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

The book spends a great deal of time discussing fatphobia and it was eye opening to read more about the ways it’s woven into the culture of America. I have new perspectives after reading. However it felt as though half more than half of the book was on fatphobic culture, it almost should’ve been a separate book on its own because there are many other beauty topics to touch on especially amongst other races. Majority of the anecdotes were from white women and it got old and repetitive fast. I wish the book touched on more things longer like aging, and beauty standards of women who aren’t white, or even sex work and how this plays a role into our culture and the objectification of women. There were some stories of Black, Latin and Asian women in the book however it just scratched the surface. It would’ve been great to reference objectified body types in black culture and body shaming because of not being that stereotypical body type (curvaceous, big butt), as well as hair and skin problems black women face in America. Dark skin was BARELY touched on and it’s just baffling to me because discrimination against dark skin is a huge problem in America. Black women have to go beyond to be considered beautiful and feminine, and I think a huge portion of important information was missed. I’m not surprised as Black women are often left out of research and statistics. Going in depth about other races and how they feel forced to conform the the Eurocentric beauty standard would’ve really helped propel the book forward, I feel it only scratched the surface. I’m confused on the little diversity of beauty problems that were discussed. It felt very repetitive, and at time was hard to get through. At times there was an undertone of disdain for thin people which I found annoying. There were a couple of quotes that just rub me the wrong way: “Jaimie encouraged me to google the group so I could get a sense of what Korean Women are expected to look like, so I did. They look like mannequins, nearly identical in shape.” I just find this odd to say. Why compare them to an object? Maybe just mention they look identical, she talked so much about objectifying in the book so why compare them to mannequins? This is a quote from research done with women: “ I can see her rib cage, that’s gross. Why are all these models damn toothpicks?” Why was a quote like this even included? My ribcage shows and I’m healthy. I eat well and have muscles. Sometimes thin women and men have ribcages that show. This is an ugly comment to include, even if we’re talking about models they are still people. And not ALL models are underweight. Here’s another, “Think of a group of women getting dressed up to head to a party with friends or for a night out at the bars. That social ritual often involves deliberately creating an appearance that invites others to look at you in a sexual way.” Since when was looking attractive inviting others to look at you sexually or objectify you? While you may want to appear sexy it’s not an “invitation” for others to look at you like a piece of meat. Women are very aware being that objectified will most likely happen anyway no matter WHAT they wear, but let’s be careful of the language here. It’s a big generalization to assume all women who want to go out and have fun want to be sexualized. It’s okay to want to look attractive. It’s kind of like when people tell girls don’t wear shorts too short because it’s inviting men to look at you. This book was insightful on all the things we as women and girls experience. Some of the things the author mentioned like body monitoring and how clothes for women and girls aren’t optimal for function and movement was interesting to me. The book had many eye opening statistics about how women feel about their bodies and beauty. But at times the book was repetitive and lacked perspective but overall a good read if you’re new to this info and in some ways I found it empowering for women.