Womanhood

Ariel Levy profiles a number of individuals, primarily in Part One of the book, to demonstrate alternative, non-normative expressions of womanhood and question what it means to be a woman.

Ariel's career centers around this question of what it means to be a woman. The first article she publishes profiles an obese woman's nightclub and analyzes a counterculture of women who embrace alternative body types that do not fit into standardized female beauty ideals. This is only the first in a series of articles Ariel writes throughout the book which all profile a woman or group of women who live outside society's normalized expectations of womanhood.

When Ariel profiles Caster Semenya, an inter-sex woman, she is confronted directly with questions on the nature of womanhood. The realities of living as an inter-sex person show Ariel that, contrary to popular belief, womanhood cannot be easily defined. Ariel questions the...