Authored by: Renee Engeln | Summarized by: Sarah Jisri<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many girls and young women are poisoned by what society and the media are influencing, particularly when it comes to appearance and how a woman is supposed to show herself to the world. This toxic influence causes many issues including a decrease in self esteem, increases in depression, eating disorders, self-objectification, objectification, anxiety, body shame, living just to please others, and making beauty take up mental space, time, and money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to self-esteem, a woman\u2019s self esteem is so strongly connected to her looks that if one wants to cause emotional damage on a woman, they would make a strike on her appearance. Women in the workplace also face a lot more judging and demand on appearance than a man would working the same job (men are prized more for competence and ability). This judging doesn\u2019t only come from men, but women judge each other as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beauty gives it\u2019s holder lots of power only if others acknowledge it, but this power is temporary as beauty is linked with youth. Because of this, women hide their age in fear of being seen as ugly, even though men are seen as more distinguishable as they age. Women should feel more powerful as they age because they gain experiences, skills, and wisdom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The author then goes in to talk about a significant issue that is constantly mentioned throughout her book, and that is objectification & self-objectification. Objectification<\/strong> is simply what happens when one is not treated as a human being with thoughts, feelings, goals, and desires. Instead, they\u2019re treated as a body or a collection of body parts. Even worse, their body is seen as something that exists just to make other people happy. Unfortunately, objectification is inescapable for most women, as it will appear at some point during their lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beauty sickness causes self-objectification and body monitoring which is a huge distraction from more important matters. Always thinking about how you look decreases your performance and full potential in many aspects. Examples of this include how to “run like a girl”, its not about running fast or hard but how you looked while you ran which is caused by self-objectification. Also, the more women self-objectify, the more difficulty they have accurately identifying internal states such as emotions, hunger, and satiety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many men think shame and feeling bad about weight gain is necessary because it could keep a woman from gaining weight. Except, it\u2019s not. This is because the more emphasis one puts on their appearance, the more shame they tend to feel. It becomes a horrible loop because shame turns thoughts to appearance, which gives more body shame. Shame is the feeling you get when you\u2019ve exposed your flawed self to judgmental people which leaves you feeling self-conscious. If your job is to please others with your appearance and you fail, that\u2019s a serious failure – the shame from it can devastate even the strongest women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be clear, shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt makes you want to apologise, not disappear. Shame is deeper, hurts more, and can help cause anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Across their lifespan, women feel more frequent, acute shame than men. Another aspect the author touched upon is that weight-related bias targets women more than men and in the workplace, women are 16x<\/strong> more likely to report weight-based discrimination. Men and women have less desire to work with fat women, and fat women are less likely to be recommended as new hires. Another thing is that particularly for women, failing to be thin indicates laziness, gluttony, or lack of discipline. Body shame is wrong for many reasons including the reasons that the thin beauty ideal is unattainable, body shame usually doesn\u2019t push women closer to the ideal, and nearing the beauty ideal doesn\u2019t guarantee health. Women are also more likely to overconsume, binge eat or stop eating. This makes them more obsessed with food and when they\u2019re hungry, it\u2019s hard to focus on anything else. Also, very low calorie diets show impaired cognitive performance with lower scores compared to non-dieting women. Frankly, in dieting women, very few maintain weight loss from diet, as many regain lost weight and many others gain more than what they\u2019ve lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to the world of healthcare and doctor visits, physicians should not focus on weight loss when treating obese patients because it increases shame they already feel and keeps them away from seeking necessary care. Instead, they should focus on physical and psychological well-being, not appearance. If we decrease the amount of attention young women place on appearance, we can decrease depression. Self-objectification is very serious as it could take up so much time and space out of your life, make you live to please others, have depression, anxiety, eating disorders, rumination and shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another problem discussed in this book is the amount of money spent on beauty. Generally speaking, women get paid less than men in the same job, are more likely to work in lower-paying occupations, less likely to get employer provided health insurance or retirement savings plan, more likely to live in poverty, and bring home less money than men. That being said, they have to spend more money on work attire and accessories, especially in public-appearance jobs. Many unnecessary beauty products feel necessary because of what culture is influencing, making women spend so much money. Additionally, culture has made many women feel insecure and\/or unattractive going out without makeup. If the women around you and in ads or tv are wearing makeup, you feel forced to do the same. It also becomes hard to tell what you want<\/strong> to buy versus what you feel you need<\/strong> to buy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To put things into perspective, Women are responsible for 85%<\/strong> of spending on beauty products. Cosmetics brought in $60 billion<\/strong> of revenue in 2015. Over half of men use no<\/strong> products getting ready in the morning while the average woman owns 40 different cosmetic products<\/strong>. When beauty feels like such a source of power for women, many are willing to pay whatever. Nonstop marketing tells us to spend money for the more beautiful version of us and companies have a deep interest in keeping us dissatisfied with how we look to increase their revenues. Young girls need to be raised to not be obsessed with their look because as the author puts it, “The price is too high”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are 3 serious problems with images of women in the media – <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. They\u2019re unrealistic and unrepresentative, they may also, at times, be described as fictional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. They\u2019re frequently paired with success, romance, and happiness making people believe it is the key to a good life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. They\u2019re frequently objectified, reinforcing our tendency to see other women and ourselves as things instead of human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n – Each of these problems is linked to negative psychological outcomes<\/strong> in girls and women. Moreover, models in ads and tv are very rare as they fit a tight criteria. Most women are diverse in body shapes & sizes, hair colours, facial features, and ages. Ironically, as the average woman\u2019s weight increased over the past few decades, female beauty models got thinner. Additionally, there is a lot of work that remains invisible to the viewer such as teams to get the model ready, work on the set, and the ever-so-popular photoshopping. These models go from statistical outliers<\/strong> to highly unusual<\/strong> to fictional<\/strong>. The most upsetting thing about all this is that it’s widely accepted and effective at making us believe that it’s attainable. Exposure to these media images leads to increased body dissatisfaction, depression, anger, and decreased positive emotions and self esteem. Social comparison is something everyone does and it is almost unavoidable because of the media all around us. It happens very quickly and automatically, so it is very difficult to stop. Furthermore, the more the objectification, the more people around them, especially men, objectify them as well. This is dangerous because it can make men think that assault, rape, abuse or treating a woman like an object is acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to social media, the author encourages avoiding toxic sources that influence objectification and eating disorders as a lifestyle choice, which provide advice on maintaining and increasing dangerous eating habits (Pro-ana or pro-mia). There are also many trolls on the internet who find delight in shaming others and throwing mean comments at them (mostly body shaming comments at women). The more you use social media, the greater the internalisation of the thin beauty ideal becomes, the more the self-objectification and social comparisons, higher levels of disordered eating, more desire to have plastic surgery, greater investment in appearance and increased depressive symptoms. Social media has also made women pose a certain way (such as the \u201cskinny arm\u201d pose) to look thinner and more appealing. This encourages the idea of the thin beauty ideal which, as previously mentioned, causes objectification. It is also important to realize that social media only shows the shiny things in someone’s life, not the ugly parts and what is really going on in their life. Social media is not real life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Media literacy is a step in the right direction, but its not enough, especially when many parts of our culture promise that our happiness is bound to achieving the beauty ideal. Media literacy programs can reduce the internalisation of the thin beauty ideal as well as decrease eating-disorder behaviour in the long-term but, their effects tend to be small. Disclaimer labels can be used to make women aware that an image has been digitally altered, trying to reduce comparison. However, in some studies, it was shown that the desire to look like a model increased with the labels and women were more likely to self-objectify. After all, images are stronger than words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feminism makes a woman less likely to agree with media standards of beauty, but it doesn\u2019t seem to help much when she is in front of the mirror. Women criticise models for being too thin, but they want to be as thin as the model, feeling disgusted of their own body. As helpful as media literacy sounds, it can patch up psychological wounds, but it may not prevent them. A suggestion would be to just walk away from this stuff, don\u2019t look at it, turn magazine covers at the cashier line around or replace it with a healthier cover. Focus on your inside and who you are and your values instead of how you look all the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Telling a woman that she\u2019s beautiful does not change her view of herself or beauty. Surprisingly, it can actually make her feel worse because the more you remind a woman about her body, even if its a good comment, the more she remembers the parts she doesn\u2019t like and feels bad. Sometimes a compliment from a man or woman can actually raise levels of self-objectification and they feel they looked worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the marketing world, specifically the Dove Approach, Dove created an ad campaign trying to make women feel beautiful in their own skin even if they didn\u2019t fit the beauty ideal. It is meant to make a world where beauty is confidence, not anxiety. Their campaign was motivated by the statistic that only 2% of women worldwide believe they\u2019re beautiful. Keep in mind that Unilever, the parent company of Dove, is also responsible for some of the most misogynistic ads, AXE body spray ads. Also, if you think about it, Unilever would lose so much revenue if women were happy with how they looked because if women were truly happy, they wouldn’t feel compelled to purchase beauty products. Regardless of Dove’s intentions, these campaigns still link beauty with happiness, telling us that we would be happy if we accept we\u2019re beautiful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The author suggests that if you really want to feel better, just think less about your appearance rather than trying to think more about it. It’s wrong to keep making a woman think about her appearance as this can result in body shame. We should instead not mention her beauty and instead talk about things that matter more. We don\u2019t have to talk about beauty in a different way, we just have to talk about it less.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We evolved to be highly sensitive to human beauty and we feel compelled by attractive people, making it hard to look away. But our reactions aren\u2019t just biologically driven, the beauty ideal also plays a part. Evolution has 2 major effects; <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. It made us very quick and automatic to notice and evaluate human beauty and, <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. What we find beautiful is partially the product of evolution. Any traits that increase human\u2019s ability to successfully reproduce should be passed on to future generations, and so we link beauty with health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, these days, many people don\u2019t prioritise reproduction as before and we\u2019re stuck with Stone Age brains, meaning that our brains have not evolved for the version of life we\u2019re currently living. We see too many perfected, unreal faces that we think extreme beauty is more common than it is. We can barely escape that face, and we didn\u2019t evolve to handle it. So, we need to turn down the volume of beauty and think about other things instead<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another topic the author discussed are schemas, which organise our experiences and change the reality that we perceive. If appearance schema is chronically activated, you see the world in terms of looks which is not good for psychological or physical health. A study of college students found that the happiest weren\u2019t more attractive than those who had average happiness. Happy people think they\u2019re more physically attractive than unhappy people. To be clear, we don\u2019t have to completely avoid beauty<\/strong>, we just have to give it a place behind more important things<\/strong>. The worry is that we give it an outsized role, and because of that we suffer and become distracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We grow up hearing voices degrading women\u2019s bodies which makes us internalise these messages and aim them at ourselves. We call ourselves ugly and tell friends we look disgusting. We learn that degrading other women\u2019s looks is a cultural norm and we join in. Lots (if not all) women fat-talk or engage in negative body talk, and these conversations don\u2019t end well, they just make women feel worse. They keep thinking of what they don\u2019t like about their body and they keep comparing themselves to others. It’s even worse when skinnier people are fat-talking because you\u2019ll think that you\u2019re huge. Fat-talk is contagious and is more about feeling fat than being fat<\/strong>. Additionally, old-talk also exists even though a woman\u2019s value doesn\u2019t decrease with age and natural ageing isn\u2019t something to fear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We preach body confidence, but don\u2019t know how to handle a woman who actually likes the way she looks. It\u2019s considered arrogant and unfeminine if a woman actually likes how she looks. Let that sink in. We tell women to love themselves the way they are, but when a woman actually feels that way, its degraded and seen as wrong. Ironic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overweight girls get the highest amounts of body-teasing, but underweight girls aren\u2019t vary far. When we degrade our own bodies, we show others that it’s acceptable for them to do so as well. We also show that women should always worry about appearance and that hating your body is \u201cnormal\u201d. We need to change the conversation<\/strong> and improve how we talk and think about our bodies. Don\u2019t give a voice to negative thoughts. When you hear others engaging in negative body talk, try to change the conversation. When you feel you’re about to negatively talk about your body, tell yourself \u201cNo. I\u2019m not doing that to myself today.\u201d, \u201cToday I\u2019m focusing on things that matter more than how I look.\u201d, etc. Talk about more important matters and let your words create a culture that sees women as human beings who can change the world, not objects to be looked at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The list of don’ts is long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what do we have to do? We have to embrace function over form<\/strong>. Self-objectification only cares about looks, not what one\u2019s body does. You lose respect for your body as a physical resource. Focusing on what you can do makes you feel better about how you look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where some people consider the gym to improve their physical health, but even fitness settings are unintentional breeding grounds for self-objectification. With mirrors everywhere, tight revealing clothing, endless comparisons to everyone around, focus on the thin beauty ideal and motivating exercise to change one\u2019s appearance. If you exercise for looks, you are more likely to get discouraged, stop and feel worse. If you exercise to feel better, stronger, manage stress, or connect with others, you\u2019re more likely to keep going. Instructors berate women\u2019s bodies trying to motivate them. They believe most women are exercising for appearance instead of fitness, which is false. Your body is home to the skills you\u2019ve developed over your lifetime, it manages social interactions, expression of emotion and automatic internal functions. We should turn down focus on our appearance, but not ignore our bodies. We need to think about all of the things it can do to heal and feel empowered, this combats body shame and dissatisfaction. We\u2019ll also be more motivated to care for them regardless of look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Positive body image is made with multiple factors, attitudes and behaviours. First, think about what your body can do, have a functional view of your body. Recognize what your body does and be grateful. From this, you take care of your body, don\u2019t force it in constant diets, punishing workouts, or cruel words. To many, food is a way of bringing people together and due to this, dieting can lead to loneliness and isolation. Intuitive eating is listening to your body for hunger cues to determine what\/how much you eat instead of emotional eating or eating because other people around are. There\u2019s mindfulness and it requires attention and respect for the body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mothers play a large role in how we think about our bodies. Mothers who are dissatisfied with themselves were more likely to influence their daughters to be the same. Mothers should avoid this by showing acceptance towards their self, and not comment on other people\u2019s looks\/weight. Fathers also shouldn\u2019t be critical of other women\u2019s bodies, as that teaches daughters that being loved by a man depends on being beautiful, and that women exist to look good for men. Body appreciation is important as it leads to greater self esteem, increased optimism, less body dissatisfaction and disordered eating and more care towards your physical health. It also protects women by letting in positive messages and blocking negative ones. As women age, their bodies move further away from the ideal. Yet, body satisfaction stays mostly steady with age because they appreciate their bodies more for what they do. In a study with women 50+ years old, some felt sorrow for spending years dissatisfied with their bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Girls get enough messages in the world that their worth is determined by their appearance. The challenge for parents is to create a climate that focuses on things other than looks. Don\u2019t compliment on appearance, but on something controllable such as being hardworking, focused, kind, creative, generous, inspirational, etc. Self compassion is important because it involves treating yourself with kindness and accepting that part of being human is having flaws. Self-esteem is different because it generally depends on evaluations from others. Self compassion helps one feel body satisfaction, a more positive mood, more body appreciation, less self objectification and fewer comparisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beauty sickness is problematic because we don\u2019t feel at home in our bodies as we\u2019re expected to be pretty all the time, causing us to not live freely. The stakes are real, we can\u2019t fully live or make progress on our goals if we believe that all success and happiness depends on our appearance. This creates a mental mirror and looking at it too much makes us beauty sick. This matters because it hurts and it’s hard to change the world, or engage with the economy, politics, and education if you\u2019re too busy with your looks. There is work to be done, leaving the world in a better shape is more important than the shape of your body. You will never be at full power if you\u2019re beauty sick. When we limit praising girls for how they look, we\u2019re sending the message that other things matter less and even worse, we\u2019re indirectly suggesting that we don\u2019t even see the other parts that make them who they are. Interoceptive awareness makes you sensitive to what your body needs and how it feels moment to moment. The more objectified your body gets, the less you\u2019re aware of its actual needs. And if you\u2019re wasting away, others still find a way to make you feel too heavy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beauty sickness leaves us trapped by our reflections. One of the best ways to break through this is to help others. There\u2019s no room for body thoughts when your thoughts are revolved around being there for others. You also keep some of that compassion with you, replacing shame and self-doubt with hope and clarity. In healing others, you heal yourself.<\/strong> Its also important to ask yourself: “What kind of person do you want to be?” and “How do you want this world to be different when you leave it?”. Your responses, which probably don\u2019t involve looks, will help you loosen your grip on the mirror and the mirror\u2019s grip on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a beauty inventory<\/strong>: The message here is not to discard all beauty practices, that’s not the issue. The issue is when it becomes a distraction. You need to have control over the money and time spent on beauty, if not, it will control you. Your world won\u2019t change for the worse if you let go of a little, it might change for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be gentle with yourself<\/strong>: We hear too much negative body talk in our culture that we can\u2019t help but internalise these voices. You need to be kind to your body and practice gratitude for all it does for you. Don\u2019t hate your body to motivate healthy behaviours, it doesn’t work like that. If you want to help a woman trying to improve her physical health, the last thing you need to comment on is how she looks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think about your body as something that does instead of something that appears<\/strong>: Exercise to improve health and manage stress, not to change your body because culture says so. Avoid gyms or instructors that encourage working out for a new body shape. Find instructors who make you feel powerful instead of insecure. Also, dress in a way that doesn\u2019t distract you from what you\u2019re doing and to respect that your body isn’t for other people to look at. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mind Your Media<\/strong>: Block out destructive and toxic media and ask yourself how you\u2019re using your media and what you are trying to convey with each picture\/post. Don’t be afraid to use social media to call out ads or companies that shame or belittle women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watch Your Words<\/strong>: Avoid body\/appearance talk. Help yourself and women around you by encouraging conversations about other topics. When we hear women talk about looks all the time, it shows that there\u2019s not much to women other than their looks and that we don\u2019t have other things to talk about. Think and talk about what matters more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vote with your wallet<\/strong>: Avoid companies that use destructive images or messages about women and girls to sell a product. Reward companies that send positive, healthy messages about women. When buying gifts for young girls, buy gifts that spread positivity and encourage bravery and curiosity instead of just pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s not one thing that causes beauty sickness, its accumulation of negative things that causes it. We need to work on building women and girls up by taking a thousand small steps, instead of being cut a thousand times by culture and media. \u201cIt’s time to focus on looking outward rather than being looked at. There\u2019s a lot to see out there in the world. There\u2019s a lot of work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just a short and sweet book summary on Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession of Appearance Hurts Girls and Women<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[74,72,81,73,79,80,75,77,76,78],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-beauty-industry","tag-beauty-sick","tag-body-image","tag-book-summary","tag-cultural-obsession","tag-how-the-cultural-obsession-with-appearance-hurts-girls-and-women","tag-makeup","tag-media","tag-objectification","tag-renee-engeln"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jisri.com\/sarah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Part 2 – This is what beauty sickness does to women<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Part 3 – This is how the media feeds beauty sickness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Part 4 – The ways we\u2019re fighting beauty sickness aren\u2019t working<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Part 5 – How we can fight beauty sickness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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