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

“[Beauty Sick] will blow the top off the body image movement…provocative and necessary.” — Rebellious Magazine

An award-winning psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's mental health, 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.

Today’s young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to their body image. They don’t want to be Barbie dolls but, like generations of women before them, are told they must look like them. They’re angry about the media’s treatment of women but hungrily consume the outlets that belittle them. They mock modern culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make videos exposing Photoshopping tricks, but feel pressured to emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a "skinny arm." They understand that what they see isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. Yet these same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about. They are ready to fight back against their beauty-sick culture and create a different world for themselves, but they need a way forward.

In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance on their emotional and physical health, self-esteem, and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we must break free from cultural forces that feed body shame, destructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.

How can women and girls break free from these cultural forces and reclaim the futures they deserve? Based on two decades of research, Beauty Sick provides an urgently needed path forward.

• Cultural Criticism: An unflinching look at how our society created an epidemic of beauty sickness by teaching girls their primary value is their appearance.
• The Science of Self-Objectification: Discover the shocking data on how seeing yourself as an object to be looked at steals your time, money, cognitive resources, and happiness.
• Beyond Media Literacy: Learn why just “knowing” the images aren’t real isn’t enough to protect you and what practical steps actually build resilience against our beauty-sick culture.
• A Path to Body Positivity: Find actionable, evidence-based solutions for you and the girls in your life to overcome negative attitudes, embrace your whole selves, and start changing the world.

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.