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Today women are lifting weights to build muscle, wrapping their bodies in seaweed to reduce unwanted water retention, attending weigh-ins at diet centers, and devoting themselves to many other types of "body work." Filled with the voices of real women, this book unravels the complicated emotional and intellectual motivations that drive them as they confront American culture's unreachable beauty ideals. This powerful feminist study lucidly and compellingly argues against the idea that the popularity of body work means that women are enslaved to a male-fashioned "beauty myth." Essential reading for understanding current debates on beauty, Body Work demonstrates that women actually use body work to escape that beauty myth. Debra Gimlin focuses on four sites where she conducted in-depth research--a beauty salon, aerobics classes, a plastic surgery clinic, and a social and political organization for overweight women. The honest and provocative interviews included in this book uncover these women's feelings about their bodies, their reasons for attempting to change or come to terms with them, and the reactions of others in their lives. These interviews show that women are redefining their identities through their participation in body work, that they are working on their self-images as much as on their bodies. Plastic surgery, for example, ultimately is an empowering life experience for many women who choose it, while hairstyling becomes an arena for laying claim to professional and social class identities. This book develops a convincing picture of how women use body work to negotiate the relationship between body and self, a process that inevitably involves coming to terms with our bodies' deviation from cultural ideals. One of the few studies that includes empirical evidence of women's own interpretations of body work, this important project is also based firmly in cultural studies, symbolic interactionism, and feminism. With this book, Debra Gimlin adds her voice to those of scholars who are now looking beyond the surface of the beauty myth to the complex reality of women's lives.

Beauty, Personal --- Beauty culture --- Cosmetology --- Beauty shops --- Cosmetics --- Beauty --- Complexion --- Grooming, Personal --- Grooming for women --- Personal beauty --- Personal grooming --- Toilet (Grooming) --- Hygiene --- Social aspects --- Beauty, Personal - Social aspects - United States --- Beauty culture - Social aspects - United States --- alternative healing. --- american beauty standards. --- american beauty. --- american culture. --- beauty standards. --- biographical. --- body building. --- body work. --- cultural studies. --- female beauty. --- female body builder. --- feminism. --- feminist. --- male gaze. --- muscles. --- mythology. --- patriarchy. --- plastic surgery. --- politics. --- strong women. --- true story. --- weight lifting. --- weight. --- womens beauty standards. --- womens beauty.

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With a wedding impending, the Taiwanese bride-to-be turns to bridal photographers, makeup artists, and hair stylists to transform her image beyond recognition. They give her fairer skin, eyes like a Western baby doll, and gowns inspired by sources from Victorian England to MTV.An absorbing consideration of contemporary bridal practices in Taiwan, Framing the Bride shows how the lavish photographs represent more than mere conspicuous consumption. They are artifacts infused with cultural meaning and emotional significance, products of the gender- and generation-based conflicts in Taiwan's hybrid system of modern matrimony. From the bridal photographs, the book opens out into broader issues such as courtship, marriage, kinship, globalization, and the meaning of the "West" and "Western" cultural images of beauty.Bonnie Adrian argues that in compiling enormous bridal albums full of photographs of brides and grooms in varieties of finery, posed in different places, and exuding romance, Taiwanese brides engage in a new rite of passage-one that challenges the terms of marriage set out in conventional wedding rites. In Framing the Bride, we see how this practice is also a creative response to U.S. domination of transnational visual imagery-how bridal photographers and their subjects take the project of globalization into their own hands, defining its terms for their lives even as they expose the emptiness of its images.

Wedding supplies and services industry --- -Weddings --- -Bridal shops --- -Wedding photography --- -Commercial photography --- Portrait photography --- Specialty stores --- Marriage --- Service industries --- Equipment and supplies --- Bridal shops. --- Bridal shops - Taiwan. --- Wedding photography. --- Wedding supplies and services industry. --- Wedding supplies and services industry - Taiwan. --- Wedding supplies and services industry-- Taiwan. --- Weddings. --- Weddings - Taiwan - Equipment and supplies. --- Weddings --- Bridal shops --- Wedding photography --- Business & Economics --- Industries --- -Equipment and supplies --- Equipment and supplies. --- Commercial photography --- artifacts. --- beauty standards. --- bridal hair. --- bridal makeup. --- bridal photography. --- bridal. --- bride to be. --- cultural history. --- cultural studies. --- makeover. --- makeup artist. --- marriage. --- matrimony. --- mtv. --- social history. --- social studies. --- taiwan. --- taiwanese. --- transformation. --- victorian england. --- wedding day. --- wedding photography. --- wedding photos. --- wedding prep. --- wedding. --- western beauty standards.

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Sarah Banet-Weiser complicates the standard feminist take on beauty pageants in this intriguing look at a hotly contested but enduringly popular American ritual. She focuses on the Miss America pageant in particular, considering its claim to be an accurate representation of the diversity of contemporary American women. Exploring the cultural constructions and legitimations that go on during the long process of the pageant, Banet-Weiser depicts the beauty pageant stage as a place where concerns about national identity, cultural hopes and desires, and anxieties about race and gender are crystallized and condensed. The beauty pageant, she convincingly demonstrates, is a profoundly political arena deserving of serious study. Drawing on cultural criticism, ethnographic research, and interviews with pageant participants and officials, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World illustrates how contestants invent and reinvent themselves while articulating the female body as a national body. Banet-Weiser finds that most pageants are characterized by the ambivalence of contemporary "liberal" feminism, which encourages individual achievement, self-determination, and civic responsibility, while simultaneously promoting very conventional notions of beauty. The book explores the many different aspects of the Miss America pageant, including the swimsuit, the interview, and the talent competitions. It also takes a closer look at some extraordinary Miss Americas, such as Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America; Vanessa Williams, the first African American Miss America; and Heather Whitestone, the first Miss America with a disability.

Beauty contests --- National characteristics. --- Racism in popular culture. --- Popular culture --- Characteristics, National --- Identity, National --- Images, National --- National identity --- National images --- National psychology --- Psychology, National --- Anthropology --- Nationalism --- Social psychology --- Collective memory --- Ethnopsychology --- Exceptionalism --- Miss Universe Pageant. --- Miss America Pageant. --- Taḥarut "Mis Yunivers" --- achievement. --- american women. --- beauty pageants. --- beauty standards. --- beauty. --- bess myerson. --- black miss america. --- cultural criticism. --- disability. --- diversity. --- empowerment. --- ethnography. --- feminism. --- gender studies. --- gender. --- heather whitestone. --- interview. --- interviews. --- jewish miss america. --- liberal feminism. --- miss america. --- national identity. --- nonfiction. --- pageant officials. --- pageant participants. --- pageants. --- race. --- ritual. --- sexuality. --- social issues. --- sociology. --- swimsuit. --- talent competitions. --- vanessa williams.

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This text about Korean American immigrant families is the result of a collaboration between an anthropologist and a psychologist. Combining quantitative surveys with family ethnography, the work explores the central question, 'How do Korean American teens and parents navigate immigrant America?' Both survey and ethnographic data reveals that acculturation differences between parents and teens - long assumed in the psychological literature to account for distress - did not necessarily make for family hardship.

Korean Americans. --- Korean Americans --- Teenagers --- Children of immigrants --- Adolescents --- Teen-agers --- Teens --- Young adults (Teenagers) --- Youth --- Ethnology --- Koreans --- First generation children --- Immigrants' children --- Second generation children --- Immigrants --- Family relationships --- United States --- Race relations. --- Race question --- American society. --- Asian American parents. --- Asian immigrant. --- Asian immigration. --- Asian racism. --- Chicagoland. --- English language learner. --- Korean beauty standards. --- Korean ethnography. --- academic achievement. --- adolescent children. --- adulthood. --- assimilation. --- church. --- classical music. --- ethnic enclave. --- ethnography. --- family dynamics. --- immigrant families. --- immigrant. --- immigration. --- intergenerational relationships. --- model minority. --- mother-daughter bond. --- parenting. --- parents. --- racism. --- racist. --- school. --- self-esteem. --- social capital. --- study abroad. --- success. --- survey. --- tiger parents. --- transnational.

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Drawing from a rich array of visual and literary material from nineteenth-century Iran, this groundbreaking book rereads and rewrites the history of Iranian modernity through the lens of gender and sexuality. Peeling away notions of a rigid pre-modern Islamic gender system, Afsaneh Najmabadi provides a compelling demonstration of the centrality of gender and sexuality to the shaping of modern culture and politics in Iran and of how changes in ideas about gender and sexuality affected conceptions of beauty, love, homeland, marriage, education, and citizenship. She concludes with a provocative discussion of Iranian feminism and its role in that country's current culture wars. In addition to providing an important new perspective on Iranian history, Najmabadi skillfully demonstrates how using gender as an analytic category can provide insight into structures of hierarchy and power and thus into the organization of politics and social life.

Women --- Gender identity --- Human females --- Wimmin --- Woman --- Womon --- Womyn --- Females --- Human beings --- Femininity --- Sex identity (Gender identity) --- Sexual identity (Gender identity) --- Identity (Psychology) --- Sex (Psychology) --- Queer theory --- Social conditions --- History. --- History --- anno 1900-1999 --- anno 2000-2099 --- Iran --- Women - Iran - Social conditions - 19th century --- Women - Iran - Social conditions - 20th century --- Gender identity - Iran - History --- Femmes --- Identité sexuelle --- 15.75 history of Asia. --- Gender identity. --- Frau. --- Vrouwen. --- Sekseverschillen. --- Identiteit. --- Feminism --- Conditions sociales --- Histoire --- Social conditions. --- Kadscharen, --- Kadjaren. --- Geschichte 1800-1900. --- Geschichte. --- 1800-1999. --- Iran. --- Gender dysphoria --- 19th century. --- academic. --- beauty standards. --- cultural history. --- cultural studies. --- education. --- feminism. --- gender identity. --- gender presentation. --- gender roles. --- gender studies. --- history. --- iran. --- iranian. --- marriage. --- middle east. --- middle eastern. --- modernity. --- modesty. --- motherhood. --- revolution. --- romance. --- scholarly. --- sex and gender. --- sexuality. --- womanhood. --- womens education. --- womens issues.