They hate their thighs. They binge and purge. They want a perfect body. These are the American girls we've heard about in report after report--surveys telling us that half of all teen-aged girls are dieting at any given time, and suggesting that many of them are "at risk" for eating disorders. But what do these statistics really mean? How do girls think about their bodies, their appearance, their culture? In Fat Talk the girls answer for themselves. The result of a study that followed hundreds of teen-aged girls for three years, this book brings to light the subtleties, the complexities, and the realities of girls' ideas about their shapes, their eating habits, and their physical ideals. 
 Anthropologist Mimi Nichter uses an engaging narrative style to explore the influence of peers, family, and media on girls' sense of self. In extensive excerpts from interviews, we hear how these girls differ from those we encounter in surveys. In particular, despite widespread dissatisfaction with one aspect or another of their bodies, the girls did not diet so much as talk about dieting. "Fat talk," Nichter wryly argues, is a kind of social ritual among friends, a way of establishing solidarity. 
 Fat Talk reveals some differences between the black and white subjects Nichter interviewed--not just in matters of weight and appearance, but also in the mother-daughter relationship that seemed to powerfully influence a girl's self-image. Moving beyond the stereotypes of such relationships, Nichter examines the issues and struggles that mothers face in bringing up healthy daughters today--and suggests how we might help girls move beyond punishing images of ideal beauty.

Fat Talk: What Girls and Their Parents Say about Dieting

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Nichter, Mimi

Diets & Weight Loss

Harvard University Press

Teen-aged girls hate their bodies and diet obsessively, or so we hear. News stories and reports of survey research often claim that as many as three girls in five are on a diet at any given time, and they grimly suggest that many are “at risk” for eating disorders. But how much can we believe these frightening stories? What do teenagers mean when they say they are dieting?
Anthropologist Mimi Nichter spent three years interviewing middle school and high school girls―lower-middle to middle class, white, black, and Latina―about their feelings concerning appearance, their eating habits, and dieting. In Fat Talk, she tells us what the girls told her, and explores the influence of peers, family, and the media on girls’ sense of self. Letting girls speak for themselves, she gives us the human side of survey statistics.
Most of the white girls in her study disliked something about their bodies and knew all too well that they did not look like the envied, hated “perfect girl.” But they did not diet so much as talk about dieting. Nichter wryly argues―in fact some of the girls as much as tell her―that “fat talk” is a kind of social ritual among friends, a way of being, or creating solidarity. It allows the girls to show that they are concerned about their weight, but it lessens the urgency to do anything about it, other than diet from breakfast to lunch. Nichter concludes that if anything, girls are watching their weight and what they eat, as well as trying to get some exercise and eat “healthfully” in a way that sounds much less disturbing than stories about the epidemic of eating disorders among American girls.
Black girls, Nichter learned, escape the weight obsession and the “fat talk” that is so pervasive among white girls. The African-American girls she talked with were much more satisfied with their bodies than were the white girls. For them, beauty was a matter of projecting attitude (“’tude”) and moving with confidence and style.
Fat Talk takes the reader into the lives of girls as daughters, providing insights into how parents talk to their teenagers about their changing bodies. The black girls admired their mothers’ strength; the white girls described their mothers’ own “fat talk,” their fathers’ uncomfortable teasing, and the way they and their mothers sometimes dieted together to escape the family “curse”―flabby thighs, ample hips. Moving beyond negative stereotypes of mother–daughter relationships, Nichter sensitively examines the issues and struggles that mothers face in bringing up their daughters, particularly in relation to body image, and considers how they can help their daughters move beyond rigid and stereotyped images of ideal beauty.

Teen & Young Adult

Lighting Up: The Rise of Social Smoking on College Campuses

While the past 40 years have seen significant declines in adult smoking, this is not the case among young adults, who have the highest prevalence of smoking of all other age groups. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the “real world”? Drawing on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of young adults, Lighting Up takes the reader into their everyday lives to explore social smoking.              Mimi Nichter argues that we must understand more about the meaning of social and low level smoking to youth, the social contexts that cause them to take up (or not take up) the habit, and the way that smoking plays a large role in students’ social lives. Nichter examines how smoking facilitates social interaction, helps young people express and explore their identity, and serves as a means for communicating emotional states. Most college students who smoked socially were confident that “this was no big deal.” After all, they were “not really smokers” and they would only be smoking for a short time. But, as graduation neared, they expressed ambivalence or reluctance to quit. As many grads today step into an uncertain future, where the prospect of finding a good job in a timely manner is unlikely, their 20s may be a time of great stress and instability. For those who have come to depend on the comfort of cigarettes during  college, this array of life stressors may make cutting back or quitting more difficult, despite one’s intentions and understandings of the harms of tobacco. And emerging products on the market, like e-cigarettes, offer an opportunity to move from smoking to vaping. Lighting Up considers how smoking fits into the lives of young adults and how uncertain times may lead to uncertain smoking trajectories that reach into adulthood.

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

NYU Press

While the past 40 years have seen significant declines in adult smoking, this is not the case among young adults, who have the highest prevalence of smoking of all other age groups. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the “real world”? Drawing on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of young adults, Lighting Up takes the reader into their everyday lives to explore social smoking. 
 Mimi Nichter argues that we must understand more about the meaning of social and low level smoking to youth, the social contexts that cause them to take up (or not take up) the habit, and the way that smoking plays a large role in students’ social lives. Nichter examines how smoking facilitates social interaction, helps young people express and explore their identity, and serves as a means for communicating emotional states. Most college students who smoked socially were confident that “this was no big deal.” After all, they were “not really smokers” and they would only be smoking for a short time. But, as graduation neared, they expressed ambivalence or reluctance to quit. As many grads today step into an uncertain future, where the prospect of finding a good job in a timely manner is unlikely, their 20s may be a time of great stress and instability. For those who have come to depend on the comfort of cigarettes during college, this array of life stressors may make cutting back or quitting more difficult, despite one’s intentions and understandings of the harms of tobacco. And emerging products on the market, like e-cigarettes, offer an opportunity to move from smoking to vaping. Lighting Up considers how smoking fits into the lives of young adults and how uncertain times may lead to uncertain smoking trajectories that reach into adulthood.

A Filtered Life

A Filtered Life is the first comprehensive ethnographic account to explore how college students create and manage multiple identities on social media. 
Drawing on interviews and digital ethnographic data gleaned from popular social media platforms, the authors document and make visible routinized practices that are typically hidden and operating behind the scenes. They introduce the concept of "digital multiples," wherein students strategically present themselves differently across social media platforms. This requires both the copious production of content and the calculated development of an instantly recognizable aesthetic or brand. Taylor and Nichter examine key contradictions that emerged from student narratives, including presenting a self that is both authentic and highly edited, appearing upbeat even during emotionally difficult times, and exuding body positivity even when frustrated with how you look. Students struggled with this series of impossibilities; yet, they felt compelled to maintain a vibrant online presence. 
With its close-up portrayal of the social and embodied experiences of college students, A Filtered Life is ideal for students and scholars interested in youth studies, digital ethnography, communication, and new forms of media.

Taylor, Nicole

Reference

Routledge

- The book explores important relationships between social media and young people's cultural experiences and expressions and presents theoretical and conceptual grounding on a timely topic that maps directly to their everyday lives. - Eminently qualified and award-winning authors who are experienced in ethnographies (see author information) and documenting this age group. - The authors problematize pathologizing accounts that have been common in other studies into social media use (see, in particular, psychology) and instead focus on the social and emotional intersections and experiences of youth and young adults engaged with and through social media. - The theoretical and conceptual grounding applied enriches the book's malleability and extends its shelf life; that is, its methods and framework may be applied to newer and more emergent social media channels. - Adds socio-cultural dimensions to a topic that students, and the book's primary readers, will have immense familiarity with.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nichter, Mimi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nichter, Mimi

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nichter, Mimi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Fat Talk: What Girls and Their Parents Say about Dieting

Fat Talk: What Girls and Their Parents Say about Dieting

Lighting Up: The Rise of Social Smoking on College Campuses

Lighting Up: The Rise of Social Smoking on College Campuses

A Filtered Life

A Filtered Life