American population, and yet they present an image
to which most women and girls feel they ought to aspire. Seen
in this light, the bloatedness of the diet industry — in which
book authors, pharmaceu-tical companies, dieting organizations,
makers of special exercise equip-ment, magazine publishers,
and support groups feed anxiety to women about weight while
filling their own bank accounts — becomes quietly disturbing.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI),
anorexia nervosa is “a serious, often chronic, and life-
threatening eating disorder defined by a refusal to maintain
minimal body weight within 15 percent of an individual’s
normal weight.” Asserting that anorexia most often occurs in
pre- and postadolescent girls, NAMI’s website explains that
“one reason younger women are particularly vulnerable to
eating disorders is their ten-dency to go on strict diets to
achieve an ‘ideal’ figure. This obsessive diet-ing behavior

27. reflects today’s societal pressure to be thin, which is seen in
advertising and the media.”Bulimia (or bulimia nervosa),
another well-known eating disorder, occurs when girls eat
excessively (or “binge”) and then purge their food, whether
through vomiting, use of laxatives, or diuretics. With both buli-
mia and anorexia, overexercising can be common, along with a
sense of “body dysmorphic syndrome” — the sense that one’s
own body is distorted, bloated, and unacceptable, despite what a
mirror or scale might reveal. Left untreated, both disorders can
be fatal, and even with treatment both can cause lifelong
damage to the body through inadequate nutrition and through
the development of a vexed relationship with food.Estimating
that between one-half to 1 percent of all females in the United
States will develop anorexia, NAMI also states that “because
more than 90 percent of all those who are affected are
adolescent and young women, the disorder has been
characterized as primarily a woman’s ill-ness.” The complex
motivations underlying different cases of anorexia are many —
girls might experience starving themselves as a way to exercise
control over their changing bodies, or they may see it as a way
to comply with a cultural standard of extreme thinness,
promoted to them daily and tacitly praised by parents who
admire models’ or actresses’ bodies.In response to these
concerns, activists and girls’ advocates have pushed in recent
years for magazines aimed at adolescent girls (and magazines
geared toward women) to employ diverse models with “real”
figures that exemplify different body types. Agitating for
change with how girls and women are perceived by the public
— and hence, perceive their own bodies — is nothing new,
although advocating for change has taken different forms.
Feminist activists of the 1960s and 1970s prom-inently crusaded
against the sexist and racist standards of beauty pag-eants: The
group New York Radical Women organized a protest in 1968 in
which two hundred activists in Atlantic City, New Jersey,
gathered to express outrage over the Miss America Pageant’s
objectification of girls and women, likening them to animals

28. being judged for their physical attributes. According to Rory
Dicker in her work A History of U.S. Fem-inisms , the
protesters carried signs with messages such as C AN M AKEUP
C OVER THE W OUNDS OF O UR O PPRESSION ? and T HE
R EAL M ISS A MERICA L IVES IN H ARLEM . Dicker
explains that the last sign made reference to the pageant’s
embedded racism: “Until 1940, contestants had to be white, and
as of 1968, no black woman had competed in, much less won,
the contest.” These campaigns of the past, and those of the
present, have often been met with mixed success. In 2004 the
skin- and hair-product company Dove launched a Campaign for
Real Beauty, during which scouts recruited a variety of
“ordinary-looking” women and asked them to pose in basic
white underwear while looking naturally proud of their
nonmodel-size bodies. Dove also set up the Dove Self-Esteem
Fund, which sponsored a series of videos and online resources
meant to promote body acceptance among women and girls, no
matter their shape or size.Dove’s campaign sought to use “real
women” to defy use of expected body shapes and types, as well
as ages, of models, and it pinpointed bol-stering self-esteem in
girls as a crucial starting point to having grown women
appreciate their bodies as they are. In a “Girls Only” part of its
web site, the campaign offered interactive tools for girls to use
to think about issues of body image and self-esteem, with
activities designed to help girls figure out who best supports
them in their lives, identify where their inner strengths lie, and
determine what they need to feel good about them-selves. In the
site’s “Girls Only Interactive Self-Esteem Zone,” users could
learn how to decode media messages aimed at girls and women
and view “before” and “after” images of models whose bodies
had been cosmetically retouched and digitally manipulated.And
yet it is critical to look more closely at what this media
campaign is selling — just as Dove advises media-literate girls
to do. Detractors are quick to point out that, fundamentally,
Dove is still hawking products to girls and women that they
probably don’t fundamentally need — but with different,

29. “affirming,” packaging. And a further catch? One of the original
ads for the Dove Real Beauty campaign was for a cellulite-
firming cream, pointing to the disconnect between promoting
women’s self-acceptance and selling a product that diminishes
the size of women’s thighs.Reporter Rebecca Traister critiqued
the campaign — and other media campaigns that use a “feel
good about yourself” tactic to fundamentally tell girls and
women that they need to do (or buy) more — in a 2005
Salon.com article, citing the tagline used in the Dove
marketing: “For too long/beauty has been defined by narrow,
stifling sterotypes [sic]./You’ve told us it’s time to change all
that./We agree./Because we believe real beauty comes/In many
shapes, sizes and ages./It is why we started the Campaign for
Real Beauty.” Traister, pointing out the cellulite-firming cream
conun-drum, writes, “As long as you’re patting yourself on the
back for hiring real-life models with imperfect bodies, thereby
‘challenging today’s stereo-typical view of beauty and inspiring
women to take great care of them-selves,’ why ask those models
to flog a cream that has zero health value and is just an
expensive and temporary Band-Aid for a problem’ that the
media has told us we have with our bodies?” Traister also
describes a simi-larly conflicted girl-focused ad campaign,
colaunched by Bath and Body Works and American Girl dolls,
that purportedly focuses on “Real Beauty Inside and Out” by
selling young girls “personal care products ‘designed to help
girls ages 8 to 12 feel — and be — their best.’” The products —
”body lotions, splashes, soaps and lip balms, all dressed up in
girl-friendly ‘hues of berry’” — arrived “with an inspirational
message like ‘Real beauty means no one’s smile shines exactly
like yours,’ ‘Real beauty is helping a friend,’ or ‘Real beauty is
trusting in yourself.’ ”ln 2007, the Campaign for a Commercial-
Free Childhood (CCFC) launched a letter-writing campaign to
Unilever, Dove’s owner, citing the hypocrisy in Dove’s hyping
its marketing campaign for girls “while simul-taneously
advertising Axe Body Spray by degrading them.” The organiza-
tion’s press release cites CCFC director and cofounder Dr.

30. Susan Linn: “Even as Unilever basks in praise for its Dove Real
Beauty campaign, they are profiting from Axe marketing that
blatantly objectifies and degrades young women.” Unilever’s
Axe product line, marketed to boys, featured ads trading on the
humor of over-the-top sexist, stereotypical gender roles: In one
promotional online music video for Axe, the Bom Chicka Wah
Wahs, a young female singing trio wearing only panties, bras,
gar-ters, and high-heeled boots, gyrate seductively atop a bus,
fondle their own breasts, cuddle up to a variety of phallic
objects, and sing pantingly about how the scent of Axe
“attacks” and overwhelms a woman’s “com-mon sense.” The
singers writhe around stripper poles and along the floor while
the camera repeatedly cuts to the women’s crotches and
bottoms. A “nerdy girl” with glasses who is first seen ironing
and mentions she needs to get to work is then transformed into a
sex kitten like the other singers; claiming she wants “true love
like Romeo and Juliet,” she is then “converted” to the other
singers’ hypersexual look with their implication of sexual
licentiousness. “[The group’s] suggestive theme song and video
is all about how the Axe aroma causes women to lose control
sexually,” CCFC writes. “Sample lyric: ‘If you have that aroma
on, you can have our whole band.’” Bob McCannon, copresident
of the Action Coalition for Media Education, calls the Dove
campaign “marketing masquerading as media literacy.” Whether
it’s viewed positively or negatively, it’s cer-tain that the Dove
campaign for girls and women has caused a stir — and maybe
one that will edge change forward by other marketers. However,
if change simply means new types of marketing for products
that funda-mentally tell women their bodies need improvement,
does it really mean true progress?
Freedom and Choices
In the final chapter of The Body Project , Brumberg writes, “At
the end of the twentieth century, living in a girl’s body is more
complicated than it was a century ago.” She lays out a late-
twentieth-century dilemma that still resonates in the twenty-
first, in what some still consider a “postfeminist” era: Girls, she

31. explains, are told “on the one hand . . . that being female was no
bar to accomplishment. Yet girls of [this] generation learned
from a very early age that the power of their gender was tied to
what they looked like — and how ‘sexy’ they were — rather
than to character or achieve-ment.” Absent the Victorian-era
“protective umbrella” that once shielded girls (and restricted
them) from sexuality, girls have more freedom than ever, but,
according to Brumberg, “their freedom is laced with peril.”Yet
openness about sexuality in a post-sexual revolution era also
gives girls options they would never before experience: the
choice to explore their sexuality before marriage or committed
partnership, to understand their own desires and needs, to
discover whether or not they are hetero-sexual, bisexual,
lesbian, or want to move between definitions.“Knowledge is
power” is a popular saying, and it is remarkable how much more
informed girls can now be — through Internet resources if there
isn’t open discussion within their own families or good
information given through school or other community resources.
Knowing more about their bodies and about sex leads girls
toward making their own choices, although careful media
education is still needed to decode options that are
“normalized,” such as being sexualized at early ages or at a
moment when a girl feels she “should” be, but might not be,
ready.Artist Barbara Kruger’s famous statement “Your body is a
battle-ground” is often heard within circles where women
examine issues per-taining to bodies, gender, and cultural
expectations. Girls’ more recently won freedoms — to
participate in sports, to envision and plan for careers previously
limited to (often privileged) men, to access accurate informa-
tion about sexuality and sexual health — intersect with a
consumer cul-ture that sees girls and women as both bait and
targets, and a society that has not come as far in abolishing
limiting and harmful stereotypes of gender and sexuality as it
likes to think. The site of a complex locus of cultural issues
surrounding power, identity, and sexuality — often converging
at uncomfortable angles — a girl’s body is hardly peaceful to

32. inhabit.
Book: From Inquiry to Academic Writing
Peggy McIntosh
White privilege: The Invisible Knapsack
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College
Center for Research on Women and has written many well-
known articles on mul-ticultural and gender-equitable curricula
and is a sought-after lecturer on these topics. The ideas in this
very influential essay are drawn from conference presentations
in 1986 and 1987 and were published as a work-ing paper in
1988 and reprinted in the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School . When McIntosh first spoke out about white privilege,
she was among the first scholars developing an analysis of
“whiteness” as a racial cate-gory, which involves in part
examining the ways European-Americans have become an
“invisible norm” against which other racial categories are often
measured. In this article, McIntosh traces her own shift from
simply seeing nonwhites as “disadvantaged” to seeing her own
whiteness as an unearned “privilege.” As she explains early in
her essay, I have come to see white privilege as an invisible
package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each
day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White
privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special
provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks,
passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank
checks. (para. 3) Perhaps the most striking feature of this essay,
rare in scholarly writ-ing, is the long personal list in the middle
of the piece in which she details the unearned advantages she
experiences in her daily life. This strategy of connecting
concrete, daily experiences to larger systems of power enables
readers to freshly “see” advantages that might come from social
class, nationality, educational status, gender, sexuality,
nationality, or able- bodied status. In other words, McIntosh’s
approach is one we might all use to analyze many different
aspects of our daily lives.In her final paragraph, she leaves

33. readers with the provocative ques-tion, “What will we do with
such knowledge?” In this piece, McIntosh takes risks and
reveals her previous ignorance and her slow learning pro-cess;
in so doing, she invites readers to take similar risks and to
begin this important work, as well.
T hrough work to bring materials from women’s studies into the
rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness
to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may
grant that women are dis-advantaged. They may say they will
work to raise women’s status, in the society, the university, or
the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of
lessening men’s status. Denials that amount to taboos surround
the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s
disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being
fully acknowledged, less-ened, or ended.Thinking through
unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized
that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was
most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly
denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been
taught about racism as something that puts others at a
disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary
aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.I think
whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as
males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have
begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white
privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible
package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each
day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White
privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of spe-cial
provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools,
and blank checks.Describing white privilege makes one newly
accountable. As we in women’s studies work to reveal male
privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one
who writes about having white privilege must ask, “Having
described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”After I realized
the extent to which men work from a base of un- acknowledged

34. privilege, I understood that much of their oppressive-ness was
unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from
women of color that white women whom they encounter are
oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as
oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began
to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and
have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.My
schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor,
as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a
damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual
whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My
schooling followed the pattern my col-league Elizabeth Minnich
has pointed out: Whites are taught to think of their lives as
morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that
when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will
allow “them” to be more like “us.” Daily Effects of White
Privilege I decided to try to work on myself at least by
identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my
life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case
attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class,
religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course
all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can
tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and
acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact
in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on
most of these conditions. 1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the
company of people of my race most of the time. 2. I can avoid
spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and
who have learned to mistrust my kind or me. 3. If I should need
to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchas-ing housing
in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will
be neutral or pleasant to me. 5. I can go shopping alone most of
the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or
harassed. 6. I can turn on the television or open to the front
page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

35. 7. When I am told about our national heritage or about
“civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what
it is. 8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular
materials that testify to the existence of their race. 9. If I want
to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on
white privilege.10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice
heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.11.
I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another
person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of
his/her race.12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding
the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find
the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a
hairdresser’s shop and find some-one who can cut my hair.13.
Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my
skin color not to work against the appearance of financial
reliability.14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the
time from people who might not like them.15. I do not have to
educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their
own daily physical protection.16. I can be pretty sure that my
children’s teachers and employers will tol-erate them if they fit
school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do
not concern others’ attitudes toward their race. 17. I can talk
with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my
color.18. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not
answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to
the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.19. I
can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting
my race on trial.20. I can do well in a challenging situation
without being called a credit to my race.21. I am never asked to
speak for all the people of my racial group.22. I can remain
oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who
constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture
any penalty for such oblivion.23. I can criticize our government
and talk about how much I fear its poli-cies and behavior
without being seen as a cultural outsider.24. I can be pretty sure
that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge,” I will be facing a

36. person of my race.25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS
audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out
because of my race.26. I can easily buy posters, postcards,
picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s
magazines featuring people of my race.27. I can go home from
most meetings of organizations I belong to feel-ing somewhat
tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered,
unheard, held at a distance, or feared.28. I can be pretty sure
that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely
to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to
jeopardize mine.29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the
promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering
on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present
setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.30. If I declare
there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at
hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position
than a person of color will have.31. I can choose to ignore
developments in minority writing and minority activist
programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any
case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative
conse-quences of any of these choices.32. My culture gives me
little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people
of other races.33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape,
bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-
interested or self-seeking.35. I can take a job with an
affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on
the job suspect that I got it because of my race.36. If my day,
week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative
episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.37. I can be
pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with
me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.38. I can
think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or
profes-sional, without asking whether a person of my race
would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.39. I can
be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my

37. race.40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing
that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the
places I have chosen.41. I can be sure that if I need legal or
medical help, my race will not work against me.42. I can
arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience
feel-ings of rejection owing to my race.43. If I have low
credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the
problem.44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions
which give atten-tion only to people of my race.45. I can expect
figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to
experiences of my race.46. I can choose blemish cover or
bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my
skin.47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting
embarrass-ment or hostility in those who deal with us.48. I have
no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our
household.49. My children are given texts and classes which
implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them
against my choice of domes-tic partnership.50. I will feel
welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life,
institutional and social.
Elusive and Fugitive
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I
wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an
elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great,
for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these
things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not
what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through
no virtues of their own.In unpacking this invisible knapsack of
white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that
I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these
perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a
more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of
these variet-ies are only what one would want for everyone in a
just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious,
arrogant, and destructive.I see a pattern running through the
matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were

38. passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of
cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who
could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move
I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as
belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for
me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to
anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the
main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.In proportion
as my racial group was being made confident, comfort-able, and
oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident,
uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from
many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was
being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.For
this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading.
We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether
earned or con-ferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the
conditions I have described here work systematically to over-
empower certain groups. Such privilege sim-ply confers
dominance because of one’s race or sex.
Earned Strength, Unearned Power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and
unearned power. Conferred privilege can look like strength
when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not
all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some,
like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that
your race will not count against you in court, should be the
norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less
powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as
the ignored groups.We might at least start by distinguishing
between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and
negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always
reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that
one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say,
should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an
unearned enti-tlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is
an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a

39. process of coming to see that some of the power that I
originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the
United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred
dominance.I have met very few men who are truly distressed
about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred
dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is
whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly
distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and
conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them.
In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they
actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white
students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect
them because they are not people of color; they do not see
“whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex
are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need simi-
larly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage,
or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to
nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.Difficulties and
dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many.
Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the
ad- vantages associated with them should not be seen as the
same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned
advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race,
religion, sex, and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all
of the oppressions are interlocking, as the mem-bers of the
Combahee River Collective pointed out in their “Black Feminist
Statement” of 1977.One factor seems clear about all of the
interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we
can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the
dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place,
I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to
recognize rac-ism only in individual acts of meanness by
members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring
unsought racial dominance on my group from
birth.Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change
them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white

40. individuals changed their attitude. But a “white” skin in the
United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we
approve of the way dominance has been con-ferred on us.
Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.To
redesign social systems, we need first to acknowledge their
colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials
surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep
the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting
unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these
subjects taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity
seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into
a position of dominance while denying that systems of
dominance exist.It seems to me that obliviousness about white
advantage, like oblivi-ousness about male advantage, is kept
strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the
myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally
available to all. Keeping most people unaware that free-dom of
confident action is there for just a small number of people props
up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the
same groups that have most of it already.Although systemic
change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me
and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily
consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What
will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching
men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use
unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our
arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems
on a broader base.