She didn’t hatch out of an eagle’s nest, circa One Million Years B.C., clad in a skimpy fur bikini. She didn’t aspire to fame as a sex symbol. Yet, for many years after making her Hollywood entrance as every man’s fantasy, Raquel Welch was best known for her beauty and sex appeal. A private person, she allowed people to draw their own conclusions from her public image. Now, Raquel Welch is ready to speak her mind. And, with the luxury of hindsight and the benefit of experience, she has plenty to share about the art of being a woman—even men will find it enlightening to read about what makes her tick. In Beyond the Cleavage, Raquel Welch talks, woman to woman, about her views on all that comes with being a member of the female sex—love, sex, style, health, body image, career, family, forgiveness, aging, and coming of age. Looking back on her life, she lets women in on her childhood, dominated by a volatile father; her first love, marriage, and divorce; her early struggles as a single working mother in Hollywood; her battles for roles and respect as an actress; and her daring decision never to lie about her age. Looking forward, she offers women a compass to guide them at every crossroad of life, from menopause through the empty nest years, to dating younger men and beyond. Along with bringing baby boomers into her confidence—she offers essential tips for staying motivated and positive past fifty, as well as divulging her secrets for fabulous hair and makeup—she even talks to today’s younger generation of women about the importance of carrying themselves with dignity and self-respect. With warmth, humor, conviction, and honesty, Raquel reveals her approach to preventative aging, her life-changing commitment to yoga, her recipe for eating right, her skincare regimen, her flair for fashion, and much more. Deeply personal (Welch wrote every word herself—no ghostwriter), Beyond the Cleavage is Raquel Welch’s gift to every woman who longs to look and feel her best, and be at peace with herself.

Since her entree to the Hollywood scene in the 1960s, Raquel Welch has been a symbol of glamour and sex appeal whose honesty, high energy, and self-deprecating sense of humor are greatly admired by all her fans. She has won a Golden Globe for her role in The Three Musketeers, starred in many films, including One Million Years, B.C., which featured her classic iconic image of a cavewoman clad in a fur bikini, and played the role of a transsexual opposite Mae West in the cult favorite Myra Breckenridge. Whether refusing to change her name to Debbie--because producers considered ''raquel'' too ethnic--or to lie about her age, even to the detriment of her career, she has evolved elegantly over time into a true champion for women who defy traditional aging. In Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, Raquel opens up about her internal struggles to age gracefully in the often-harsh spotlight of Hollywood and to make peace with the sometimes uncomfortable mantle of ''sex symbol,'' at the same time dispensing precious tips to all women about staying young in mind and body. She discloses the challenges of hitting forty and suffering all the ensuing stereotypes; how to cope with fifty, menopause, and shifting gears; and continuing into your sixties, sometimes with the challenges of dating and decisions about cosmetic surgery, all the while laying bare her own experiences of aging and maintaining and successful acting career. The book reveal the secrets of diet, exercise, and healthy living--including her early devotion to yoga and fitness--that she devised over the years, as well as the hair, makeup, and dressing tips that have allowed her to remain effortlessly beautiful into her late sixties. While her book will be a must-have for every woman in the baby boomer generation, her warm, often comically irreverent voice and her priceless advice, based on decades of experience in one of the toughest arenas for women, will have wide appeal. Raquel Welch remains one of the most vital and enduring female icons of her day.

This book recounts the events involving Raquel Liberman, an impoverished immigrant to Argentina that was forced by circumstances into prostitution, and the powerful Zwi Migdal, which controlled the recruitment and deployment of Jewish prostitutes in Argentina while maintaining mutually profitable relations with corrupt politicians and policemen. Liberman's story is presented as an example of individual courage and determination in the face of the violence and corruption of the prostitution business. Her struggle with the Zwi Migdal and triumphant public victory over her oppressors was widely publicized in newspapers and magazines, and was a political cause celebre in its time. This book gives readers an intimate view of how the affair caught the public imagination, and was interpreted and transformed by the artistic imagination.

"Gustavo is a very famous writer, but, on the other hand, when it comes to work, he can't help but procrastinate. The worst thing is that, on the eve of delivering the first three chapters of his new novel — he's been charged for months by the agent — everything that happens around you soon becomes a beautiful reason to be distracted".

Raquel is a novel that alludes to thousands of women who experience violence in an abrupt and brutal manner that leaves its mark not only on them, but also on their families and, in less visible ways, on society as a whole. Violence against women has escalated alarmingly in Mexico. This increase has not only been quantitative, but also in terms of cruelty, so that when leaving home, the feeling is one of fear of small and large-scale violence, harassment, rape, kidnapping, death. In the midst of this contemporary ferocity, Raquel presents us with a story of strong, courageous, risk-taking women, who are also companions of men committed to respectful relationships. A story where the mother, with her example, transmits strength and demonstrates to her daughters, every day, how to value themselves, take care of themselves and be assertive. Raquel presents a clear position: the person responsible for violence is the one who commits it, the State is the guarantor of Human Rights and the only task of the victim is to get ahead, relying on who she decides and in the way she can. Dark alleys, majestic buildings and an imposing mountain in Guanajuato are the setting for a novel that takes us from despair to hope, from frustration to pleasure and from fear to joy. A novel that contains enough elements to make evident the fragility of the individual, but how resoundingly strong he or she can be with others. Raquel is like violence: direct, clear, raw, and at the same time powerful. Raquel, its protagonist, kidnapped by a group of criminals who systematically use women for their own satisfaction, takes us by the hand to discover organized crime networks and their alliances with the authorities, while showing us what strength, faith and the love of the family can achieve. What connects us with the people we love? What are the reaches of the psyche in extreme situations? Can science prove what are the true limits of the mind? Raquel invites us to leave aside the known and rational world and to enjoy the possibilities of intuition, faith, imagination, the holistic that transcends time and space.

There is someone behind us telling us that somewhere there exists another person in the world living a life parallel to ours; someone who feels the same things and is perhaps doing the same thing at this very moment. But what happens when two parallell lines intersect? The impossible happens, and what should not happen, happens. If soulmates do exist, and if we have the desire to find them, that doesn’t mean that the meeting will make our lives easier or give us solutions. The narrator of this novel reveals to us his encounter with Raquel, his soulmate. With him we discover how two people are born in the same city, almost on the same day, marry similar people, give their children the same names, and write very similar books, without ever having seen each other or met until they reach the age of forty. An existential cataclysm, this experience only serves to move these two characters further into exile. Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) is a journey to the limits of logic. “Do you remember the poor man wearing a djellaba who would beg for money next to the school?” “The one on the corner.” “Two corners and the school in the middle, the black metal door.” “I remember that you would run to give him a coin before they closed the door, always arriving to class last.” “I wanted to sleep a little more, you were always in my dreams.” “He would dance.” “Do you remember the rulers they used to hit our hands?” “And they would say ‘met la main’ (‘put out your hand’), but then your hand would automatically move back when the ruler came close.” “And once again, ‘met la main’, as if it were normal for a child to like being hit.” “And we still have good memories from that school.” “Who are we?” “We are the people from the memory.” “The past is that story that never stops changing.”