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38 reviews for:
Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash
Timothy Caulfield
3.56 AVERAGE
38 reviews for:
Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash
Timothy Caulfield
3.56 AVERAGE
I actually didn't finish this book cuz I lost it I only got through half of it but after reading these reviews I'm kind of glad...
REALLY interesting book, written with equal parts humour and scientific rigour. Greatly enjoyed it. By the end it seemed to start repeating itself and became a bit harangue-y and boring. I also suspect I have a bit of confirmation bias in that he says a lot of what I already agree with, but overall I really enjoyed it and think it would be great to teach in high schools!
lighthearted
medium-paced
Wasn't entirely what I was expecting (the later half leans quite heavily on psychology and sociology, with most of the debunking of silly celebrity fads being restricted to the first half of the book) but quite an interesting and entertaining read nonetheless.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Really good read. It's well written and I didn't find it repetitive, yet it was easy to follow and has a good "flow." If you're interested celebrity culture, I think it's worth picking up. I really enjoyed it. :)
I wanted to like this more than I did. The main reason that it can't get a higher rating for me is that it became extremely repetitive.
Okay, I get it. Celebrities are rich and pampered and obsessed with their appearances, and some of them fancy themselves as experts on the topics of health and beauty, catering to other celebrities and and the common folk. That was the thesis of this book as I understand it, and I only had to read half of it to pick that up. So, with the pile of library books encroaching, I put this down before the end. Maybe I'll pick it up again down the line.
Most of the first half of the book was A+.
And I think that's because a lot of it was up to science and scientific fact: No, this face cream will not make you look twenty again, there's no scientific proof of this; no, there's no such thing as "toxins" in the way that these lifestyle gurus/celebrities mean, here is the scientific basis for it. Smoking is bad for you, bears shit in the woods, more groundbreaking news at eleven.
It was around the "Pamela Anderson's Breasts" chapter that we started the slide, and I think that's because the book starts to progress away from provable scientific fact and starts to get into the more nebulous sciences of sociology- and I could rant about this for hours, but I'll keep it succinct:
Much like with dermatologists having a conflict of interests when it comes to being a skin doctor AND profiting from beauty treatments, you'll find that many people who pursue sociology as a career choice can have major biases when it comes to things like social issues (sexism, women, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc). There are many, many, many people with a degree/career in sociology/sociological studies that embrace extremist beliefs and therefore have a tendency to seek out information that reinforces those beliefs rather than challenging them.
This can involve deliberate skewing of test results, dishonest testing practices (e.g. "we asked 300 teenage girls how they felt about men- oh by the way, all of them were in a rape crisis center after being raped by men, so obviously these results are super non-biased") and biased interview/survey questions (years ago there was a phone survey (bad survey method btw) done by (iirc?) a feminist group asking women if they had ever had sex after drinking; women who said "yes" were marked down by the group as having been raped. This is skeevy because they did not ask how much was drunk, if the other party involved was drunk, if the women themselves felt they had been raped, and they did not tell the women that they were marking them as having been raped.) All of these methods are used to gain results that the person/group WANTS to hear and spread. It's insidious and dishonest and bullshit.
tl;dr take sociology "experts" with a grain of salt.
Anyway, my point is that in the tail end of the first half and much of the second half of the book, we start to move away from the rigorous scientific dedication of the first half.
In the chapter on beauty, the author mentions for instance that beautiful people make more money than non-beautiful people do. And I have a problem with this for a few reasons:
First, beauty is not a yes or a no. There are people who are pretty, but maybe not beautiful; there are people who aren't super pretty, but you wouldn't call them ugly. So this already introduces some skepticism in me as to who exactly these numbers are referring to.
Second, there's an important distinction to be made here: Are beautiful people being PAID more for their looks, or are they maybe gravitating towards PROFESSIONS that pay more? If beautiful people are more likely to be actors, singers, spokespeople, working in visible professions, then it could very well be that they are gravitating (or being invited to) careers that happen to pay more.
One thing I appreciated about the book was the author making a concerted effort to talk about the effect of celebrity body standards on men and boys as well as women (God, reading a book written pre-2016 is a treat). I have one nitpick, something the author doesn't address: He says that the effect of celebrity body image is clearly less pronounced for men/boys as it is for girls/women. But is it that the effect is less pronounced, or is it that men and boys don't feel like it's acceptable to talk about the way women do?
I mean, let's be real here: Men rarely talk about getting plastic surgery, or about beauty regimens. At most, they talk about working out. Plastic surgery and face-cream and shit is seen as feminine, and there is absolutely a stigma and sense of mockery for men who get plastic surgery or engage in beauty routines on par with a woman's. Men/Boys may not talk about it as much, but I'd wager the effect of celebrity on them is only slightly smaller than the effect on women.
On page 111, there's an example of that sociology bias I was talking about. The author says a study was done and they found that 97% of women have a "I hate my body" thought throughout the day.
I call bullshit. When you see numbers like that, you should call bullshit too because it is probably bullshit. This has the same vibe as the phone survey example I mentioned above.
Look, I'm a woman. I don't hate my body. Without giving away too much identifying information, I have a very visible medical condition that makes me look different from the average woman my age. It's not debilitating, and it's not something super socially awkward (I'm not disfigured, for instance) but it is something that people notice and sometimes (super inappropriately) comment on.
And occasionally I do have the thought of "God, I wish that I did not have this medical condition, I don't like the way it makes me look."
I guarantee- I guaran-fucking-tee- that that "study" fucked around with the answers the women gave. I guarantee you some of them said "Well, I have a skin condition that I think about kind of regularly, I don't like the way it makes me look" or "Oh, I got into a car accident when I was five and I have scars on my face, I don't like those and wish they were gone" and made it into "these women think about how much they hate their bodies at least once a day".
Because let me tell you, most women have better shit to do than agonizing over our bodies every day. At most we have a vague "eh, wish that wasn't a thing because of the problems it gives me" and we fucking move on. The women who obsess over it and don't move either have medical/physical conditions that they're living with, or they need to talk to a psychologist because yoo-hoo! body dysmorphia is a thing.
The final issue I took with this book was the bit about celebrity worship. Because once again, we went down the rabbit hole from "here are actual scientific studies/data" to "I googled search terms and decided that this was a reliable indicator that values have changed over the last sixty years".
The author talks about how phrases/sayings for "chase your dreams!" have increased since the 1950s, and phrases/sayings for things like "sacrifice" "obligation" "service" (among others) have gone down- the implication being that this is connected to the supposed narcissism of the younger generations. And I'm not gonna lie, I almost put the book down when I read that. This is the most alarmist, finger-wagging, kids-these-days observation I've read in a book in a while, and it reeks of that tendency for older generations to whine about how different things were in their day. It was the author engaging in the very correlation=causation fallacy he's been warning us about in the rest of the book.
Furthermore, the author goes on and on and on about how many kids want to be celebrities when they grow up, or talk about how they want to be famous.
And it's like... yeah. They're kids.
My knee-jerk reaction, on page 126, was "Okay, they all say they want to be famous. Now ask them if they think they WILL be famous or not." There was absolutely no delineation between "these kids want fame and are going for it" and "they want fame, but realistically they know it's just a fantasy". Again: Alarmism about kids these days. It's also worth mentioning that the answers may very realistically change depending on what socioeconomic status the child is: A kid who lives in relative comfort and security may feel that pursuing celebrity is a worthwhile goal, whereas one who lives in poverty may have different aspirations or sense of reality.
Overall, the most disappointing thing about this book is that it devolves into the kind of older generation alarmism about how "kids these days are just so obsessed with celebrity, they base their lives around it" crap, and it's not nearly as supported in credible fact the way that most of the first half of the book is.
ETA: I lied. One last thing.
Author: I work in a bookstore that sells magazines.
On page 199, that clerk wasn't side-eyeing you because she thought you were weird or creepy- she was side-eyeing you because taking pictures of pages/articles in magazines and putting them back on the shelves without purchasing is technically a form of theft.
Just buy them next time.
And I think that's because a lot of it was up to science and scientific fact: No, this face cream will not make you look twenty again, there's no scientific proof of this; no, there's no such thing as "toxins" in the way that these lifestyle gurus/celebrities mean, here is the scientific basis for it. Smoking is bad for you, bears shit in the woods, more groundbreaking news at eleven.
It was around the "Pamela Anderson's Breasts" chapter that we started the slide, and I think that's because the book starts to progress away from provable scientific fact and starts to get into the more nebulous sciences of sociology- and I could rant about this for hours, but I'll keep it succinct:
Much like with dermatologists having a conflict of interests when it comes to being a skin doctor AND profiting from beauty treatments, you'll find that many people who pursue sociology as a career choice can have major biases when it comes to things like social issues (sexism, women, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc). There are many, many, many people with a degree/career in sociology/sociological studies that embrace extremist beliefs and therefore have a tendency to seek out information that reinforces those beliefs rather than challenging them.
This can involve deliberate skewing of test results, dishonest testing practices (e.g. "we asked 300 teenage girls how they felt about men- oh by the way, all of them were in a rape crisis center after being raped by men, so obviously these results are super non-biased") and biased interview/survey questions (years ago there was a phone survey (bad survey method btw) done by (iirc?) a feminist group asking women if they had ever had sex after drinking; women who said "yes" were marked down by the group as having been raped. This is skeevy because they did not ask how much was drunk, if the other party involved was drunk, if the women themselves felt they had been raped, and they did not tell the women that they were marking them as having been raped.) All of these methods are used to gain results that the person/group WANTS to hear and spread. It's insidious and dishonest and bullshit.
tl;dr take sociology "experts" with a grain of salt.
Anyway, my point is that in the tail end of the first half and much of the second half of the book, we start to move away from the rigorous scientific dedication of the first half.
In the chapter on beauty, the author mentions for instance that beautiful people make more money than non-beautiful people do. And I have a problem with this for a few reasons:
First, beauty is not a yes or a no. There are people who are pretty, but maybe not beautiful; there are people who aren't super pretty, but you wouldn't call them ugly. So this already introduces some skepticism in me as to who exactly these numbers are referring to.
Second, there's an important distinction to be made here: Are beautiful people being PAID more for their looks, or are they maybe gravitating towards PROFESSIONS that pay more? If beautiful people are more likely to be actors, singers, spokespeople, working in visible professions, then it could very well be that they are gravitating (or being invited to) careers that happen to pay more.
One thing I appreciated about the book was the author making a concerted effort to talk about the effect of celebrity body standards on men and boys as well as women (God, reading a book written pre-2016 is a treat). I have one nitpick, something the author doesn't address: He says that the effect of celebrity body image is clearly less pronounced for men/boys as it is for girls/women. But is it that the effect is less pronounced, or is it that men and boys don't feel like it's acceptable to talk about the way women do?
I mean, let's be real here: Men rarely talk about getting plastic surgery, or about beauty regimens. At most, they talk about working out. Plastic surgery and face-cream and shit is seen as feminine, and there is absolutely a stigma and sense of mockery for men who get plastic surgery or engage in beauty routines on par with a woman's. Men/Boys may not talk about it as much, but I'd wager the effect of celebrity on them is only slightly smaller than the effect on women.
On page 111, there's an example of that sociology bias I was talking about. The author says a study was done and they found that 97% of women have a "I hate my body" thought throughout the day.
I call bullshit. When you see numbers like that, you should call bullshit too because it is probably bullshit. This has the same vibe as the phone survey example I mentioned above.
Look, I'm a woman. I don't hate my body. Without giving away too much identifying information, I have a very visible medical condition that makes me look different from the average woman my age. It's not debilitating, and it's not something super socially awkward (I'm not disfigured, for instance) but it is something that people notice and sometimes (super inappropriately) comment on.
And occasionally I do have the thought of "God, I wish that I did not have this medical condition, I don't like the way it makes me look."
I guarantee- I guaran-fucking-tee- that that "study" fucked around with the answers the women gave. I guarantee you some of them said "Well, I have a skin condition that I think about kind of regularly, I don't like the way it makes me look" or "Oh, I got into a car accident when I was five and I have scars on my face, I don't like those and wish they were gone" and made it into "these women think about how much they hate their bodies at least once a day".
Because let me tell you, most women have better shit to do than agonizing over our bodies every day. At most we have a vague "eh, wish that wasn't a thing because of the problems it gives me" and we fucking move on. The women who obsess over it and don't move either have medical/physical conditions that they're living with, or they need to talk to a psychologist because yoo-hoo! body dysmorphia is a thing.
The final issue I took with this book was the bit about celebrity worship. Because once again, we went down the rabbit hole from "here are actual scientific studies/data" to "I googled search terms and decided that this was a reliable indicator that values have changed over the last sixty years".
The author talks about how phrases/sayings for "chase your dreams!" have increased since the 1950s, and phrases/sayings for things like "sacrifice" "obligation" "service" (among others) have gone down- the implication being that this is connected to the supposed narcissism of the younger generations. And I'm not gonna lie, I almost put the book down when I read that. This is the most alarmist, finger-wagging, kids-these-days observation I've read in a book in a while, and it reeks of that tendency for older generations to whine about how different things were in their day. It was the author engaging in the very correlation=causation fallacy he's been warning us about in the rest of the book.
Furthermore, the author goes on and on and on about how many kids want to be celebrities when they grow up, or talk about how they want to be famous.
And it's like... yeah. They're kids.
My knee-jerk reaction, on page 126, was "Okay, they all say they want to be famous. Now ask them if they think they WILL be famous or not." There was absolutely no delineation between "these kids want fame and are going for it" and "they want fame, but realistically they know it's just a fantasy". Again: Alarmism about kids these days. It's also worth mentioning that the answers may very realistically change depending on what socioeconomic status the child is: A kid who lives in relative comfort and security may feel that pursuing celebrity is a worthwhile goal, whereas one who lives in poverty may have different aspirations or sense of reality.
Overall, the most disappointing thing about this book is that it devolves into the kind of older generation alarmism about how "kids these days are just so obsessed with celebrity, they base their lives around it" crap, and it's not nearly as supported in credible fact the way that most of the first half of the book is.
ETA: I lied. One last thing.
Author: I work in a bookstore that sells magazines.
On page 199, that clerk wasn't side-eyeing you because she thought you were weird or creepy- she was side-eyeing you because taking pictures of pages/articles in magazines and putting them back on the shelves without purchasing is technically a form of theft.
Just buy them next time.