The beaches of Orkney are thick with seaweed. Worthless today, two hundred years ago seaweed meant wealth and well-being to the inhabitants of these windswept islands north of Scotland.

Air-dried, then burned in shallow sand pits until it liquefied and hardened into cakes, seaweed was a source of alkali, a substance critical for making glass and soap. The product was called "kelp," after one abundant seaweed. The Orcadians sold it to the British, whose usual source of alkali had been cut off by the Napoleonic wars.

Ndidi Moses touches the cover of Cosmopolitan. The woman under the title is thin and white, with strawberry-blonde hair and azure eyes. She wears a come-hither look and a white lace dress that leaves her torso almost bare. "That dress is beautiful," Moses says, running her fingers across the page. "You couldn't wear it out, but for a fashion show . . . I wonder if that's her real body."