Dr. Renee Engeln on How We Live in a Beauty Sick Culture—and What We Can Do About It

I’m really excited to bring you this conversation today about a book that came out in 2017 called Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Dr. Renee Engeln. In the book, Dr. Engeln introduces us to beauty sick culture and what it feels like and looks like for women and girls. She writes in the book “How might women’s lives be different if they book the energy and concern aimed at their own appearance and aimed it out at the world instead?” If women didn’t have to worry about this, think of all we could get done. The desire to be thin and pretty, to be the beauty ideal, seems to affect girls younger and younger, and in Beauty Sick Dr. Engeln introduces us to what she calls the “tyranny of the mirror,” and writes that looks shouldn’t matter—but they do. Beauty is used as a source of power for women, and girls learn that the most important asset they possess is their physical beauty. We don’t teach boys and men this same lesson. Beauty, Dr. Engeln writes, is a weak and temporary power, and beauty sickness is a barrier to gender equality, where we see women as objects instead of human beings. Today we talk about how social media has played into this, how beauty sickness revolves around shame, how it attacks women’s mental and emotional well-being and their financial well-being, as well, and how we should, in her words, “turn away from the mirror to face the world.” Dr. Engeln writes that she’s looking for “a culture that sees women not as objects to be looked at, but as human beings who are ready and able to change the world in remarkable ways,” and so am I. Dr. Engeln’s TEDx talk on beauty sickness received more than 700,000 views and reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. This book combines scientific studies and the voices of real women of all ages, and I’m really excited to introduce you to Dr. Engeln, who has been a professor for 15 years at Northwestern, where she teaches about psychopathology, the psychology of women and gender, social psychology, and the psychology of human beauty. In addition to publishing numerous empirical journal articles and presenting at academic conferences on body image, media, and the objectification of women, Dr. Engeln presents talks on these topics to groups around the country and is regularly interviewed by media outlets, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Today.com, The Huffington Post, and more. At Northwestern, her lab, The Body and Media Lab, conducts research exploring issues surrounding women’s body images, with a particular emphasis on cultural practices that create or enforce the frequently contentious relationship women have with their bodies. Take a listen to this compelling conversation.

Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Dr. Renee Engeln