An award-winning Northwestern University or college psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women’s appearance is an epidemic that harms women’s ability to get forward and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg.

Today’s young women face a bewildering group of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don’t really desire to be Barbie dolls but, like decades of females before them, are about Beauty Sick: The way the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Women and Woman informed they must appear to be them. They’re furious about the media’s treatment of ladies but hungrily consume the shops that belittle them. They mock contemporary culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make movies exposing Photoshopping tips, but feel pressured to emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a ‘skinny arm.’ They understand that what they observe isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. However these same young women are brutal fighters for the issues they care about. They will be ready to fight against their beauty-sick lifestyle and create a different world for themselves, but they need a means forward.

In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the surprising outcomes of our obsession with girls’ appearance on the psychological and physical health insurance and their wallets and ambitions, including depressive disorder, consuming disorders, disruptions in cognitive digesting, and lost time and money. Combining scientific studies with the voices of actual women of all ages, she makes very clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we should break free from cultural forces that feed damaging desires, behaviour, and words-from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about additional women. She provides inspiration and workable answers to help women and women get over negative attitudes and accept their entire selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, transformation their world.