Description: Hysteria as a new female malady was "discovered" in the late 1800s and reached epidemic proportions before finally being debunked as a legitimate medical diagnosis a century later. Yet long after the medical view of hysteria as a natural woman's condition diminished, its cultural origins and enduring impact are still apparent in contemporary gender politics and the commercial world of advertising. In this provocative book, Mady Schutzman explores "hysteria and advertising as intimate bedfellows" both in terms of the portrayal of the female body in print media and the creation of a consumer culture governed by hysteria's incapacity to differentiate between reality and illusion.Schutzman examines the performances of hysterics in the 19th century as photographically documented by Charcot and shows how this medical iconography of female madness is echoed in contemporary ads. Her juxtaposition of ads from the 1990s against medical case histories of the late 1800s reveals the cultural origins and remarkable continuity of our visual and narrative stereotypes of the feminine. Interweaving feminist theories of representation, medical science, psychoanalysis, and commodity capitalism, she unearths "the complexities of performance and mimicry" enacted by women as consumers.

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