the Female Body GOVERNING

Productive Bodies 135
predominance of depression in women and their use of antidepressants
link the female body, work, and affective personal and social relations
to the requirements of productivity in a postindustrial economy.
The confl uence of these factors presents us with a privileged site from
which to seek an understanding of cultural, social, and economic production
today.
The mass movement of women into wage labor coincides with the
onslaught of modern psychotropic medication. In the early 1950s, antidepressants
were discovered when serotonin was linked to emotional
function and in 1952 the American Psychiatric Association published
the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). In 1955, Miltown,
the first mass-marketed tranquilizer, became widely available and
prescribed (see Solomon, 2001; Metzl, 2003). Simultaneously, in the
1950s a significant increase of married and older women entered the
paid labor force as part-time workers. 4 This confluence of events altered
the entire terrain of work: who was working, where they worked, the
length of the workday, and the forms of socialization occurring in the
workplace.
The first generation of psychotropic medication treated symptoms
of anxiety in women whose primary role was that of a housewife. As
more women moved into paid labor, both the symptoms and treatment
of depression changed to reflect the shifting affective and
daily experiences of women. Depression, previously dominated by
symptoms of anxiety and restlessness, was later redefined by symptoms
of listlessness, sadness, and melancholy. In early advertisements
of psychotropic medications, women appeared angry, aggressive, and
agitated. A 1965 advertisement for Valium presented a large image of
an aggressive woman with her jaw clammed shut, her teeth exposed,
her eyes squinting with hostility, and her brow furrowed in obvious
agitation. Under the heading, “Reduce psychic tension” the text
proclaims, “Symptoms of psychic tension, anxiety or depression are
often intermingled and rarely appear as separate, distinct elements”
(American Journal of Psychiatry, 1965, pp. xii–xiii, reprinted in Metzl,
2003, p. 16). This historic moment categorized women’s symptoms of
depression as comprising both anxiety and melancholy. In the first
DSM (1952) under the heading “depressive reaction,” anxiety is the
first symptom mentioned prior to connecting it with other symptoms of
depression (pp. 33–34). In contrast, a recent ad for the duel antianxiety
and antidepressant drug, Zoloft, portrays a crying egglike figure with
a rain cloud overhead. Affirming one’s feelings of depression, the text
reads, “You know when you feel the weight of sadness. You may feel
exhausted, hopeless, and anxious. Whatever you do, you feel lonely