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

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Salk, R. H., & Engeln-Maddox, R. (2012). Fat talk among college women is both contagious and harmful. Sex Roles, 9, ­636-645 . Unsurprisingly, in societies such as China and greater East Asia where the competition to be the best and look the most beautiful is fierce, looking pretty and keeping fit is the feminine ideal. For young women in urban China, body image is a topic that's often discussed, yet not nearly enough. Engeln-Maddox, R., Salk, R. H., & Miller, S.A. (2012). Assessing women’s negative commentary on their own bodies: A psychometric investigation of the Negative Body Talk Scale. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36, 162-178.

Engeln, R., & Salk, R. (2014). The demographics of fat talk in adult women: Age, body size, and ethnicity. Journal of Health Psychology, 19, 1-10.Engeln, R., & Imundo, M. N. (2020). I (don’t) love my body: Counter-intuitive effects of body-affirming statements on college women. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 39, 617-639. Fat Talk: BAM researchers have been examining the frequency, content, and impact of the types of social exchanges in which women engage in mutual body disparagement. Of particular interest is the finding that this type of talk appears to be most common among women of a healthy body weight.

For a time, toxic criteria of slimness made their rounds on social media, such as millions of netizens sharing photos of eggs being delicately perched on their pronounced collarbones. These bizarre internet trends have further contributed to the social anxiety of young women who fear judgment or strive for perfectionism. And there are the myriad beauty "gurus" who link slimness to self-discipline, and beauty to power. For 26-year-old Rani Wei, the experience hits close to home. The former actress said in most of the auditions she had attended, she was discriminated against because she was "overweight" and "not that beautiful" by filmmaking standards. Johnson, S., & Engeln, R. (2020). Gender Discrepancies in Perceptions of the Bodies of Female Fashion Models. Sex Roles, 84, 299-311. performing or carrying out body hair removal, including waxing chemical methods, electrolysis and laser hair removal When it comes to asking the daughter to lose weight, Zhao Yangyang has a mother that's the same as Monica's. Zhao, 24, has taken diet pills from countries such as Japan and South Korea. "They really worked, though they made you thirsty."Engeln, R., & Zola, A. (in press). These boots weren’t made for walking: Clothing choices as a gendered form of self-objectification. Sex Roles.