When I talk to young girls, I often ask that question so many adults ask. What do you want to be when you grow up? I love the variety of answers. A teacher. A scientist. An astronaut. A veterinarian. A painter. The president. But no matter what type of life young girls dream of, I know thereâs a good chance there are two things they really want to be: thin and pretty.
Girls start thinking about their ideal body at a shockingly early age. Thirty-four percent of five-year-old girls engage in deliberate dietary restraint at least âsometimes.â Twenty-eight percent of these girls say they want their bodies to look like the women they see in movies and on television.1 To put this into context, important developmental milestones for five-year-olds include the successful use of a fork and spoon and the ability to count ten or more objects. These are girls who are just learning how to move their bodies around in the world, yet somehow theyâre already worried about how their bodies look, already seeking to take up less space.
Between ages five and nine, 40 percent of girls say they wish they were thinner.2 Almost one-third of third-grade girls report they are âalwaysâ afraid of becoming fat.3 These young girls are not worried about their weight because of health concerns. Theyâre worried because they know that being pretty matters for girls, and that in this culture, thinness is a key component of that prettiness.
Leigh*, a bright, delightful seven-year-old girl with a curious disposition, visited my office with her mother, who had agreed to be interviewed for this book. Leigh decided she wanted to be interviewed as well, so I talked with her first. Leighâs mother stayed in the room, but sat slightly behind Leigh so that she would be less likely to influence her responses.
The chair in my office on which Leigh sat was too tall for her, leaving her free to swing her legs as we talked. Leighâs resting facial expression was mildly skeptical, as if she couldnât decide whether the visit was boring, like going to see a doctor, or fun, because she got to play with the toys on the table in my office. Either way, she was a good sport.
âLeigh,â I asked, âcan you think of what a beautiful woman looks like? Someone whoâs very pretty? Can you make her up in your head?â
Leigh squinted her eyes a bit and nodded. âShe has long, straight hair, and sheâs wearing a lot of makeup. And high heels. Sheâs thin. Her arms and legs are thin.â Leighâs description sounded as though she were reading off a list of specifications for a casting call. After detailing the thinness required for various parts of this imaginary womanâs body, Leigh paused. âIâm not sure how big her head is,â she said, her brow wrinkled in thought.
The moment was simultaneously sad and charming. Charming because Leigh was so perplexed about how to describe the size of a womanâs head. Sad because she already believed that a womanâs beauty could be captured via a series of measurements.
I asked Leigh if it matters whether a girl is pretty. âYou get more praise and stuff,â she told me, barely taking her eyes away from the miniature Rubikâs Cube she was manipulating.
Early in many girlsâ development, the desire to be prettier is already cluttering their thoughts. Iâm sure I was no different as a young girl. I remember my grandparents taking me to Cypress Gardens in Florida when I was five years old. In addition to all the lovely flowers youâd expect to see, Cypress Gardens was populated with young, attractive women who had been hired to dress as southern belles and roam the park. They carried parasols and wore frilly, poofy, pastel dresses. I have an album with several photos of young me, clad in shorts and a T-shirt, squinting into the sun, posing next to each of these women. I was too young to wonder why a woman would be hired just to walk around and look pretty, or why there was no male equivalent of the roaming southern belles. I was too young to wonder what it must have felt like to wear one of those crinoline-heavy dresses in the Florida heat, even as my own sweat-soaked hair stuck to my head. I was also too young to ask why all the women were young and white and thin.
Times have changed since that childhood trip to Florida. The cultural obsession with prettiness remains, but the standards are even higher. A relative of mine took her six-year-old daughter to Disney World recently. When the little girl saw Cinderella and Snow White, she complained, âThose arenât real princesses. Theyâre just regular ladies dressed like princesses.â She scoffed, âI can tell because their faces are busted.â
When I first heard this anecdote, I was confused. I thought she meant their faces literally were broken. Turns up any young person could tell you that busted is just a synonym for ugly.
âWhere did you learn that word?â asked the little girlâs mom.
âYouTube,â the girl replied, with a shrug and a grin.
Girls today grow up knowing not just that prettiness is required of women, but that the standard for beauty is near perfection. Even women hired to impersonate princesses leave them thinking, âMeh. Iâve seen better.â
Happily, despite being aware of these princess-level impossible standards, seven-year-old Leigh seems to feel just fine about how she looks. âLeigh,â I said, momentarily pulling her attention away from a set of toy magnets, âwhat if somebody asked, âWhat does Leigh look like?â What would you say?â
Leigh scrunches her face up, lets out a long hmmm, then answers. âWell, not exactly tall, not exactly short. Iâm like the average seven-year-old size, and I have curly red hair and green eyes and today Iâm wearing a dark blue dress and light blue shoes.â
âThatâs a good description,â I tell Leigh. âWhat would you say your body looks like?â
Leigh is warmed up now, so thereâs no pause. âMy arms are thin and my legs are really muscly and my trunk is normal.â
âDo you like your body?â I ask.
Leigh nods and gives a delightful answer. âI run laps and run around and climb a lot and jump a lot. And I swim and kicking gets my legs good.â
âWhat do you think is more important,â I ask Leigh, âif your body can do things or if your body is pretty?â
âDo things.â Leigh answers with no hesitation. Leighâs mom smiles from behind her, relief in her eyes.
âDo you think youâll always feel that way?â I ask.
Leigh gets a little quiet. âIâm not sure,â she responds.
âI hope so,â I say.
âMe too,â says Leigh, but sheâs looking down and her legs have stopped swinging.
I wonder what will happen to Leigh when she enters the rocky territory of adolescence. I hate thinking about the fact that thereâs a decent chance she will no longer feel so accepting of how she looks. The statistics arenât good. Around 90 percent of young women have no problem naming a body part with which theyâre unhappy. About 50 percent express what researchers call a âglobal negative evaluationâ of their body.4 The sense so many teen girls have of not being âgood enoughâ is intimately tied up with the disappointment they feel when they look in the mirror.
Beauty Sick
After researching womenâs battles with beauty for years, I can confidently tell you that girls and women who struggle to feel at home in their own bodies are not some odd subculture of America. They are not a vanity-struck minority. They are our daughters, our sisters, our students, our friends, our partners, and our loved ones. They are our future leaders. They are sick of wondering if they will ever be beautiful enough. They are beauty sick.
Beauty sickness is what happens when womenâs emotional energy gets so bound up with what they see in the mirror that it becomes harder for them to see other aspects of their lives. It starts surprisingly early, as soon as young girls are taught that their primary form of currency in this world involves being pleasing to the eyes of others. Although we hear the most about beauty sickness in young women, itâs a malaise that affects women of all ages. You canât simply grow out of it. You must break free with deliberate intent and perseverance.
Beauty sickness is fed by a culture that focuses on womenâs appearance over anything else they might do or say or be. Itâs reinforced by the images we see and the words we use to describe ourselves and other women. Those who shame women for their appearance feed beauty sickness. Those who praise girls and women only for how they look do the same.
Beauty sickness hurts. It contributes to and finds a ready home in the depression and anxiety that plague so many women. At a practical level, beauty sickness steals womenâs time, energy, and money, moving us further away from the people we want to be and the lives we want to live. It keeps us facing the mirror instead of facing the world.
Beauty sickness is not a literal illness. You wonât see it on an X-ray or in the results of a blood test. But like many other types of illnesses, you can see its widespread and devastating effects. Some of the effects are obvious, like eating disorders and skyrocketing rates of plastic surgery. Others are more subtle, like the distracted hours a girl spends obtaining the perfect selfie to post on social media. Beauty sickness may not be a diagnosis a physician or psychologist would make, but I promise you that any health care practitioner who works with women has seen it. Weâve all seen it.
If youâre a woman, thereâs a good chance youâve felt beauty sickness. If youâve ever thought about staying home instead of attending an important event because you didnât think you looked good enough, that was beauty sickness. If youâve found yourself distracted during a meeting because you were comparing your body with that of another woman in the room, thatâs beauty sickness. If youâve ever decided not to go swimming with your children because you couldnât imagine facing the world in a bathing suit, thatâs beauty sickness. If you feel short of time and money, but still spend plenty of both trying to push yourself closer to our cultureâs beauty ideal, you can blame beauty sickness. If you want to stop worrying about how you look, but keep getting pulled back to the mirror, then you know what beauty sickness feels like.
The signs of beauty sickness are in our thoughts and our behaviors, but this illness also lives in our culture. A beauty-sick culture cares more about an actressâs nude selfie than important world events. A beauty-...