sweetearlgrey 's review for:

Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Teri Schnaubelt, Renee Engeln

3.0

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 This is an important topic, and I was specifically looking for books about how our modern beauty ideal developed. In that regard, this book wasn't what I was looking for, which was disappointing.

What it does do well is examine how current beauty standards directly affect mostly young women, drawing on many interviews with them. However, I found a lot of the personal accounts started to feel quite similar, and it became difficult to keep track of the different names and stories, so I tuned out after a bit.

It does include a section on how advertising creates unattainable standards and discusses self-acceptance and body neutrality. These are points I agree with, but I didn't find anything new or particularly interesting here for me personally. I also thought the analysis was at times overly simplistic. For instance, the writer seemed to assume that East Asian beauty standards are rooted only in Western influence. From my own research, I believe this is a much more complex issue; standards like valuing white skin and double eyelids are quite ancient, and while Western influence is a newer factor, it's not the sole or original cause.

I came across an interview where the author, Renee Engeln, mentioned she somewhat regrets making the book have a broader appeal by not incorporating a more emotionally charged feminist perspective. After reading it, I have to agree; the analysis throughout felt quite tepid to me.