Title: Growing up female, a personal photo-journal
Photographer(s): Abigail Heyman
Writer(s): Abigail Heyman
Designer(s): Arnold Skolnick
Publisher(s): Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York,USA
Year: 1974
Print run:
Language(s): English
Pages: 118
Size: 19 x 24,5 cm
Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket
Edition:
Print: Rapoport Printing Corp. USA
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: U.S.A.,1974
ISBN: 978-0030124518
this book is about women and their lives as women, from one feminist's point of view. It's about what women are doing and what they are feeling and how they are relating to their mates, their children, their friends, their work, their interests, and themselves.
Being a woman influenced my ideas about what I wanted to photograph. My interest in women’s issues, in family issues, in social relationships came out of my experience of growing up as a female.
Women flirting to gain access are called “using their sexuality to gain greater access,” while men flirting to get access are called “charming.” I think it was an early feeling I had that I wanted to avoid accusation so badly that I never learned how to flirt or be charming.
Abigail Heyman
Heyman’s images are specific to a distinct place and time—the America of the late sixties and early seventies, roiled by the feminist revolution and other protest movements, yet caught in the grip of earlier, more conservative ideologies.
To grow up female is not just to develop in a woman’s body over time but also to emerge into a greater, less embarrassed, less hidden, and more present understanding of what being a woman means, as complicated and contradictory as that meaning might be.