Legend says that fated lovers are bound together by an invisible red thread. Most people think it's superstition, but seventeen-year-old Chiyako knows better -- she can see them! Yearning to be an independent adult, she's struggling to earn enough money to move out of her parents' house. Her path is clear, until a chance encounter with a mysterious group of hot guys known as the Tyers shows her that she has the power to pull all of fate's strings...though doing so binds her into the form of a child!

Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why, and to whom does beauty matter in today's world? Whose standard of beauty motivates African Americans to straighten their hair? What inspires beauty queens to measure up as flawless objects for the male gaze? Why does a French performance artist use cosmetic surgery to remake her face into a composite of the master painters' version of beauty? How does beauty culture perceive the disabled body? Is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable? Provocative essays by an international group of scholars discuss aesthetics in aesthetics, the arts, the tools of fashion, the materials of decoration, and the big business of beautification—beauty matters—to reveal the ways gender, race, and sexual orientation have informed the concept of beauty and driven us to become more beautiful. Here, Kant rubs shoulders with Calvin Klein. Beauty Matters draws from visual art, dance, cultural history, and literary and feminist theory to explore the values and politics of beauty. Various philosophical perspectives on ethics and aesthetics emerge from this penetrating book to determine and reveal that beauty is never disinterested.

Offers a collection of articles which discuss the causes, symptoms, health and psychological effects, and treatments of eating disorders, and provides a directory of facilities and programs designed to help people with these disorders.

Includes material on femininity (psychology).

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to accept and enjoy the way you look instead of constantly worrying about and criticizing your appearance? What if instead of focusing on your flaws, you felt confident with the body you have right now? If you don't like what you see when you look in the mirror, you may not realize that these feelings are entirely within your grasp. You don't need extensive cosmetic surgery, pricey beauty treatments, or weight loss programs, but you may need to do something even more drastic-change your perspective and the way you view yourself. The Body Image Workbook offers a comprehensive program to help you stop focusing on your perceived imperfections and start feeling more confident about the way you look. As you complete the helpsheets in this book, you'll learn to celebrate your body instead of feeling ashamed of it. This new edition includes discussions of our obsession with physical appearance and with body-fixing options. It helps you discover your personal body image strengths and vulnerabilities and then guides you in creating new, life-changing experiences of mindfulness and body acceptance. After completing this eight-step program, you'll look at yourself in a whole new light-seeing the beauty of the real you.

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.

Taking the concept of beauty seriously, this encyclopedia examines how humanity has sought and continues to seek what is "beautiful" in a variety of cultural contexts, giving readers an understanding of how to look at beauty both intellectually and critically. Is beauty ever more than "skin deep"? Arguably yes, considering that the concept of beauty—and the pursuit of it—has shaped cultures worldwide, across every time period, and has even served to change the course of history. Studying beauty practices yields insight into social status, wealth, political ideology, religious doctrine, and gender expectations, including gender nonconformity. A truly interdisciplinary text, Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia presents an insightful perspective on beauty that draws from philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and feminist studies, giving readers a unique view of world beauty practices. This volume offers information about beauty practices from the past to the present in alphabetical entries that address terms and topics such as "beards," "dreadlocks," "Geisha," "moko tattoos," and "progressive muscularity." Readers will better comprehend how beauty shapes many social interactions in profound ways worldwide, and that the unspoken social agreements that shape ideals of attractiveness and desirability within any given culture can matter very much. The encyclopedia's entries challenge readers to consider the questions "What is beauty?" and "Why does it matter?" A comprehensive bibliography is a valuable resource for further research.