Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures

She takes up the overwhelming preoccupation with the experience of being humiliated, dominated, or even abused that has pervaded the stories that make up women?s culture?from eighteenth-century epistolary novels to popular twentieth-century teen magazine features to present-day romantic comedies. In three chapters??Rough Sex,? ?Expensive Sheets,? and ?Saying Yes to the Dress??that mirror the plot structures of feminine fictions themselves, this book tells the story of the desires that only the guiltiest of pleasures evoke. Zibrak reexamines documents of femme culture long dismissed as ?trash? to reveal the surprisingly cathartic experiences produced by tales of domination, privilege, and the material trappings of the heteropatriarchy. Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at American culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures reclaims women?s experiences for themselves.