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› Find signed collectible books: '200 Ways to Love the Body You Have'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Am I Thin Enough Yet?: The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity'
Whether they are rich or poor, tall or short, liberal or conservative, most young American women have one thing in common--they want to be thin. And they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get that way, even to the point of starving themselves. Why are America's women so preoccupied with weight? What has caused record numbers of young women--even before they reach their teenage years--to suffer from anorexia and bulimia? In Am I Thin Enough Yet?, Sharlene Hesse-Biber answers these questions and more, as she goes beyond traditional psychological explanations of eating disorders to level a powerful indictment against the social, political, and economic pressures women face in a weight-obsessed society.
Packed with first-hand, intimate portraits of young women from a wide variety of backgrounds, and drawing on historical accounts and current material culled from both popular and scholarly sources, Am I Thin Enough Yet? offers a provocative new way of understanding why women feel the way they do about their minds and bodies. Specifically, Hesse-Biber highlights the various ways in which American families, schools, popular culture, and the health and fitness industry all undermine young women's self-confidence as they inculcate the notions that thinness is beauty and that a woman's body is more important than her mind. The author builds her case in part by letting her subjects tell their own story, revealing in their own words how current standards of femininity lead many women to engage in eating habits that are not only self-destructive, but often akin to the obsessions and ritualistic behaviors found among members of cults. For instance, we meet Delia, a bulimic college senior who makes the startling admission that "my final affirmation of myself is how many guys look at me when I go into a bar." We even learn of six-year-olds like Lauren, already preoccupied with her weight, who considers herself "a real clod" in ballet class because she is not as thin as her peers. We are introduced to women (and men) from different cultures who themselves have acquired eating disorders in pursuit of the American standard of physical perfection. And we learn of the often tragic consequences of this obsession with thinness, as in the case of Janet, who underwent surgery to reduce her weight only to suffer from chronic illness and pain as a result. The book concludes with Hesse-Biber's prescriptions on how women can overcome their low self-image through therapy, spiritualism, and grass-root efforts to empower themselves against a society obsessed with beauty and thinness.
Am I Thin Enough Yet? brings into sharp focus the multitude of societal and psychological forces that compel American women to pursue the ideal of thinness at any cost. It will remain a benchmark work on the subject for many years to come. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'APPETITES: WHY WOMEN WANT'
The final and remarkable book of best-selling author Caroline Knapp underlines her gift of leveraging her life experiences into provocative lessons. On the surface, Appetites may appear to be about eating-complete with Knapp's unflinching account of her anorexia. In fact, Knapp is writing about how every woman can decipher her hunger and loneliness by connecting with her desire to experience pleasure. She illuminates the ways in which cultural taboos about women who desire create vulnerability to disorders of appetite including food and alcohol addictions, compulsive shopping and promiscuous sex. In this expansive view, "one womans tub of cottage cheese is another womans maxed-out Master Card." Readers will nod in recognition as the author seamlessly weaves autobiography and anthropology, describing her family of origin, profiling women of appetite and countering what she calls "the culture of No!" that curbs and disguises women's desires. Knapp gets to yes by urging readers to ask: "What gives me delight and fully engages me?" Knowing that 42-year-old Knapp died of lung cancer makes this question all the more poignant. Such questions suggest Knapps brave and generous legacy. --Barbara Mackoff [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Autobiography of a Face'
At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasure of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women'
Explores the phenomenon of the violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women's advancement. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beauty Myth: How Images of Female Beauty Are Used Against Women'
In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Body Project'
Adolescent girls today face the issues girls have always faced: "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to be?" Unfortunately their answers, now more than ever before, revolve around the body rather than the mind, heart, or soul. "The body is at the heart of the crisis that [Carol] Gilligan, [Mary] Pipher, and others describe.... The fact that American girls now make the body their central project is not an accident or a curiosity," writes Brumberg, "it is a symptom of historical changes that are only now beginning to be understood." The historical photos, thorough research, and political even-handedness make this a book of worth and sincerity. The Body Project is also comforting for women, adolescents, parents, lesbians, and male lovers of women--helping us sort out the roots of female insecurities, obsessions, and angst. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Body Project : An Intimate History of American Girls'
Adolescent girls today face the issues girls have always faced: "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to be?" Unfortunately their answers, now more than ever before, revolve around the body rather than the mind, heart, or soul. "The body is at the heart of the crisis that [Carol] Gilligan, [Mary] Pipher, and others describe.... The fact that American girls now make the body their central project is not an accident or a curiosity," writes Brumberg, "it is a symptom of historical changes that are only now beginning to be understood." The historical photos, thorough research, and political even-handedness make this a book of worth and sincerity. The Body Project is also comforting for women, adolescents, parents, lesbians, and male lovers of women--helping us sort out the roots of female insecurities, obsessions, and angst. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Body Wars: Making Peace With Women's Bodies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder'
In a world obsessed with appearances, it is not surprising that body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, has manifested itself as a troubling and relatively common problem for many individuals. In The Broken Mirror, the first and most definitive book on BDD, Dr. Katharine Phillips draws on years of clinical practice, scientific research, and professional evaluations of over 700 patients to bring readers her expertise and experience with this often debilitating illness.
BDD causes sufferers to be obsessed by perceived flaws in their appearance and may afflict as much as two percent of the population, or nearly five million people. Many sufferers are able to function well in society, but remain secretly obsessed by their "hideous acne" or "horrible nose," sneaking constant peeks at a pocket mirror, or spending hours at a time redoing makeup. Others find their lives disintegrate because of their appearance obsessions. It is not an uncommon disorder, simply a hidden one, since sufferers are often embarrassed to tell even their closest friends about their concerns. The author presents the stories and interviews of over 200 individuals to show the many different behaviors and symptoms of BDD, and includes a quick self-assessment questionnaire. Four new chapters provide updated information on treatment of BDD, frequently obtained treatments to be avoided, and more detailed advice for family members and friends on how to cope with the disorder.
Left untreated, the torment of BDD can lead to psychiatric hospitalization and sometimes suicide. With treatment, many sufferers are able to lead normal lives. The Broken Mirror is literally a lifesaving handbook for sufferers, their families, and their doctors. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel'
-- An ad for sneakers "You can love it without getting your heart broken." -- An ad for a car "Until I find a real man, I'll settle for a real smoke." -- A woman in a cigarette ad
Many advertisements these days make us feel as if we have an intimate, even passionate relationship with a product. But as Jean Kilbourne points out in this fascinating and shocking exposé, the dreamlike promise of advertising always leaves us hungry for more. We can never be satisfied, because the products we love cannot love us back.
Drawing upon her knowledge of psychology, media, and women's issues, Kilbourne offers nothing less than a new understanding of a ubiquitous phenomenon in our culture. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years' worth of television ads over the course of a lifetime. Kilbourne paints a gripping portrait of how this barrage of advertising drastically affects young people, especially girls, by offering false promises of rebellion, connection, and control. She also offers a surprising analysis of the way advertising creates and then feeds an addictive mentality that often continues throughout adulthood. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Conversations With the Fat Girl'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising'
Jean Kilbourne first gained prominence in the 1970s as the maker of Killing Us Softly, a documentary that detailed how the images of women in advertising were destructive for women in real life. In the years since, her thesis hasn't changed much, but the evidence supporting it has accumulated at an overwhelming rate. One of the first points that Kilbourne makes clear in Deadly Persuasion is that advertising does influence people, which is why newspapers and magazines engage in cutthroat competition to convince corporations to place ads in their publications, on the principle that their readership consists of the most valuable demographic. What appear in those ads, though, are images that equate emotional well-being with material acquisition; encourage women--beginning in their teenage years--to work at preserving the one "right" look; and associate rebellion and independence with the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
Kilbourne is militant on these issues, and some readers may find her positions a bit too extreme, as when she lambastes ads that employ surre alism for imitating a drugged state of altered consciousness or when she declares that most sexual imagery in advertising is "pornographic," elaborating in such a way as to denigrate the very idea of casual sex. And, despite several attempts at grim sarcasm, Deadly Persuasion is ultimately rather humorless. Kilbourne's heart, though, is definitely in the right place, and her demonstration of the extent to which we allow corporations to shape our desires is truly eye-opening. --Ron Hogan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Earth, My Butt, And Other Big Round Things'
An overweight teen is sure that shes the weakest link in her high-powered family - until her handsome, athletic, star-student brother has a shocking fall from grace.
Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves has a larger-than-average body and a plus-size inferiority complex. She lives on the Web, snarfs junk food, and follows the "Fat Girl Code of Conduct." Her stuttering best friend has just moved to Walla Walla (of all places). Her new companion, Froggy Welsh the Fourth (real name), has just succeeded in getting his hand up her shirt, and she lives in fear that hell look underneath. Then there are the other Shreves: Mom, the successful psychologist and exercise fiend; Dad, a top executive who ogles thin women on TV; and older siblings Anaïs and rugby god Byron, both of them slim and brilliant. Delete Virginia, and the Shreves would be a picture-perfect family. Or so shes convinced. And then a shocking phone call changes everything.
With irreverent humor, insight, and surprising gravity, Carolyn Mackler creates an endearingly blunt heroine whose story will speak to every teen who struggles with family expectations - and serve as a welcome reminder that the most impressive achievement is to be true to yourself. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat Girl's Guide to Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat Is a Feminist Issue'
Orbach's non-dieting approach to weight loss shows women how to get off the diet/binge merry-go-round and lose weight through self acceptance. "It is more essential than ever that (it) be read by every American woman".--Susan Faludi, bestselling author of Backlash. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat Is a Feminist Issue: How to Lose Weight Permanently without Dieting'
Orbach's non-dieting approach to weight loss shows women how to get off the diet/binge merry-go-round and lose weight through self acceptance. "It is more essential than ever that (it) be read by every American woman".--Susan Faludi, bestselling author of Backlash. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat Is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-Diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss'
Orbach's non-dieting approach to weight loss shows women how to get off the diet/binge merry-go-round and lose weight through self acceptance. "It is more essential than ever that (it) be read by every American woman".--Susan Faludi, bestselling author of Backlash. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat: The Anthropology Of An Obsession'
An eclectic and highly original examination of one of the most dynamic concepts-and constructs-in the world.
With more than one billion overweight adults in the world today, obesity has become an epidemic. But fat is not as straightforward-or even as uni-versally damned-as one might think. Enlisting thirteen anthropologists and a fat activist, editors and anthropologists Don Kulick and Anne Meneley have produced an unconventional-and unprecedented-examination of fat in various cultural and social contexts. In this anthology, these writers argue that fat is neither a mere physical state nor an inert concept. Instead, it is a construct built by culture and judged in courts of public opinion, courts whose laws vary from society to society.
From the anthropology of "fat-talk" among teenage girls in Sweden to the veneration of Spam in Hawaii; from fear of the fat-sucking pishtaco vampire in the Andes to the underground allure of fat porn stars like Supersize Betsy-this anthology provides fresh perspectives on a subject more complex than love handles, and less easily understood than a number on a scale. Fat proves that fat can be beautiful, evil, pornographic, delicious, shameful, ugly, or magical. It all depends on who-and where-you are.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fat! So?'
Fat? Chunky? Less than svelte? So what! In this hilarious and eye-opening book, fat and proud activist/zinester Marilyn Wann takes on Americas' biggest fearworse than the fear of public speaking or nuclear weaponsour fear of fat.Statistics tell us that about a third of Americans are fat, and common sense adds that just about everyone, fat or thin, male or female, has worried about their appearance. FAT!SO? weighs in with a more attractive alternative: feeling good about yourself at any weightand having the style and attitude to back it up. Internationally recognized as a fat-positive spokesperson, Wann has learned that you can be absolutely happy, healthy, and successful...and fat. With its hilarious and insightful blend of essays, quizzes, facts, and reporting, FAT!SO? proves that you can be out-and-out fabulous at any size. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Good in Bed: A Novel'
Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed is the story of a year in the life of a late-twentysomething American woman: Cannie, a journalist on the Philadelphia Examiner, who has recently broken up with her boyfriend of three years (cue endless similarities with countless other books aimed at young Western women). Fortunately, Weiner's book has enough originality to break out from the mould, with an overweight heroine and a mother who has recently moved in with her lesbian lover. Good in Bed has its funny moments, dealing with humour and sensitivity with Cannie's status as a "larger woman", her bizarre family and her regrets at splitting up with Bruce, but there is often more a feeling of pathos than laughter. Cannie is not a tragic figure through her dress size--Weiner successfully side-steps any attempt to pity her or her fellow larger women at a weight-loss clinic, taking the humorous path instead--but through her relationship and career predicaments. It is therefore not clear why Weiner cast Cannie as a plus-size, unless to drive home the eternal fact that whatever their size, all women have the same neuroses inside. Cannie's year offers more lows than highs--with a particularly heart-breaking low towards the end of the novel, which is unlikely to be read by anyone with even a wry smile--and it therefore is not a "feel good to be a woman" novel. For laugh-out-loud writing with a dash of pathos try Shannon Olson's Welcome to My Planet, but for sensitive and ultimately tear-inducing touching narration try Good in Bed. --Olivia Dickinson [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Hunger Pains: From Fad Diets to Eating Disorders-What Every Woman Needs to Know About Food, Dieting, and Self-Concept'
More editions of Hunger Pains: From Fad Diets to Eating Disorders-What Every Woman Needs to Know About Food, Dieting, and Self-Concept:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Hunger Pains: The American Woman's Tragic Quest for Thinness'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hunger Pains: The Modern Woman's Tragic Quest for Thinness'
We live in an appearance-obsessed culture. Fashion ads, magazine covers, TV shows, and movies idealize a body type that is impossible for most real women to achieve. In this comforting, liberating book, Dr. Mary Pipher, bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, offers advice, counsel, and practical solutions for understanding our needs, our fears, and our many hungers. She shows us how we can at last learn to live at peace with the natural differences in our bodies and appetites.
The rates of anorexia, bulimia, and depression for women are the highest they have ever been, and begin at ever younger ages. Dr. Pipher reveals how society encourages our misery and prevents us from accepting our looks. Indeed, for many women the humiliation of overweight or obesity is a wound that never heals. Dr. Pipher reminds us that accepting our bodies the way they are is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hungry Self: Women, Eating, and Identity'
From front page: An inspired psychoanalytic meditation on contemporary female identity and eating disorders. Phyllis Chesler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I'm Not The New Me'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jemima J'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Keeping the Moon'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-imagining the "Perfect" Body'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Minding the Body'
Twenty intensely personal essays on physical and emotional self-image by women writers from a wide range of ages, races, and conformity. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul'
Twenty intensely personal essays on physical and emotional self-image by women writers from a wide range of ages, races, and conformity. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Cup Runneth Over'
Yes, "large" just about covers it,
although to be quite honest,
not many things do -- cover it,
I mean.
Angelica Cookson Potts, better known as Angel, loves food, both cooking it and eating it, and plans to be a famous chef someday. But she thinks she's just too big -- her mother is a skinny ex-model, her best friends are all smaller than she is, and she feels like a huge, wobbly whale in comparison. In addition to food, Angel also loves Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef) and Adam (who doesn't know she's alive). In order to get Adam's attention, she tries making major Life Changes, including a cabbage-only diet that has...well, explosive results. Through it all her best friends, Minnie, Portia, and Mercedes, are there with her, and when the school fashion show comes around, Angel discovers that her size might not be such a bad thing after all.
Everyone knows an Angel, and readers will laugh out loud at her take on life.
Angel's own recipes are included so that other "foodies" can cook along with her. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'New Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women'
Three decades ago, information about women's health was hoarded by physicians and doled out sparingly to their female patients. Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1969, helped change that situation. The latest edition runs 752 pages and covers a stunning range of territory about women's physical beings: fitness (this section includes a reminder that overweight women have a right to not exercise), reproductive health, aging, sexuality, and childbirth. It also includes thick chapters on relationships and information about mental-health issues, including psychotherapy. The New Our Bodies, Ourselves is the straightest-talking, most comprehensive book about women's health on the market. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Body's Perfect: Stories by Teens About Body Image, Self-Acceptance, and the Search for Identity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Fat Chicks: How Big Business Profits Making Women Hate Their Bodies-How to Fight Back'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness'
The Obsession is a deeply committed and beautifully written analysis of our society's increasing demand that women be thin. It offers a careful, thought provoking discussion of the reasons men have encouraged this obsession and women have embraced it. It is a book about women's efforts to become thin rather than to accept the natural dimensions of their bodies--a book about the meaning of food and its rejection. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century : A Book by and for Women'
In a major update of the book that helped to launch the women's health movement, Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century updates the classic with chapters on such issues as online health resources, AIDS, and managed care. At the same time, it expands its appeal by addressing the concerns of an increasingly diverse readership, from lesbians to women of color, from women with disabilities to women of all age groups.
Yet the book, by the nonprofit Boston Women's Health Book Collective, remains true to the spirit of those empowering discussions women were first having in the 1960s and 1970s about their bodies: "As the millennium approaches, our original goals for this book remain as important as ever: to fit as much information about women's health between the covers of this book as we can, providing women with tools to enable all of us to take charge of our health and lives; to support women and men who work for progressive change; and to work to create a just society in which good health is not a luxury or a privilege but a human right."
By updating and continuing to tackle such topics as body image, sexuality, contraception, childbearing, breast cancer, and the politics of women's health, this edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves keeps giving women the power and the knowledge to take charge of their own health. It remains a valuable resource for women of all ages and backgrounds. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Overcoming Overeating'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Overcoming Overeating: Living Free in a World of Food'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding Myself'
An intimate and darkly comic memoir of a woman who does a 180 with her body.
When she was in her early forties, Frances Kuffel lost half her body weight. In Passing for Thin, Frances describes with unflinching honesty and a wickedly dark sense of humor her first fumbling introductions to her newly slender body, shining a light on the shared human experience of feeling uncomfortable in ones own skin. She gradually moves from observer to playerenjoying for the first time flirting, exercising, and shoppingas she explores the terrain on the Planet of Thin. As Frances gradually comes to knowand lovethe stranger in the mirror, she learns that her body does not define her, but enables her to become the woman shes always wanted to be. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood'
Part memoir, part exposé, Promiscuities is Naomi Wolf's (author of The Beauty Myth and Fire with Fire) perspective on the confusion surrounding female sexuality. According to Wolf, promiscuous is "a word that holds within it the mixed message girls today are given about sex: 'You're promiscuous if you do anything, but you are a prude if you do nothing.'" Thus, still polarized on the spectrum between virgin and whore, adolescent girls are allowed little information and even fewer healthy outlets for their normal sexual desires. Wolf shatters the illusion that good girls and professional women are not sexual, and boldly embarks on redefining female sexuality outside of men's experience and assumptions. Wolf's own coming of age in the post-sexual revolution of Haight-Ashbury, serves as an evocative tool for revealing the naked and admirable truth of female sexuality. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Real Gorgeous: The Truth About Body and Beauty'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'She's Come Undone'
Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 1997: "Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered." So begins the story of Dolores Price, the unconventional heroine of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn't she be? She's suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender's most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. Hers is a dysfunctional Wonder Years, where growing up in the golden era was anything but ideal. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single and how college turned an older sibling into a long-haired hippie, Dolores was grappling with such issues as divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you're disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you'll be drawn into Dolores's warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty'
In the latter part of the 20th century, the adage "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" has evolved far beyond its original intent as an admonition against false vanity to become a cultural manifesto used to explain phenomena as diverse as the art of Andy Warhol and the rise of a multi-billion-dollar cosmetics industry. But is there something more to human reaction to beauty than a conditioned response to social cues? Yes, says Harvard Medical School psychologist Nancy Etcoff. Survival of the Prettiest argues persuasively that looking good has survival value, and that sensitivity to beauty is a biological adaptation governed by brain circuits shaped by natural selection.
Etcoff synthesizes a fascinating array of scientific research and cultural analysis in support of her thesis. Psychologists find that babies stare significantly longer at the faces adults find appealing, while the mothers of "attractive" babies display more intense bonding behaviors. The symmetrical face of average proportions may have become the optimal design because of evolutionary pressures operating against population extremes. Gentlemen may prefer blondes not so much for their hair color as for the fairness of their skin--which makes it easier to detect the flush of sexual excitement. And high heels accentuate a woman's breasts and buttocks, signaling fertility. Is beauty programmed into our brain circuits as a proxy for health and youth? In marked contrast to other writers like Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth), Etcoff argues that it is, noting, "Rather than denigrate one source of women's power, it would seem far more useful for feminists to attempt to elevate all sources of women's power." --Patrizia DiLucchio [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thinner Than Thou'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Uglies'
Playing on every teens passionate desire to look as good as everybody else, Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters) projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shays cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty. Hoping to rescue Shay, Tally sets off on the dangerous journey as a spy. But after finally reaching The Smoke she has a change of heart when her new lover David reveals to her the sinister secret behind becoming pretty. The fast-moving story is enlivened by many action sequences in the style of videogames, using intriguing inventions like hoverboards that use the riders skateboard skills to skim through the air, and bungee jackets that make wild downward plunges survivable -- and fun. Behind all the commotion is the disturbing vision of our own society -- the Rusties -- visible only in rusting ruins after a virus destroyed all petroleum. Teens will be entranced, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them gasping for the sequel. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wake Up, I'm Fat!'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia And Bulimia'
"I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine). [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media'
An insightful, witty, and well-written analysis of the effects of mass-media on women in late 20th-century American culture. Douglas cuts through the fluff that spews from the tube with a finely-honed sense of the absurd that can forever change (or minimally, inform) how you perceive the changing portrayals of women by the media. The only book I know of that has been given highest recommendations by Gloria Steinem, The McLaughlin Group, and Amazon.com. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Woman: An Intimate Geography'
Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, as far as the health care profession is concerned the standard operating design of the human body is male. So when a book comes along as beautifully written and endlessly informative as Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, it's a cause for major celebration. Written with whimsy and eloquence, her investigation into female physiology draws its inspiration not only from scientific and medical sources but also from mythology, history, art, and literature, layering biological factoids with her own personal encounters and arcane anecdotes from the history of science. Who knew, for example, that the clitoris--with 8,000 nerve fibers--packs double the pleasure of the penis; that the gene controlling cellular sensitivity to male androgens, ironically enough, resides on the X-chromosome; or that stress hormones like cortisol and corticosterone are the true precursors of friendship?
The mysteries of evolution are not a new subject for Angier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biology writer for the New York Times whose previous books include The Beauty of the Beastly and Natural Obsessions. The strengths of Woman begin with Angier's witty and evocative prose style, but its real contribution is the way it expands the definition of female "geography" beyond womb, breasts, and estrogen, down as far as the bimolecular substructure of DNA and up as high as the transcendent infrastructure of the human brain. --Patrizia DiLucchio [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Los Patitos Feos Tambien Besan / Jemina J.'
Jemima Jones está gorda, muy gorda. Sus delgadas compañeras de piso la tratan como a una criada y su maravillosa, delgadísima y guapísima jefa en el Kilburn Herald, mucho más tonta que ella pero mejor pagada, actúa como si Jemima fuera su sierva. Si a esto le sumas que está loca por su encantador, sexy e inalcanzable colega Ben, la conclusión es que la vida de Jemima necesita un cambio. Cuando conoce a Brad por internet le llega la oportunidad de reinventarse: será la felina, guapa, gimnasio-adicta y glamourosa JJ. Su Romeo a larga distancia no tarda en pedirle una cita.
Con un argumento que nunca decae y un sorprendente final, esta novela es la crónica de una búsqueda: la de la mujer que Jemima siempre quiso ser; un viaje en el que aprenderá un montón de lecciones sobre la atracción, la adicción, el significado del verdadero amor y, finalmente, sobre quién es ella misma.
«El tipo de novela que devoras de una sentada.»
Cosmopolitan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gut Im Bett'
Leichte Gebrauchsspuren!!!; Leichte Gebrauchsspuren!!! [via]
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