The Wrong Prescription for Women: How Medicine and Media Create a "Need" for Treatments, Drugs, and Surgery

by Paula J. Caplan, Maureen C. McHugh, Joan C. Chrisler

Overview

This groundbreaking book challenges the medicalized approach to women's experiences including menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause and suggests that there are better ways for women to cope with real issues they may face.

Before any woman diets, douches, botoxes, reduces, reconstructs, or fills a prescription for antidepressants, statins, hormones, menstrual suppressants, or diet pills, she should read this book. Contesting common medical practice, the book addresses the many aspects of women's lives that have been targeted as "deficient" in order to support the billion-dollar profits of the medical-pharmacological industry and suggests alternatives to these "remedies."

The contributors—psychologists, sociologists, and health experts—are also gender experts and feminist scholars who recognize the ways in which gender is an important aspect of the human experience. In this eye-opening work, they challenge the marketing and "science" that increasingly render women's bodies and experiences as a series of symptoms, diseases, and dysfunctions that require treatment by medical professionals who prescribe pharmaceutical and surgical interventions. Each article in the book addresses the marketing of a specific "condition" that has been constructed in a way that convinces a woman that her body is inadequate or her experience and behavior are not good enough. Among the topics addressed are menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, post-partum adjustment, sexual desire, weight, body dissatisfaction, moodiness, depression, grief, and anxiety.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440831768
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/14/2015
Series:	Women's Psychology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Maureen C. McHugh, PhD, teaches gender and diversity at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP).

Joan C. Chrisler, PhD, is the Class of 1943 Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword Michele A. Paludi ix

Foreword Paula J. Caplan xi

Introduction: The Medicalization of Women's Bodies and Everyday Experience Maureen C. McHugh Joan C. Chrisler 1

1 Pregnancy and Birth as a Medical Crisis Ruthbeth D. Finerman Adriane M. F. Sanders Lynda M. Sagrestano 17

2 (Re)Productive Disorders: The Expanding Marketplace of Infertility Medicine Emily Breitkopf Lisa R. Rubin 37

3 The Medicalization of the Menstrual Cycle: Menstruation as a Disorder Jessica Barnack-Tavlaris 61

4 The Medicalization of Women's Moods: Premenstrual Syndrome and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder Joan C. Chrisler Jennifer A. Gorman 77

5 Menopause: Deficiency Disease or Normal Reproductive Transition? Heather Dillaway 99

6 Menopause and Sexuality: Resisting Representations of the Abject Asexual Woman Jane M. Ussher Janette Perz Chloe Parton 123

7 Women's Sexual Problems: Is There a Pill for That? Leonore Tiefer 147

8 The Thin Ideal: A "Wrong Prescription" Sold to Many and Achievable by Few Mindy J. Erchull 161

9 From Fat Shaming to Size Acceptance: Challenging the Medical Management of Fat Women Ashley E. Kasardo Maureen C. McHugh 179

10 Medicalizing Women's Weight; Bariatric Surgery and Weight-Loss Drugs Julie Konik Christine A. Smith 203

11 Can Women's Body Image Be "Fixed"? Women's Bodies, Well-Being, and Cosmetic Surgery Charlotte N. Markey Patrick M. Markey 221

12 Women's Loss of Self through Antidepressants: The Depression Diagnosis as a Form of Social Control Alisha Ali 239

13 Mourning Matters: Women and the Medicalization of Grief Leeat Granek 257

Index 277

About the Editors and Contributors 287

Editorial Reviews

The threads that tie the volume together are clear: the pathologizing and undervaluing of women's health-related experiences; the double-edged sword of medicalization, which can take women's health risks seriously while patronizingly 'localizing authority for [their health] care in the hands of physicians' (to quote the chapter titled 'Pregnancy and Birth as a Medical Crisis'); and social context and the influences of the media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.” —Choice

“Maureen C. McHugh and Joan C. Chrisler have gathered together an impressive collection of chapters on the medicalization of women's normal physical experiences throughout the life cycle. While researchers have been writing about this phenomenon in relation to particular issues for decades, this collection highlights the broader problematic treatment of women's experiences, exposing commonalities concerning the treatment of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and birth, infertility, sexual response, menopause, body size and image, and depression. Taken as a whole, the pattern is striking. . . . Because these chapters present research thoroughly, in language that is accessible for readers, they will help women to better understand their own life experiences and provide the impetus to think critically about their choices.” —Psychology of Women Quarterly

From the Publisher