on the minds of all women, regardless of the kinds of lives they lead. "Women everywhere have bad body fever," the Cornell historian says. "What makes having a body such a problem?"

Tracing the history of this "bad body fever" through 150 years' worth of young women's diaries led Brumberg to her most recent book, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. This one, published by Random House, is not primarily a scholarly work as her others have been. "I wanted to address the people who parent girls today," Brumberg says. And apparently she has reached that audience. The Body Project has been the subject of articles and reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post,Newsweek, and the Chronicle of Higher Education,among others. (Brumberg also appearedon Oprah, telling an anxious young woman: "I'm not a psychologist. But I am a historian--and a grandmother.")

"Diary writing became popular for girls in the 1830s and 1840s," Brumberg says. "Before then, it was a male thing." As women's general level of literacy rose, so did the use of personal diaries. "Evangelical religion helped spur personal writing as a way for girls to chart their spiritual progress," she says. Diaries became "a spiritual autobiography for young women."

Have women always had the "bad body fever?" Brumberg says No. "Before the 20th century, girls simply did not organize their thinking about themselves around their bodies. Today, they believe that the body is the ultimate expression of the self."

Compare two diary entries, the first from a young woman in 1892 wanting