Part self help with some humor mixed in, this book presents another viewpoint of the realities of the "common woman." Applicable to women young and old, it focuses on the plight of those of us who never quite "measure up" according to the dictates of our beauty-obsessed culture. There is a way to retain our self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, despite being surrounded by our youth and appearance-saturated media and our judgments that have long since been shaped by factors outside our control. As a social worker for over a decade, I am privy to the innermost feelings of teenage girls, young women seeking their identities, and mothers who have forgotten they once had identities. Whether beautiful, plain, or somewhere in between, we cannot escape the fact that we are physical beings in a world that often forgets to look beneath the surface. As a self-described "plain" woman myself, I know that we cannot change this. However, we can control our own perceptions of ourselves and by doing so, end the tyranny that beauty-and the lack of it- has always held over us.