Showing results by narrator "Mara Altman" in All Categories

Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn't have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn't it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it's like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies.

In her Audible Original A Short Drink of Water, Altman challenges the assumption that taller is better. Her journey to empower those at the short end of the stick (and why is it always the short end?) delivers a hilarious and heartfelt look at the differences between tall and short and how people seek to narrow them both physically and psychologically. You’ll meet people of every size and opinion in this deeply reported and richly comical ride through a world where every inch counts.

Twenty-six-year-old Mara Altman wanted to know what all the screaming was about. She'd lost her virginity at seventeen; grown up in southern California with sexually free parents; had lovers in India, Burma, and Peru; and spent a year in Bangkok observing all manner of depravity. And yet she was an attractive, successful, single woman in New York who'd never had an orgasm. And so she embarked on a wildly funny, emotionally resonant odyssey - a journey both inside and outside herself - only to discover that, for Mara, orgasm was connected to a part of her that no vibrator could reach.

Every day hundreds of human beings board long-haul flights to India on extended breaks from their everyday lives, in search of something seemingly easy to find: themselves. That quixotic quest for understanding has drawn much of the world's population eastward ever since Buddha first assumed the lotus position, and writer Mara Altman needed to know why. So she flew around the world in search of an answer not only to that mystery but also to the deeper questions that plague all who yearn to define the meaning of life.

At 32 years old, the recently married author found herself suddenly surrounded by babies, and the expectation of family and friends that she would soon have one herself. Altman’s ambivalence prompted a search for the meaning of motherhood - one that led her to wear a fake pregnancy belly, attend pre-natal yoga classes, debate experts, and even tend to her very own crying plastic baby. Her reporting led to a surprising and uplifting lesson about life, love and the choices we make.

Last fall, newly-engaged author Mara Altman rejected the showy sparkle of a multi-carat diamond ring, and chose instead a simple, three-figure bauble. But why? There began her reportorial journey to find the true connection of diamonds to marriage - and to love.

Mara Altman, author of the best-selling Kindle Single Sparkle, returns to top comic form to address the problem every woman faces but no woman wants to acknowledge: facial and body hair. Her brave, witty memoir gives readers a rare, honest glimpse into the hidden world of lasers and razors. It begins in childhood, when Altman discovers that hair sometimes grows in unexpected places - and that it's best to remove it immediately, or risk ridicule from 8th-grade girls. It continues into early adulthood, when romantically inclined men make offhand remarks about her fine coating of fur.

The hirsute heroine of last year's hit Kindle Single Bearded Lady has found herself on the precipice of failure. A rejected novel has sent newly-married Mara Altman into a tailspin of questioning and self-doubt. Should she stop racing forward, and settle down to start a family? Or should she give her quest for success another shot? With a gimlet eye trained directly on herself, Altman recounts her wild experience of becoming a standup comedian. By turns comic and cosmic, the 31-year-old Altman's search for a new path — and fresh answers — yields a joke-filled journey towards an unexpected and life-affirming finish line.