In Pursuing Perfection, authors Margo Maine and Joe Kelly explore the emotional, social and cultural factors behind the ongoing epidemic of disordered eating and body image despair in adult women at midlife and beyond. Written from a biopsychosocial and feminist perspective, Pursuing Perfection describes the many issues women encounter as they navigate a rapidly changing culture that promotes unhealthy standards for beauty and appearance. This updated and expanded edition (originally published as The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect) is a unique guide for anyone seeking practical tools and strategies for adult women looking to establish health and body acceptance.

This book is the first to address what really happens behind closed doors during eating disorders treatment, as most writing has only addressed theoretical approaches and behavioral strategies. The field has long needed a book that describes the heart of the matter: the therapeutic interventions and interactions that comprise life-changing treatment for this life-threatening disorder. In response to this need, the authors have created a book that reflects the individual therapeutic skills and the collective wisdom of senior clinicians, all of whom have years of experience treating anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Intended to be a deeply thoughtful and instructive volume, Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Heart of the Matter demonstrates the depth, complexity, and impact of the therapeutic process. In particular, the book articulates and explores essential points of information, issues, insights and unresolved questions about eating disorders treatment. Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders describes and explicates important treatment issues and themes in a nuanced, highly contextualized and qualitative manner. The book offers a significant reference for both novice and seasoned therapists, and it includes specific information that will serve to inform and mentor future generations of eating disorders clinicians.

This book is the first to address what really happens behind closed doors during eating disorders treatment, as most writing has only addressed theoretical approaches and behavioral strategies. The field has long needed a book that describes the heart of the matter: the therapeutic interventions and interactions that comprise life-changing treatment for this life-threatening disorder. In response to this need, the authors have created a book that reflects the individual therapeutic skills and the collective wisdom of senior clinicians, all of whom have years of experience treating anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Intended to be a deeply thoughtful and instructive volume, Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Heart of the Matter demonstrates the depth, complexity, and impact of the therapeutic process. In particular, the book articulates and explores essential points of information, issues, insights and unresolved questions about eating disorders treatment. Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders describes and explicates important treatment issues and themes in a nuanced, highly contextualized and qualitative manner. The book offers a significant reference for both novice and seasoned therapists, and it includes specific information that will serve to inform and mentor future generations of eating disorders clinicians.

In Pursuing Perfection, authors Margo Maine and Joe Kelly explore the emotional, social and cultural factors behind the ongoing epidemic of disordered eating and body image despair in adult women at midlife and beyond. Written from a biopsychosocial and feminist perspective, Pursuing Perfection describes the many issues women encounter as they navigate a rapidly changing culture that promotes unhealthy standards for beauty and appearance. This updated and expanded edition (originally published as The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect) is a unique guide for anyone seeking practical tools and strategies for adult women looking to establish health and body acceptance.

In this ground-breaking study, Margo Maine declares war on a culture that dismisses, devalues, and disempowers women by making them hate their own bodies. This book covers issues from dieting and weight prejudice to concepts of beauty and ageism to sports, fashion advertising, and propaganda. With practical strategies for activists, educators, and parents, this book also contains extensive references and appendices. Body Wars takes its place alongside The Beauty Myth and Reviving Ophelia in recognizing the constant assault women face, but goes further by giving them practical tools with which to fight back.

Eating disorders (EDs) affect at least 11 million people in the United States each year and spread across age, race, ethnicity and socio-economic class. While professional literature on the subject has grown a great deal in the past 30 years, it tends to be exclusively research-based and lacking expert clinical commentary on treatment. This volume focuses on just such commentary, with chapters authored by both expert clinicians and researchers. Core issues such as assessment and diagnosis, the correlation between EDs and weight and nutrition, and medical/psychiatric management are discussed, as are the underrepresented issues of treatment differences based on gender and culture, the applications of neuroscience, EDNOS, comorbid psychiatric disorders and the impact of psychiatric medications. This volume uniquely bridges the gap between theoretical findings and actual practice, borrowing a bench-to-bedside approach from medical research.

The body is the canvas upon which women paint their secrets and self-doubt, their hopes and their dreams, their pain and their disappointments. Hair has historically played a central role in the battles for power, self-determination and autonomy--serving as a nonverbal language that represents women's lives. However, pain, anxiety, racism, sexism and rigid beauty standards can too often underlie these stories. Modern events like the Black Lives Matter movement and the Covid-19 pandemic have exposed the societal barriers that have prevented the free and equitable expression of hair. Although countless books and articles address body image, the personal psychology and the universal, entangled and lifelong meaning of hair have been missing. This work fills this niche, empowering women to understand complex hair-head-heart connections as well as the many sociocultural and relational pressures they have experienced regarding hair. Above all, the text emphasizes that hair is never just hair.