News and Reviews

For Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance

Women are sick of the same tired, stale body image advice. Don’t tell us to ‘Slick on some sexy red lipstick’ or ‘Spend a day at the spa’ – we need real, functional tips that can help us break out of a bad body image day. Rosie Molinary answers our call in Beautiful You: Her ideas are inspired, creative, and totally doable, with many carrying a trickle-down effect to the younger generation of girls. With the first day of reading it, my copy was thoroughly dog-eared and I can’t wait to employ Tip #39 this January, when I ask my husband and best friend to write a body image-based New Year’s resolution for me.   – Leslie Goldman, Author, Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-imagining the “Perfect” Body (Da Capo, 2007)

As I read Rosie Molinary’s Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance, I found myself marking the pages that contained body image wisdom that really resonated with me. Guess what? By the time the book was finished, I’d marked more than half the pages! Molinary has done a fabulous job of offering practical and doable advice to help women see — and appreciate — themselves in a whole new way, and to realize that a healthy body image is about so much more than what we think we see in the mirror. I’m giving this book my ultimate seal of approval — I’m handing it off to my 14-year-old daughter. — Dara Chadwick, Author, You’d Be So Pretty If: Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies — Even When We Don’t Love Our Own (Da Capo, 2009)

Press for Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance

5-Minute Body Image Boosters: Here’s How to Bust the Blues When You’re in a Rut 
 

Charlotte Talks conversation on August 18, 2010

Mentors Witness Change in Girls

For Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina

Growing up in two cultures, children are usually the ones “who bring America home” while their parents “just want the guest to go away.” [Molinary’s] lively, honest narrative captures the immigrant conflicts of trying to fit in at home and feeling a stranger outside. She combines her personal experience with commentary drawn from more than 80 Latinas she interviewed and more than 500 who answered her Web-based questionnaire. They talk frankly about prejudice, family tensions, body image, skin color, sexuality, faith, media, language, social norms, and much more. Throughout, the young women are candid about ignorance from all sides, and they are fiercely critical both of the stereotype that Latinas are all “Mexican and illegal” and of the exotic, sexy roles Latinas play on television. Rooted in clear details, the strong, upbeat message celebrates the traditional and the contemporary sides of today’s Latinas.  Teen girls, and not just Latinas, will grab this for the honest talk of coming of age.  Hazel Rochman, Booklist  

 Hijas Americanas gives voice to the many influences that go into making strong, talented, beautiful Latina women.  Its broad-based approach includes Latinas of all stripes, races, ethnicities, who have made different choices about what balance to strike between their two cultures.  Rosie Molinary contributes to a much-needed conversation about what defines us as a community as well as what challenges us as individuals.  The book sends an affirmative message that is bound to resonate with Latinas and with women of all backgrounds and ages.  Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Saving the World 

This is an important and authentic contribution to the quest for identity and meaning of us Latinas. Rosie Molinary has written a powerful and meaningful book that candidly explores the many stereotypes associated with growing up Latina and the quest to accept this vital identity. Marjorie Agosin, Professor, Wellesley College
 
Hijas Americanas canvases the diversity of the American Latina experience– from children of immigrants to those of us who can’t speak a lick of Spanish—frankly and compassionately. Molinary’s subjects were candid and generous, sharing the most intimate details of their experiences.  As I moved through the quick-paced chapters, I was stunned by how many times I thought, “that happened to me, too!”  Michelle Herrera Mulligan, co-editor of Border-Line Personalities 

Hijas Americanas is a bicultural ethnography of the challenges and triumphs of Latina women who have been forced to merge the conflicting realities of a culture where being treated as a credible individual often requires as much beauty as brains.  Latina Style Magazine, Spring 2007  

Trust us.  You’ll relate to Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina as much as you relate to Latina.  Well, okay, almost as much.  Author Rosie Molinary incorporates interviews with 500 Latinas and her own experience coming of age as a bicultural chica into an engaging, un-textbooklike look at our issues with body image, beauty and ethnic identity.  Latina Magazine, June/ July 2007      

Composing a book that draws from her experiences as a Latino woman in America as well as hundreds of other women throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America, author Rosie Molinary explores the age old debate of what it means to be beautiful in Hijas Americanas.   Opening with a personal reconciliation of her image issues, Hijas Americanas recognizes, “women’s experiences will vary and the one truism across all grounds is that you owe yourself the time and energy of figuring out what is right for you.  Like a candid conversation, Hijas Americanas redefines beauty, allowing readers to understand it is never solely skin deep.  Beauty embraces inner spirit and changes perceptions.  Hijas Americanas also addresses beauty views from the Latino male standpoint and discusses the relationship pressure of having to be a good girl in life and a bad girl in bed.  Instead of harnessing issues of cultural identity, beauty standards and sexuality defined by near-impossible media generated ideals and deep-rooted cultural stereotypes, Hijas Americanas becomes the potent voice that enables women to celebrate themselves.  Urbano Latino Magazine, Issue # 74