Throughout the history of the Western world, countless attempts have been made to define beauty in art and life. This text examines concepts of female beauty in terms of the ideal and the real, investigating paradigms of beauty as represented in art and literature and how beauty has been enhanced by cosmetics and hairstyles

The women at Julie's International Salon share their experiences of bodily self-presentation, femininity, aging, and caring. Their own words are at the center of the book; the stories of their lives, fresh and compelling, are told here with affection. But beyond the stories themselves, Frida Kerner Furman explores the socio-moral significance of these beauty shop experiences, showing how they reveal as much about society at large as about older women. For in telling us how they perceive reality, make choices, and live in their worlds, the women of Julie's expose structures of power, inequality, and resistance in the larger world that all of us, young or old, beautiful or not, face every day.

Drawing from 2,500 years of wisdom that has been adapted to today’s lifestyles, Facing East teaches you how to restore your Qi—the vital energy at the root of every function in the human body—to become both internally healthy and externally radiant. In Facing East, Dr. Jingduan Yang, a fifth-generation practitioner of Chinese medicine and a respected authority in integrative medicine, joins forces with wellness advocate Norma Kamali to reveal ancient healing secrets, adapted for the modern age, that will help preserve, maintain, and restore vitality, health, and beauty in all its forms. Style icon Norma Kamali, having felt deeply and noticeably rested and rejuvenated after Dr. Jingduan Yang’s unique acupuncture treatments, encouraged her remarkable physician to share his mastery of both traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine with the world. The result is Facing East, a book filled with practical day-to-day health, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle practices that can radically enhance the way you look, feel, and interact with everything and everyone around you! Inside you’ll discover: The ways each of the primary organs can affect every aspect of your life—from your physical health to your mental well-being—and how to keep them in balance Tips to help revitalize the hair, skin, eyes, lips, teeth, and nails Self-assessments to help determine your unique general energy constitution Personal checklists for preventative care A year-round wellness plan that includes advice on sleep, sex, exercise, and nutrition And much more! By exploring the mind-body-spirit connection from a truly integrative perspective, Facing East helps you maintain wellness in every aspect of your life. “Dr. Yang and Norma Kamali share ancient wisdom in a friendly, modern, and engaging dialogue, making timeless Eastern health practices relevant to the present and easy for everyone to apply in their lives. If you want to design happy, vibrant wellness for yourself, read Facing East!”—VINCENT PEDRE, M.D., author of Happy Gut: The Cleansing Program to Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Eliminate Pain Harness the power of the East to feel better, look younger, and live healthier, no matter your age! Are you easily fatigued? Is there too much fat around your belly? Are you often unhappy? Do you have chronic nasal congestion? Do you have black circles under your eyes? Does your skin often feel dry? Do your hands and feet feel cold? Is your skin prone to acne? If you answered yes to any of these questions, your Qi—the vital energy essential to your body’s every function—is probably out of balance. Filled with ancient health and beauty secrets, Facing East can help you rebalance your body and turn back the hands of time. “Facing East looks to the past for a vision of the future, drawing on ancient knowledge to devise simple strategies to allow you to stay young, vibrant, and healthy. This book by Dr. Yang, a foremost expert on Chinese medicine, and his patient, Norma Kamali, will help you to correct imbalances with techniques so simple anyone can use them with success.”—Andrew Weil, M.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author

Have you ever thought why every workout you have ever done stopped at the neck? Or wondered why traditional yoga calms the mind, tones the body but forgets the face? Are you looking for a natural way to look and feel younger and healthier? Danielle Collins, TV's Face Yoga Expert, believes we should all have the opportunity to look and feel the very best we can for our age and to care for our face, body and mind using natural and holistic techniques. Her method requires just 5 minutes a day and could not be easier to get started. Integrating practical facial exercises with inspirational lifestyle tips, including diet and skincare, Danielle Collins' Face Yoga is a revolutionary new programme to help you achieve healthier, firmer, glowing skin..

"Well worth reading. The scientific debate about the regulation of the emotions is as lively as ever, and this is a provocative and insightful contribution."-New Scientist

Female beauty systems everywhere are complex, integrating markers of class, status, power, and sexuality to perform the fundamental function of sorting individuals into categories of “more” or “less” desirable. Heirs to the tradition of courtly love, modern western female beauty systems tend to share the norm of man as pursuer, woman as pursued, having developed around the trope of the madly-desiring poet or knight supplicating his aloof and lovely lady for her favor. The apparent longevity of the courtly love tradition raises the question of whether the way in which it structures male desire in reaction to female beauty is part of a “universal” tendency, an evolutionary adaptation, despite clear evidence that female beauty systems are also, in fact, socially constructed, and reflect enormous ambivalence about the power and performance of beauty. Although modern western female beauty systems are routinely demystified and contested today, the purveyors of culture that support them—institutional, intellectual, artistic, commercial, and popular—continue as they always have to construe women as objects of male desire. Still, within this basic structure, the systems have varied greatly across time and space, with women using beauty as a form of social capital in widely differing ways. Moreover, as individuals have begun to experience their bodies as malleable and endlessly transformable, rather than unruly and unyielding, many have begun to experience beauty less as a given and more as a project. The nine essays collected here examine a number of different Western female beauty systems over the centuries, considering how women have complied with, contributed to, profited or suffered from, and resisted them.