Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women

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An award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg. Once when I was in graduate school, I got a terrible case of the flu and dropped a good deal of weight in a short amount of time. When I returned to campus, a professor said, “You look good! Did you lose weight?” When I responded that I had lost weight because I’d been seriously ill, she just shrugged and said, “Well, however it happened, looks good!” I remember that moment as such a clear example that much of what we claim to be health-based concern about other women’s weight is not at all. It’s nothing more than an ill-disguised bit of buy-in to a culture that says our worth is determined by our body size and that less is always more, no matter how we get there.” We preach body confidence, but we live in a culture that doesn’t quite know what to do with a woman who actually likes the way she looks. It’s considered arrogant and even unfeminine. Think of the recent hit One Direction song that made the claim that a woman was beautiful precisely because she didn’t know she was beautiful. We need to question a culture that tells women they must be beautiful to be loved, but that they shouldn’t actually feel beautiful or we’ll find them conceited.” Also, CICO isn't going to not work because of your magical metabolism. You're eating less/more than you think, or you're a fidgeter, or you walk around a lot more, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Renee Engeln, PhD, is an award-winning professor of psychology at Northwestern University. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals and at academic conferences, and she speaks to groups across the country. She is regularly interviewed by the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Today.com, the Huffington Post, Think Progress, and other national media, as well as local outlets and college student publications. Her TEDx talk at the University of Connecticut has more than 450,000 views on YouTube. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

I found this to be remarkably sage advice from the author's grandfather: "Never be too proud of your youth or your beauty. You did nothing to earn them and you can do nothing to keep them."The thing is--Engeln had some good ideas, and I think her thesis as a whole is something that is worth looking in to. I have often said that there's a handbook for boys and a handbook for girls but it's unfair that the boys handbook doesn't say anything about girls while the girls handbook includes the boys handbook in its entirety. I know that's just my own silly idea, But what I enjoyed so much about this book is I feel like I really gain some insight into The pressure that women and girls face. I also gained insight into how the culture how of the world, USA particulary, can be so detrimental to women and girls. This toxic environment is sometimes self inflicted, Not always intentional and not always with malice but there is a hill to climb nonetheless.

Chronic body monitoring is a ridiculous price to pay for fashion, but as women, we pay it all the time in dozens of different ways. I don’t want young women to feel shame about their bodies. I don’t want them to be called sluts when they wear what fashion moguls have decided to be the in style of the season. They should be able to wear whatever they are comfortable wearing. But how comfortable are they? We should have the freedom to dress how we see fit, but we should also have the freedom to be present in the moment. If we are to monitor ourselves, I want us to be able to monitor our thoughts and feelings, our desires and goals, not our appearance.” I particularly admired Engeln’s criticism of the highly lauded Dove beauty campaign. She broke down exactly why the campaign is not empowering. I already agreed with Engeln, and her examination only reinforced that agreement. Dove has good intentions, but, as Engeln explained, the company is misguided and its campaign problematic. Also enlightening is her very needed argument against fat shaming as motivation to lose weight and the parts on the influence of parenting and self-objectification (especially pertinent). Non ci vogliamo veramente far mancare nulla, come sempre siamo troppo avanti in materia di femminismo. There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it's haunting Harry Potter's dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror?

A fascinating book on the joys of discovering how the world works, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cosmos and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. I must admit, I hold the opinion that anyone with eyes and a brain and some time to reflect upon the Western trends and obsessions would arrive at similar conclusions as Engeln even without interviewing all the different girls and women, but perhaps I'm wrong. There's a lot of righteous indignation in here, and it gets pretty pretentious. Especially that bit at the end, where she's like "I mean I guess... some women... want to look pretty and they enjoy it... but THINK about it really THINK about it" really rubbed me the wrong way. Though it could just be because I am someone who likes to put effort into my appearance because I like it. An award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor reveals how the culturalobsession with women's appearanceis an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg.

This was a really interesting read that has me thinking a lot about how I talk to other women. It is second nature to compliment something about how another girl or woman looks, but I'm trying to jump to more important things in my conversations. Here are my notes on the book, mostly for myself so I can remember it for later.An award-winning psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Peggy Orenstein and Sheryl Sandberg.