How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today's worldThe demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves good or bad, a success or a failure. Perfect Me explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, more demanding, and more global than ever before.Heather Widdows argues that our perception of the self is changing. More and more, we locate the self in the body--not just our actual, flawed bodies but our transforming and imagined ones. As this happens, we further embrace the beauty ideal. Nobody is firm enough, thin enough, smooth enough, or buff enough-not without significant effort and cosmetic intervention. And as more demanding practices become the norm, more will be required of us, and the beauty ideal will be harder and harder to resist.If you have ever felt the urge to "make the best of yourself" or worried that you were "letting yourself go," this book explains why. Perfect Me examines how the beauty ideal has come to define how we see ourselves and others and how we structure our daily practices-and how it enthralls us with promises of the good life that are dubious at best. Perfect Me demonstrates that we must first recognize the ethical nature of the beauty ideal if we are ever to address its harms.

“Imperfect World … Perfect Me! is a step-by-step handbook to living the full life that is found only in Jesus Christ. In her transparency, Karen shares her testimony regarding some of her own personal struggles. She explains how she overcame the obstacles each situation presented by trusting God, applying His Word, and knowing her identity in Christ. “Karen covers everything from having a personal relationship with Jesus to marriage to self-esteem and gives encouraging truths from God’s Word that will move you from a mindset of defeat to a mindset of faith, all rooted in the promise of God.

All fifteen-year-old Katie Camilleri wants is the perfect first kiss from the perfect guy—and now he's just magically appeared in her bedroom, completely naked! When Katie and her best friend accidentally cook up a gorgeous teenage boy in the kitchen (seriously—he's like a long-lost Hemsworth brother), things are looking up for Katie and her plan to lock lips. But it turns out spontaneously creating a human being named Guy is slightly more complicated than Katie could have anticipated. Guy is wholly devoted to Katie but can't pin down why. Her high school classmates can't figure out what a hot guy like him is with her. And to make matters worse, her BFF isn't on board with this new romance. Plus, the longtime boy from next door is suddenly all kinds of moody. So is the "perfect" boy the right boy for Katie, after all? From the author of What I Like About Me comes a hilarious twist on the 1985 pop culture classic "Weird Science." Jenna Guillaume uses her signature humor and relatable voice to delight and also explore themes of body image, friendship, and supporting character asexuality.

Recover. Rinse. Repeat. Dana Bowman can’t escape the lure of perfectionism, trying to be a flawless wife, mother, and person in recovery. When Dana experiences a short-lived relapse during the Christmas holiday, she has the startling realization that recovery is more than just giving up alcohol. In this funny and revealing follow-up to her best-selling book Bottled, Dana reflects on how we live in a society of excess, always pushing ourselves to do and be better. However, it doesn’t take her long to realize that self-care and getting over herself is the key to happiness.

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other. Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful. Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

Emily Halban developed anorexia in her final year at school. She went on to university at Oxford where her disease took on a powerful dimension and by her final year she was so debilitated that she had to sit her exams in a separate room where she could be fed continuously throughout each one. With heartbreaking candour and poignant intimacy, Emily vividly chronicles the complexities and inner struggles of living with anorexia. Two years on, she traces her disease from its elusive origins, through its darkest moments of deprivation, guilt and self-loathing, and finally recounts her journey towards recovery. Emily allows us to understand what it's really like to suffer from anorexia, exposing its secrets and dispelling some of the myths that shroud it. Alive with self-awareness, but never self-pity, Perfect is an inspiring read that will help those battling with the horrors of anorexia find a way out, and those on the outside to understand more.

Nearly three hundred brilliant thoughts or "pot shots" are presented with humorous illustrations on the themes of communication, time and change, pleasure, life, and other topics of human concern