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copied from Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism is a 2011 book by British journalist, author and political activist Laurie Penny, which she describes as her "little anti-capitalist-feminist pop-theory book."

Content

- Introduction: Branded Bodies – Penny gives an overview of how female flesh is a resource and commodity, while women are simultaneously the biggest consumers. She states that the book is “an attempt to chart some of the ways in which women’s bodies are marginalized and controlled under late capitalism.”

- Chapter 1: An Anatomy of Modern Frigidity – Penny talks about the sexualization of women through “raunch culture,” the forced victimhood that stems from the culture, and talks about sexual branding and sex work.

- Chapter 2: Taking Up Space -In this chapter Penny largely focuses on eating disorders, particularly anorexia. 

- Chapter 3: Gender Capital – Penny rejects the idea of female body essentialism in defining womanhood. 

- Chapter 4: Dirty Work – Penny explains how capitalism is essential to marginalizing domestic work. 

Reception

In The Independent, Abby O'Reilly described the work as 'a nutritious thought-snack for emergent feminists and those approaching female cultural positioning from a socialist perspective' whilst it was described in Peace News as 'a great first book on feminism by a worthy successor to Wolf, Greer and Woolf'. In the Oxonian Review, the book was praised as a 'a stirring call to political action' while in Red Pepper Jennie O'Hara wrote that the Meat Market was 'refreshing reading' in its rebuttal anti-sex feminism. Eleanor Davies of The Anti-capitalist Initiative believes that while the book shows "articulate, sharp observations", it is lacking due to Penny showing no solutions are we head forward.