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Ibroscheva, Elza. Advertising, Sex, and PostSocialism: Women, Media, and Femininity in the Balkans. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. Pp. xxvi, 175. ISBN 978-0-7391-7266-7 (cloth) $65.00; 978-0-7391-7267-4 (eBook) $64.99.
Though the title might strike some casual browsers as indicating a rather specialized work, Ibroscheva provides the reader with a remarkable and comprehensive look at the media in the post-socialist world of Eastern Europe. Using a lens of feminism more particularly and women more generally, she examines the role of the media, both before and after the fall of socialist governments. The change of government opens a window on the complex relationship of people, media, and society. She writes, "When the dystopia of communism ended, men and women alike were thrown back into a vortex of economic, social, and political uncertainties. More importantly, the collapse of the regimes in the East proved that the denial of freedom of choice, including the choice of expressing sexual desires and exercising one's right to shop, was virtually unsustainable" (p. xiii). The book, then, addresses a complex world in transition and, though focusing on women in the media, addresses male audiences as well.
The book has two stated goals: "to explore the role of advertising and the consumption that it promotes across the Balkans . . . while changing cultural perceptions of sex and femininity" and to theorize "how the marketing of gender identities" has "affected the social, economic, and political positioning of women in the region" (p. xx). Ibroscheva...