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Reviews
Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Renee Engeln
estellegodard's review
informative
medium-paced
3.5
relatable and backed by research; this makes for a very informative and digestible book.
littleroseygirl's review
4.0
This was a fascinating study of society and the expectations it places on women in regards to dress, make-up, weight, and beauty/appearance in general. The author's thesis, that a cultural focus on beauty serves only to hurt women, is well thought out and backed up through interviews and studies she discussed in the book. Interestingly enough, I finished this book and then logged in to Twitter to see that AOC's expensive (and borrowed) Vanity Fair photoshoot outfit was causing an uproar. It was an excellent example of what I had just read about: how society expected women to look flawless while also punishing them for the effort it takes to look that way. I would be interested to see Engeln dive deeper into the correlation between weight loss and beauty sickness. She seemed to come to the conclusion that intentional weight loss of any kind is the result of beauty sickness. I do appreciate her point that, if you notice someone has lost weight, it's better to ask them whether or not it was intentional instead of ascribing value to it without knowing the whole story. There's a lot to unpack in this book and a lot to simmer on. I appreciate and have learned a lot from Engeln's work and effort.
booksbyanneleen's review
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This book was utterly depressing, mainly because I think all women know, to a certain extent, how beauty ideals influence how we think about our bodies and that of other people, but to actually hear data upon data confirming how much it affects us is truly something else. I found it particularly sad to hear how body ideals not only influence how we perceive our self worth, but the constant worrying about our appearances can actually make us less focused and perform worse when doing certain tasks. Very interesting read, but left me quite heartbroken for myself and fellow women.
Content Warnings
Minor: Body shaming and Eating disorder
ktgreen's review
3.0
Interesting and informative. But it seemed to drag at times and occasionally drifted into confirmation bias (as when, for example, we’re told about surveys of both women and men but not given the results for men). I probably would’ve given it another star if I could relate to it more, although I recognize I’m an outlier in our beauty-obsessed society.