"Artist Archives" is an extraordinary series of treasured artworks from the golden years of pin-up illustration. These collections are valuable references, as well as nostalgic reminders of glamorous periods. Each book showcases 14 carefully selected reproductions of artworks with attention to historic significance and artistic merit.

Julia V. Douthwaite describes the interrelated representations of cultural and sexual difference in key French works of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The heroines of this book are foreign women, brought to France through no will of their own, and forced into the margins of a new society. The author contends that their experience resonates with larger cultural beliefs about exotic and primitive peoples in ancien régime France and illuminates some of the blind spots in Enlightenment thought.

The fantasy of a male creator constructing his perfect woman dates back to the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Yet as technology has advanced over the past century, the figure of the lifelike manmade woman has become nearly ubiquitous, popping up in everything from Bride of Frankenstein to Weird Science to The Stepford Wives. Now Julie Wosk takes us on a fascinating tour through this bevy of artificial women, revealing the array of cultural fantasies and fears they embody. My Fair Ladies considers how female automatons have been represented as objects of desire in fiction and how “living dolls” have been manufactured as real-world fetish objects. But it also examines the many works in which the “perfect” woman turns out to be artificial—a robot or doll—and thus becomes a source of uncanny horror. Finally, Wosk introduces us to a variety of female artists, writers, and filmmakers—from Cindy Sherman to Shelley Jackson to Zoe Kazan—who have cleverly crafted their own images of simulated women. Anything but dry, My Fair Ladies draws upon Wosk’s own experiences as a young female Playboy copywriter and as a child of the “feminine mystique” era to show how images of the artificial woman have loomed large over real women’s lives. Lavishly illustrated with film stills, artwork, and vintage advertisements, this book offers a fresh look at familiar myths about gender, technology, and artistic creation.

Miss Nikki presents Flexible Women, women with gymnastics and cheerleading backgrounds. Featuring Alexis Crystal, Alexis Fawx, Allie Kay, Anastasia Morna, ChiChi, JC Simpson, and Keegan Chillz

Uses interviews, media, reportage, and secondary sources to explore the historical and pop cultural roots of Western images of Asian women.

A fresh and provocative approach to representations of exotic women in Victorian Britain.

If you're an adventurer in search of romance or a wife from a distant land, Fantasy Islands: A Man's Guide to Exotic Women and International Travel, is for you.

Every year in downtown Las Vegas, often called "Old Vegas," The Burlesque Hall of Fame reunion brings together members of the League of Exotic Dancers, one of the earliest unions for women in exotic entertainment, to perform their half-century-old routines. In this annual tradition, performers from the golden age of Vegas burlesque rally counter-culture neo-burlesque fans who both keep the tradition alive and add new meaning to it. Over the past four years, documentarian Kaitlyn Regehr and photographer Matilda Temperley have embedded themselves within this community-a group, which like Old Vegas itself, continues to survive and thrive sixty years past its supposed prime. Here, in a smoky, off-strip casino, they found women, at times well into their 80s, subversively bumping and grinding away preconceptions about appropriate behavior for a pensioner. This collection of interviews and photographs is drawn from the backstage dressing rooms, homes, and lives of this aging burlesque community, as well as the young neo-burlesque community who adore them. The authors present an inter-generational sisterhood that is both unique and socially significant. Through a range of experiences-from discussing struggles for wage equality, to helping stabilize an 85 year old as she steps into a sequined g-string-the authors describe the complexity of the lives of these performers and the burlesque history from which they come. Regehr and Temperley present multidimensional portraits of this community and conclude that they are at their most vital when read with all the nuances, troubles, trials, and triumphs that they formerly and currently experience.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.