"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."
In this book, the author explores how young women today face a huge set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. The media says things that make them angry, but they still consume these very outlets. Modern culture has an absurd beauty ideal, but women still feel pressured to emulate the same images. Dr. Engeln has given a TEDx talk on what she terms "beauty sickness" has had more than 250,000 views and she reveals the shocking consequences of our society's obsession with girls' appearances on their emotional and physical health, their ambitions, their disruptions in cognitive processing, and more. It's a sobering book, although Engeln provides inspiration and workable solutions to things that not only young women, but all women face.
I found this to be an interesting read, and remembered a paper that I had written for a college linguistics class about the language of advertising aimed at women. I find that I still notice a lot in advertising and the media, although I find that it doesn't affect me the same way that it might have when I was younger. However, like many women, I admit that I have sometimes fallen into the trap of contradictions about appearance and beauty and self-worth. Reading this book brings up things I haven't thought about in a long time, and it's a frustrating read because I find that in 2017, there are still so many contradictions and an obsession in society about appearance (and I was hoping that somehow, society would have moved beyond some of these things). Definitely an interesting read, and I think it would be a good book for parents to read and maybe talk about with their daughters.
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