The World Has Curves

American women today are faced with a paradox: they uphold an ideal of beauty—long, lean, toned—that increasingly bears little resemblance to truth about their size. Women around the world are spending more time, money, and energy pursuing this ideal than ever before. So why does the "perfect body" remain so elusive? And why does the definition of "ideal" vary so widely between countries and cultures? The World Has Curves is journalist Julia Savacool's attempt to answer these questions. She take