Beauty Queen: The Pathway to Pageantry is a one-stop sourcebook on everything you ever wanted to know about pageantry – its meaning, history, inner mechanics, organisation and required preparedness. The book throws light on the history of pageantry, and gives a very real account of what to expect at a pageant (the good and the bad). It explains in detail every aspect of pageant preparedness, such as body grooming, nutrition, wardrobe, catwalk, interview and judges’ perspectives, while drawing on a number of examples about what worked for people and what did not. Bringing in information from the author’s personal experiences, the book is the first of its kind and a unique attempt in presenting pageantry as a composition of science, art, and grace in equal proportions. It’s not just for aspiring beauty queens but also for every individual who wants to look and feel healthy and beautiful.

The detective kept calling her by some other woman's name, but it meant nothing. Rose Boh me had no past, not until Detective Dixon Lloyd found it worth looking for. He was a man so focused on her, he'd been searching for more than ten years.... His first homicide case was hers, and he could never shake it. He was haunted by her--and when he found her, living, breathing, there remained only more questions and a bloody trail to follow. But was he doing her any favors seeking out those answers, so punctuated by danger? Or were they killing her second chance at life by inviting death back in?

The first in-depth look at how women have shaped the history and legacy of Indiana University. Women first enrolled at Indiana University in 1867. In the following years they would leave an indelible mark on this Hoosier institution. However, until now their stories have been underappreciated, both on the IU campus and by historians, who have paid them little attention. Women at Indiana University draws together 15 snapshots of IU women's experiences and contributions to explore essential questions about their lives and impact. What did it mean to write the petition for women's admission or to become the first woman student at an all-male university? To be a woman of color on a predominantly white campus? To balance work, studies, and commuting, entering college as a non-traditional student? How did women contribute to their academic fields and departments? How did they tap opportunities, confront barriers, and forge networks of support to achieve their goals? Women at Indiana University not only opens the door to a more inclusive and accurate understanding of IU's past and future, but also offers greater visibility for Hoosier women in our larger understanding of women in American higher education.

Shades of Difference examines the significance of skin color in different societies around the world and its effects on relations between and within racial groups.

It has been over twenty years since the full manuscript of my book was edited for publication in 1998. I had begun writing it in the previous decade, the 1980’s... a period of flourishing women’s liberation movements against the patriarchal status quo. Books about women’s sexuality and spirituality were flooding the bookstores, and many writers were producing profound studies of the untold heroism of women throughout history. I was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of Sex therapy and education at the University of Minnesota Medical School’s “Program in Human Sexuality.” In addition, I conducted women’s self-enrichment groups and workshops in my private practice... “Woman’s Discovery Institute” ... where I also gave professional Astrology readings and classes. This rich mix of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and a knowledge of the cyclic patterns of life shown by astrology created within me an avid interest in researching women’s unsung heroism throughout history. It brewed in me a heady fascination to stitch it all together in a circle montage that connects all women and all aspects of our multi-layered lives. I based my theory on the lunar cycle, which is eternally linked to women’s menstrual, emotional, and psychic cycles. With a friend, I created a series of workshops for women to celebrate their many-faceted selves and gain confidence to pursue their goals. Yet for various reasons my book manuscript remained in my own bookshelf, never getting published. Until now... the times again call for women to claim their autonomy and gain equality in an overly male-dominated and viciously callous world. I am blessed to find in Xlibris a publisher ready to take on the project with me. I am thrilled to finally see my “Life’s Masterwork” in print. You will find many divergent ideas in these two volumes. No single woman encompasses all that are described, but as you read and recognize these characters in yourselves and your friends, I hope it will help you gain a full appreciation of your own awesome erotic spirit and sacred sexual powers.

Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice presidential candidacy garnered tremendous levels of interest, polarizing the American public—both Democrats and Republicans alike. While many have wondered who she "really" is, trying to cut through the persona she projects and the one projected by the media, Beail and Longworth analyze why she touches such a nerve with the American electorate. Why does she ignite such passionate loyalty – and such loathing? How did her candidacy mobilize new parts of the electorate? Using the notion of "framing" as a way of understanding political perception, the authors analyze the narratives told by and about Sarah Palin in the 2008 election – from beauty queen, maverick, faithful fundamentalist and post-feminist role model to pit bull hockey mom, frontier woman, and political outsider. They discuss where those frames are rooted historically in popular and political culture, why they were selected, and the ways that the frames resonated with the electorate. Framing Sarah Palin addresses the question of what the choice and perception of these frames tells us about the state of American politics, and about the status of American women in politics in particular. What do the debates engendered by these images of Palin say about the current roles and power available to women in American society? What are the implications of her experience for future candidates, particularly women candidates, in American politics?

Featuring over 100 colour images, this book explores the photographic self-representations of the urban middle classes in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining the relationship between photography and gender, body, space as well as materiality and language, its six chapters explore how the production and circulation of vernacular photographs contributed to the making of the modern Turkish citizen in the formative years of the Turkish Republic, when nation-building, secularization and modernization reforms took centre stage. Based on an extensive photographic archive, the book shows that individuals actively reproduced, circulated and negotiated the ideal citizen-image imposed by the Kemalist regime, reflecting not only state-imposed directives but also their class aspirations and other, wider social and cultural developments of the period, from Western fashion trends and movies to the increasing availability of modern consumer items. Calafato also reveals that the freedom from state control afforded by personal cameras allowed the desired image to be sometimes tweaked by incorporating elements from Ottoman and Turkic traditions, by pushing the boundaries of gender norms or by introducing playfulness. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen offers a valuable portrait of the ongoing political and social changes on the lives of the Turkish middle class, and of how they saw and wanted to present themselves, privately and publicly.

The Weight of Images explores the ways in which media images can train their viewers’ bodies. Proposing a shift away from an understanding of spectatorship as being constituted by acts of the mind, this book favours a theorization of relations between bodies and images as visceral, affective engagements that shape our body image - with close attention to one particularly charged bodily characteristic in contemporary western culture: fat. The first mapping of the ways in which fat, gendered bodies are represented across a variety of media forms and genres, from reality television to Hollywood movies, from TV sitcoms to documentaries, from print magazine and news media to online pornography, The Weight of Images contends that media images of fat bodies are never only about fat; rather, they are about our relation to corporeal vulnerability overall. A ground-breaking volume, engaging with a rich variety of media and cultural texts, whilst examining the possibilities of critical auto-ethnography to unravel how body images take shape affectively between bodies and images, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media, cultural and gender studies, with interests in embodiment and affect.