Tongue First

In spirited, refreshing prose, this book allowed me to venture into and vicariously experience much of the current bodily culture scene. In places, Jenkins' astute sensitivity is touching and disturbing. I closed the last page bigger in awareness than when I opened the first.

I loved this book. First off, Jenkins writes wonderfully--her descriptions of her own and others' experiences of bodily culture, from taking heroin to choosing a lipstick, vividly (and often hilariously) take the reader there. Second, the book is thought provoking. Without ever becoming didactic, Jenkins reliably offers insights every few pages that stop the reader short. Jenkins richly engages us in pondering the meaning (cultural and personal) of the thousands of choices we each make about our body.

The strength of this book is its straightforward, conversational style; Jenkins demonstrates that even the simplest bodily rituals and practices (wearing makeup; using public locker rooms; sleeping) are tied into body fetishisms that mainstream culture casts as deviant (or at least daring, now that tattoos have hit the suburban mall).Jenkins does not use abstract theoretical jargon (though as a PhD student at Columbia, she surely could); nevertheless her readings of popular culture (and her own place in it) are clearly influenced by a wide range of readings in gender theory and cultural studies. _Tongue First_ can therefore introduce the theoretical concepts of drag, performance, spectacle, and fetishism to an audience that would never pick up a book of theory.Perhaps this makes the book less theoretically rigorous than, say, Judith Butler's _Gender Trouble_. But it sure is a lot more fun to read. To complain about its light tone (as some reviewers have) is to miss the point; _Tongue First_ does not aspire to being a philosophy textbook, but an engaged, humorous, and above all personal look at our cultural notions of the physical through the medium of Jenkins's own body.

Emily Jenkins looks at things a little more closely than most of us, and takes risks we only think about. Thanks to TONGUE FIRST, I now know what it's like to shave one's head, get a tattoo, snort heroin, and go to the 10th Street Baths -- among many other things. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity and making me think, too.