Category: beauty
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Too much vanity
“I put that poison in my body, mostly because of having too much vanity,” said Andressa Urach, Brazilian reality TV star, commenting on her botched plastic surgery, which resulted in gaping wounds and a long hospital stay. We found Urach’s quote in the February 1, 2015, issue of The Dallas Morning News.
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The simple pleasure of flowers
Mary Cassatt usually avoided painting flowers. “She avoided a genre in which many female artists historically had been confined,” explained the words next to her painting in a exhibit called “Bouquets” at the Dallas Museum of Art. Her painting was beautiful and so were the many other colorful paintings in the exhibit. All of them…
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The Western woman’s harem
Fratema Mernissi, a professor of sociology at the University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco, remembers trips to visit her grandmother, “who was illiterate and lived in a harem with locked gates that women were not supposed to open.” In her book Scheherazade Goes West—Different Cultures, Different Harems, Mernissi describes visiting an American department store,…
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The self-assertive, independent woman
“What kind of revolution, I wonder, do we need to make men dream of self-assertive, independent women as the epitome of beauty?” asks Fratema Mernissi in her book Scheherazade Goes West—Different Cultures, Different Harems. A professor of sociology at the University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco, Mernissi remembers trips to visit her grandmother, who…
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The sounds of the loons
At night, when I pulled the covers around me to keep warm in our cabin in Maine, I heard the sad, loud sounds of the loons on the lake. “How do you describe those sounds?” I asked one morning. To answer my question, my friend Leslie pulled a bird guide from the bookshelf. The guidebook…
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Nix the Quick Fix
I love the headline—“Nix the Quick Fix”—which I found in the March 2014 issue of Oklahoma magazine. What a great reminder as summer approaches, and I would like to lose five pounds now, instantly, before-I-switch-to-summer-clothes. I needed the timely reminder. I read the article, but it wasn’t necessary. The headline and two subheads offered great…
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Avoid fashion magazines?
Three out of four teenage girls feel worse about themselves after spending just three minutes with a fashion magazine. “The media is sending a dangerous message to our youth about what kinds of bodies are or aren’t acceptable,” leaders of The Representation Project stressed in a recent email newsletter. Those dangerous messages affect not only…
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Brainy boys and fat girls
“More than a decade into the 21st century, we would like to think that American parents have similar standards and similar dreams for their sons and daughters,” writes Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in the January 26, 2014, issue of The Dallas Morning News. A contributing writer for The New York Times, he recently received a Ph.D. in…
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A salute to Lady Bird
When you think about LBJ, most likely, you don’t think about Lady Bird Johnson and bluebonnets. Not unless it’s April and you live in Texas. In the Lone Star State, we say thank you to Lady Bird every year as we look forward to bluebonnet season and the Texas-size fields of wild flowers that line…
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Contemplative at the eye of chaos
Sister Joan Chittister, author of many books and a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, talks about “being contemplative at the eye of chaos.” Contemplative in the midst of chaos? We like that image. It’s easy to be contemplative when you’re outside in a quiet garden or alone listening to music. But, to…