About The Beauty Experiment
• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books; 1 edition (December 23, 2012)
The Beauty Experiment: How I Skipped Lipstick, Ditched Fashion, Faced the World Without Concealer and Learned to Love the Real Me is a funny, controversial, and painfully honest coming–of-age memoir set vividly in Hong Kong and the U.S. At the book’s center are some of contemporary womens’ most pressing questions: How can I stop being at war with myself? How can I transform my critical inner voice into a trusted and compassionate advisor? Rather than offering a glib self-help program, The Beauty Experiment combines the tale of a year spent au natural with original research, inconvenient facts of biology and history and a mindful, compassionate approach to today’s “beauty craziness.” As author Phoebe Baker Hyde traces her gradual journey toward self-respect, she sows for her readers seeds of inner peace whose yield will long outlast this year’s self-improvement resolutions.
The Beauty Experiment has been featured in the New York Times, Salon.com, Canada’s Globe and Mail and The UK Sunday Times. The hosts of radio and television programs in the US, UK and Canada, including Katie Couric and several NPR personalities, have invited Phoebe to share her insights on the mask of beauty and the feminine inner voice with their audiences. Journalists from Brazil, Italy, India, The UAE, Sweden, Spain and elsewhere have also posed Phoebe’s questions about the evolving shape of modern womanhood to their international readers, putting The Beauty Experiment at the center of a fascinating worldwide conversation.
Praise for The Beauty Experiment
From the Blisstree Bookshelf –“Read this book if you like buying fancy lipstick and then never wearing it or if you like buying fancy lipstick and then always wearing it. Read this book if you loved Dove’s recent “real beauty” drawing experiment. Also read this book if you hated that experiment. Read this book if you like memoirs by women….Read this book if you, too, have a nagging inner voice that wants to tell you how you can and should feel about your own body and beauty.”
From The New Inquiry –“There are plenty of reasons to recommend this book: Hyde’s skilled storytelling, the glimpses into relationships with her husband and the culture surrounding her…, the “relatability” of the narrator….The biggest reason is its Zen-like quality. Where I expected an arc of insecurity to security, there was a cyclic tale of relationship dynamics, liberations co-existing with expectations, mixed responses from friends and cultural pressures….The riddle of beauty is rarely as well articulated as it is here.”
From Canada’s National Post – “[Hyde’s] memoir benefits from time, and the digestion of lessons she learned after the year [of her experiment] elapsed. There is little of the evangelical zeal of the newly converted because of the insight from hindsight. She offers reasoned, measured and manageable changes rather than reactionary ones, allowing the book to reasonably dissect the airbrushed nation.”
About Phoebe Baker Hyde
Phoebe Baker Hyde has written on self, place and culture for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, and The Wall Street Journal. She holds degrees in Anthropology and English from the University of Pennsylvania and Master of Fine Arts in writing from University of California at Irvine. She currently lectures and teaches in Boston.
Find out more about Phoebe at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.
Phoebe’s Tour Stops
Monday, January 20th: Overstuffed
Wednesday, January 22nd: One Frugal Girl
Thursday, January 23rd: Breezes at Dawn
Friday, January 24th: Patricia’s Wisdom
Sunday, January 26th: Diamond Cut Life
Monday, January 27th: Evolution You
Tuesday, January 28th: Jenny Ann Fraser
Wednesday, January 29th: guiltless reading
Monday, February 3rd: The School of Smock
Tuesday, February 4th: You Can Read Me Anything
Tuesday, February 4th: Imperfect People in love with a Perfect God