First Published in 2000. This study stands alone in pairing black and white American women writers across the twentieth century on the intertwined issues of female beauty and literary aesthetics. Other studies published during the late 1980s and early 1990s—such as Aldon Lynn Nielsen’s Reading Race: White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century (1988), Dana B. Nelson’s The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638-1867 (1992), Eric J. Sundquist’s To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (1993), and Laura Doyle’s Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture (1994)—have also engaged in the process of reading racialist discourse in white texts or in attempting to construct a dialogue between black and white texts. None, however, has been concerned with female beauty and literary aesthetics in relation to twentieth-century American women writers and race.

The Nigerian beauty pageant industry positions itself as working to symbolically restore the public face of the nation while seeking to materially shift the private lives of affiliates on the ground.

"This book's message is rooted in the philosophy that people inherently possess the wisdom necessary to make healthy choices and to live in balance. It emphasizes that self-love, acceptance of genetic diversity in body size, celebration of the unique beauty of every individual, and intuitive self-care are fundamental to achieving good physical and emotional health. It encourages readers to shift their focus away from ineffective, harmful weight-loss efforts towards improving and sustaining positive self-care behaviors. Initial research indicates that this work significantly improves people's ability to regulate eating, decreases depression and anxiety, and increases self-esteem--all critical resources that promote resiliency against eating and body image problems. Embody guides readers step-by-step through the five core competencies of the Body Positive's model: Reclaim Health, Practice Intuitive Self-Care, Cultivate Self-Love, Declare Your Own Authentic Beauty, and Build Community. These competencies are fundamental skills anyone can practice on a daily basis to honor their innate wisdom and take good care of their whole selves because they are motivated by self-love and appreciation. Rather than dictating a prescriptive set of rules to follow, readers are guided through patient, mindful inquiry to find what works uniquely in their own lives to bring about--and sustain--positive self-care changes and a peaceful relationship with their bodies"--

Embodying Modernity examines the current boom of fitness culture in Brazil in the context of the white patriarchal notions of race, gender, and sexuality through which fitness practice, commodities, and cultural products traffic. The book traces the imperial meanings and orders of power conveyed through “fit” bodies and their different configurations of muscularity, beauty, strength, and health within mainstream visual media and national and global public spheres. Drawing from a wide range of Brazilian visual media sources including fitness magazines, television programs, film, and social media, Daniel F. Silva theorizes concepts and renderings of modern corporality, its racialized and gendered underpinnings, and its complex relationship to white patriarchal power and capital. This study works to define the ubiquitous parameters of fitness culture and argues that its growth is part of a longer collective nationalist project of modernity tied to whiteness, capitalist ideals, and historical exceptionalism.

"[Book] examines the relationship between high fashion and the evolving ideals of beauty through the careers and personifications of iconic models who posed in the salons, walked the runways, and exploded onto the pages of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and even Life and Time. High-profile models enlivened the designs of the world's most celebrated couturiers and, on occasion, even inspired them." --Book jacket.