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

Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and WomenToday's young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don't want to be Barbie dolls, but still feel they must look like Barbie dolls. They're angry about how women are treated by the media, but they readily consume the same media that belittles them. They mock our culture's absurd beauty ideal. They make videos exposing Photoshop tricks. But they can't help wanting to emulate the same images they criticize. They

Today's young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don't want to be Barbie dolls, but still feel they must look like Barbie dolls. They're angry about how women are treated by the media, but they readily consume the same media that belittles them. They mock our culture's absurd beauty ideal. They make videos exposing Photoshop tricks. But they can't help wanting to emulate the same images they criticize. They know what they see isn't real, but they still long for it. They know better, but knowing better is not enough-they still download apps on their phones to airbrush their selfies.

But, those same young women are all in when it comes to issues they care about. They are itching for a fight. They are ready to drop their mirrors and create a different world for girls and women. Beauty Sick is the book that will help them do so. It will review evidence for the myriad consequences of appearance monitoring, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time; and it will provide solutions, because once we have a better understanding of how words, especially fat talk and appearance commentary, affect ourselves and other women, change is in reach.