Rating: 
Summary: A living Legend
Review: I loved this book, and it contains amazing photographs of a beautiful woman.
She is a legend and it's easy to see why...
A+++
Rating: 
Summary: Poses Essential Question
Review: If beauty is the business of good looks, as this book claims, then Iman dares to ask the question: whose business is it? Answering that question, or at least trying, makes this book much more important than a quick flip through its classic photos would indicate. Iman's own history, it seems, indicates that centuries-old Eurocentric conventions about what is "fashionable" are now being confronted by the pure demographics of change. As she points out in one of the book's autobiographical sections, the NEW "girl next door" is likely to be Asian or Latina or black. When Iman arrived on the scene in 1975, black models were just beginning to get a foot in the door, but she was a sign of a coming revolution. The message of this book, and there is one, is that this is a state of permanent revolution: perhaps never again will there be "standard" of beauty.
This playful, beautifully-made book throws the question - whose business is it? - right back at us. The answer, I guess, is you and me, the people who buy books from Amazon, the "hegemony." We validate good looks by changing our own clothes to suit an idea. We validated Iman. So then, of course, the challenge: why isn't there even more room for different ethnicities, different body shapes, different styles of clothes? Is there only room for one Iman?
Okay, all that is serious and all, but clothing is also very un-serious. For whatever reason that she became the first black African to become a supermodel, she grabbed hold of that ephemeral, life-affirming pop culture and squeezed it for all the fun it's worth. Jonathan Barnbrook's design is perfect to handle the politics of dancing, and walks a line between fun and fury that is in your face and yet rewards every subsequent reading. Though the essays by bell hooks and others are not terribly academic, I have a feeling this book will be revisited in years to come as being a first step at trying to understand a new global perspective on beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: Silly -- an extra star for the handsome photographs!
Review: That Iman is stunningly beautiful is without question -- she is probably the most elegant creature on the face of the earth. I'm sure she is also a reasonably pleasant person who enjoys going out to the theatre and having dinner with close friends.That said -- Iman is obviously no intellectual despite her studied attempts here to burnish herself with that brush. Despite phenomenal photography which gives a fascinating look at more than three decades of fashion, "I Am Iman" has a pompous core that ultimately defeats it. Iman is of the elevated opinion that she is a perfectly fabulous creature able to capivate the catwalk, run a high end cosmetic line, cook marvelous gourmet meals for her adoring rock icon of a husband and make the kind of insightful, significant social commentary that actually influences international policy! While some of Iman's opinion about her fine qualities is assuredly true -- and she has certainly dragged in enough of her equally fabulous friends to testify on her behalf -- some of it is not. Many beautiful, successful people -- surrounded by those who would flatter and curry favour -- fall into the deadly trap of believing themselves a good deal cleverer than they really are. Need one look any further than John Lennon and his "Acorns for Peace" plan to get a sense of it? Iman, sadly, has tumbled headlong into this ghastly tiger pit. She thinks her views on social policy and international affairs are actually important. I'm sure that her favourite lectures go over very well with friends at a posh Manhattan restaurant --especially after a few belts from the bar. No doubt she has received a lot of positive response from pals who think it's amazing that someone so gorgeous could be so caring, so committed to her "people" -- and when it all comes out wrapped in that strange Euro-trash voice, it even sounds so important! This unrelenting self-importance harnessed with a really rather unfortunate tendency to inform her reader how she or he ought to think about the thorny topic of international race relations makes this a cringe-making book at best. I especially grew weary of her complaint that the West misunderstood her, misrepresented her, exploited her -- casting her as a goatherding African princess when she so eagerly promoted this racist myth herself in her 70's heyday. I guess in this new century if one is fabulous, famous and wealthy, one can rewrite history to suit.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed bag
Review: The contradictions of what 'is Iman' are a thematic basis for some pretty shocking tableaus of life, as displayed, portrayed and assayed in this book. After reading this book it's clear that Iman clearly has a brain as well as a body; and this book is something utterly unexpected - in other words, you can't tell this one from its cover. Read it and weep, laugh and be 'I-manned'.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Rocks
Review: The contradictions of what 'is Iman' are a thematic basis for some pretty shocking tableaus of life, as displayed, portrayed and assayed in this book. After reading this book it's clear that Iman clearly has a brain as well as a body; and this book is something utterly unexpected - in other words, you can't tell this one from its cover. Read it and weep, laugh and be 'I-manned'.
Rating:
Summary: FABULOUS
Review: two words: very fabulous ! but should we expect anything else from a modern day cleopatra, who transcends all boundaries, and brings it back to the lovely nile with such grace and true real beauty inside and out. if you can handle real beauty that is not manufactured by falseness........ if you can breathe it, then take this book, fore oxygen lives within this book for all to take.
Rating:
Summary: I must have read a differnet book !!!
Review: While I found the pictures to be wonderful. I found the text to be so much more. Being a person of color I could relate to much of what is written here. Yes the West's perception of skin color needs to be addressed. People of all ages need to read this book for this matter alone. It is not preachy or self involved as some have said. It discusses more than fashion and addresses all of us. Beauty is the tip of the iceberg here and one must read the book and look a little deeper. Not just at Iman but ourselves and each other as well.
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