Showing results for "The Look" in Gender Studies

Images tell powerful stories about how women should look and act. We may think girl power and body positivity have replaced tales of helpless, beautiful princesses, but contemporary images in popular culture continue to perpetuate harmful stereotypes. In Look like a Lady, art historian Elissa...

A beauty and mental health expert exposes how Western society has controlled the narrative on feminine aesthetics, and breaks down the science and psychology of beauty to help women feel more confident. What is beauty? Who gets to determine who is beautiful? What happens when you fall outside of...

A Single Revolution is one book for single women that won’t approach you like you’re unfinished. It’s for those who are exhausted, frustrated, confused, or angry - who want relationships but don’t deserve to be miserable in the meantime. You can be happily single and still meet someone. It’s possible to value your single time so much that you refuse to give it up for anything less than the amazing relationships you deserve. It’s also possible to stop searching for them so relentlessly that you ignore every other aspect of your life.

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship—in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film—and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert."  

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: Neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life.

Felicity Hayward—curve model and founder of the online movement #SelfLoveBringsBeauty—is a leading voice for change within the UK's fashion industry. Rooted in her own personal journey navigating the fashion world, Felicity's debut book is a joyful and powerful guide to how you can take control of your own self-image and learn to love your true and authentic self. 

This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." In a series of narrative essays, Dr. G writes eloquently and powerfully about the role of language in social transformation and the academic, intellectual, linguistic, and societal debates that shaped her groundbreaking work as a Black Studies O.G. and a Womanist scholar-activist of African American Language.

How do you let go of the pain when love turns toxic, when rejection, betrayal, abuse, or addiction have shattered your soul? Love isn’t supposed to hurt, but if you’re tired of the heartache, it’s time to leave the past behind and find emotional freedom in relationships. The truth is...letting go of the past is easier said than done. Those that mean well may have advised you to pray harder or give it to God, but these solutions are far too vague.

Many women - regardless of income, size, shape, ethnicity, and age - are uncomfortable in their own skin. We fixate on our body image and try endless diets, implants, hair extensions, and new shoes, but it's never enough. The problem is that girls and women have been socialized to mistakenly conflate body esteem and self-esteem. Body esteem refers to how you think and feel about your physical appearance: your size, shape, hair, and features.

* A Real Simple Best Book of 2019: "An essential read for parents and students." * The New York Times bestselling author of Pledged is back with an unprecedented fly-on-the-wall look inside fraternity houses from current brothers’ perspectives—and a fresh, riveting must-read about what...

Inspiring and honest, this unique memoir of gender transition and coming of age proves it’s never too late to find your true identity.