Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / BEAUTY SICK: How Society's Obsession with Appearance Hurts Women with Dr. Renee Engeln

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BEAUTY SICK: How Society's Obsession with Appearance Hurts Women with Dr. Renee Engeln · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Hey guys, it's Unter and Mikayla and this is the
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Model Citizen Podcast. We wanted to let the members of
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: our community experience a different side of us that they
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: see glimmers up but never the full force exactly. We
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: wanted a place where we could talk unfiltered about anything
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  Speaker 2: and everything, including our lives and experiences in the modeling industry, beauty, fashion, dating, sex, marriage,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: a dash of political commentary, and of course pop culture.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Honey, we're going all the way in.
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  Speaker 2: Tune in every Thursday for a giggle, a laugh, and
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  Speaker 2: maybe even a tear or two. You've just found your
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: new best friends, and we're so happy to have you.
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  Speaker 3: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
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  Speaker 3: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe, and each week my guests
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  Speaker 3: and I have conversations that put a new spin on pretty.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: This is pretty smart. What is the cost of beauty
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  Speaker 3: over the course of a lifetime for the average American woman?
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  Speaker 3: It's about two hundred and twenty five thousand, three hundred
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  Speaker 3: and sixty dollars, basically the same as tuition at Harvard.
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  Speaker 3: It's about fifty five minutes a day, two weeks over
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  Speaker 3: the course of a year on hair and makeup. That's
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  Speaker 3: the cost of time and money. But what else do
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  Speaker 3: we lose?
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  Speaker 4: Beauty goals are losing proposition in a way that other
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  Speaker 4: goals are.
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  Speaker 1: Not, because you will never be beautiful enough.
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  Speaker 3: Award winning professor of psychology and author of Beauty sick
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  Speaker 3: doctor Renee Engel reveals how the cultural obsession with women's
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  Speaker 3: appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get
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  Speaker 3: ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives.
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  Speaker 5: The power that beauty gives you is it's not good power,
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  Speaker 5: it's not real power.
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  Speaker 4: It's a super weak form of power. It short lived,
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  Speaker 4: its other people are in control of it. But it
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  Speaker 4: is power, and you are going to lose it.
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  Speaker 3: So how can we strike the realistic balance between I mean,
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  Speaker 3: caring how we look and not having to care about
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  Speaker 3: how we look?
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  Speaker 6: That's the push back with the idea of beauty sickness
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  Speaker 6: is I want to be as free of it as possible,
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  Speaker 6: and I also, if I'm being honest, still care how
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  Speaker 6: the world perceives me.
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  Speaker 3: Doctor Engeln is offering practical solutions.
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  Speaker 5: I can worry about how I look and change the world,
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  Speaker 5: but don't believe from a moment that there aren't trade offs.
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  Speaker 5: Who's benefiting from the fact that you hate your body?
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  Speaker 5: Who benefits from the fact that you feel like you
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  Speaker 5: have to have ten coats of makeup on before you
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  Speaker 5: walk out the door?
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  Speaker 3: What happens when we take just a little bit of
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  Speaker 3: the time we spend thinking about being pretty and start
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: thinking how we can change the world.
• 2:42
  Speaker 6: Part of the reason that your work has not just
• 2:45
  Speaker 6: inspired or shifted my perspective, but it activated something in
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  Speaker 6: me when I first read your book, because I grew
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: up completely unaware of appearances. My family put zero emphasis
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  Speaker 6: on it. They still don't. And when I moved to LA,
• 3:03
  Speaker 6: I realized that the people getting the jobs I wanted
• 3:06
  Speaker 6: looked a certain way. And I think this has shifted
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  Speaker 6: a bit, and it is starting to shift even more.
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  Speaker 6: But when I moved to LA it was like the
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  Speaker 6: Paris Hilton type look. It was long legs, tall, very thin,
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: and very blonde. And I had never like, I didn't
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  Speaker 6: know how to do my makeup. If you look at
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  Speaker 6: photos of me from college, it's like a different human,
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  Speaker 6: you know. And so, just like what you were saying
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  Speaker 6: with your book tour, like you had to learn all
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  Speaker 6: this stuff. I went through the same transformation, and it
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  Speaker 6: start when you start thinking about it more. For me,
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  Speaker 6: I became more unhappy, and there's I want to get
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: into the book because there's I have so many questions.
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  Speaker 6: But I think to be a woman in America is
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: to be beauty sick, like I equate the two. I
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  Speaker 6: don't know one woman who's not in some way. Is
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  Speaker 6: that fair to say?
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  Speaker 4: I mean it's always hard to speak.
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  Speaker 5: For everyone, right, But I know a lot of people
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  Speaker 5: ask me like, well, where did you find women to
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  Speaker 5: interview for your book who had these things to say
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  Speaker 5: about their bodies?
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  Speaker 4: And I thought I just found.
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  Speaker 5: Women like I wasn't. I didn't have to look for
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  Speaker 5: people with particular issues. I didn't have to advertise, like, hey,
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  Speaker 5: who has something to say about body image? Like this
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  Speaker 5: is just women know this world, and I think it's
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  Speaker 5: a continuum. I think there are women who struggle every minute,
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  Speaker 5: every day, right, and then there are some who can
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  Speaker 5: sort of like go most of their life without thinking
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  Speaker 5: about much. But it also has to do with the
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  Speaker 5: body you're in and how our culture accepts your body.
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  Speaker 1: It's easy in some ways to think about it less when.
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  Speaker 5: Your body is accepted by your culture, right, because you're
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  Speaker 5: not experiencing a sort of like systematic discrimination.
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  Speaker 4: Based on how you look.
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  Speaker 5: But I think all women I know struggle with this.
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  Speaker 5: I have yet to meet one who doesn't.
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  Speaker 6: You're right, there's a whole spectrum of how much we
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  Speaker 6: struggle with it based on how we're accepted in society,
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  Speaker 6: because we gain so much currency through how we look
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  Speaker 6: as we and as I was prepping for this interview,
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  Speaker 6: I kept trying to think about, like why, like where
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  Speaker 6: does this even start?
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  Speaker 1: Like why women and not men?
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  Speaker 4: That's a big question I should say. Like first, I'm
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  Speaker 4: going to say something.
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  Speaker 5: That makes a lot of people unhappy, which is I
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  Speaker 5: do think there are some evolutionary roots here to consider.
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  Speaker 4: And I know that that's not a sort of popular
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  Speaker 4: perspective or supposed to say that every bit of this
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  Speaker 4: is culture.
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  Speaker 5: I think a lot of it's culture, But it's culture
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  Speaker 5: that's building on a human tendency to.
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  Speaker 4: Notice how people look. We can't shut that off.
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  Speaker 5: I met someone once who's like, I don't notice how
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  Speaker 5: people look, but yes you do, right, Like you do
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  Speaker 5: not because you're a bad person, but because you're a
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  Speaker 5: human being.
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  Speaker 4: And it's how our brains are wired. Right, So we've
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  Speaker 4: got this foundation where we tend to be very visual.
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  Speaker 4: We notice how people look right away, and what our
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  Speaker 4: culture has done is just taken that and amplified it.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 4: So why women instead of men?
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  Speaker 5: Because men face a different set of pressures because their
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: power comes from status and competence and power and money.
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  Speaker 4: And it's not like.
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  Speaker 5: Those things don't matter to women, but when they matter,
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  Speaker 5: they have to matter in addition to how you look.
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  Speaker 4: So women can't.
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  Speaker 5: Buy their way out of people critiquing their appearance, right,
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  Speaker 5: whereas men can. A man with enough power and enough resources,
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  Speaker 5: he can have whatever he wants. It doesn't matter what
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  Speaker 5: he looks like. You only need to look to our
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: media landscape to see that. Whereas you can be a
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  Speaker 5: woman with as much power imaginable, and people are still
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: going to say, did you do that to your hair?
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  Speaker 4: Did you wear that?
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  Speaker 5: Do you not have makeup on? You look tired? You're
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: still going to hear those things.
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  Speaker 6: I can't help but always think about women in politics
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  Speaker 6: when we broach that topic, because I just think they
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  Speaker 6: get it, maybe more than any other group of women.
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  Speaker 5: And what I wonder then, is how many women would
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  Speaker 5: think about entering politics if it weren't for that particular pressure.
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  Speaker 4: Now, being in the public iving in politics is difficult period. Like,
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  Speaker 4: there are a lot of reasons you might choose not
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  Speaker 4: to get involved, but I'm certain that plays.
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  Speaker 1: A role for a lot of women, and I should I.
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  Speaker 5: Should be fair because everyone always asks this, Like, it's
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  Speaker 5: not that men don't get criticized for how they look, right,
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  Speaker 5: It's just not the number one thing.
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  Speaker 4: It's not the go to And I don't think we
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  Speaker 4: should do it to anyone, right, I get lots.
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  Speaker 5: Of arguments, I'll keep it politics free, but basically, people
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  Speaker 5: feel like it's okay to mock the bodies of people
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  Speaker 5: with whose politics they do able to create, right, And
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  Speaker 5: it's like, no, the minute you open that door, you're
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  Speaker 5: saying that this is okay, Right, this is okay to
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  Speaker 5: talk about people's wage or what their face looks like
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  Speaker 5: or whether they're aging. Right, Like, if you want to
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  Speaker 5: criticize someone, go for the meat, right, Go go for
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: their ideas as their ideas.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you watch the Hillary doc on who Luve?
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  Speaker 1: By any chance? I haven't.
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  Speaker 3: No.
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  Speaker 1: So there's this part.
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  Speaker 6: In the dock where she talks about how many hours
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  Speaker 6: she has done her haircumutably over the course of the
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  Speaker 6: twenty sixteen campaign. And right, I mean it's hundreds of hours.
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  Speaker 6: And she's so good at multitasking. She's learned kind of
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  Speaker 6: like how to figure it out. But I was thinking,
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  Speaker 6: in my own life, Okay, if I spend forty five
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  Speaker 6: minutes or two an hour a day getting ready doing
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  Speaker 6: my makeup and hair, and then two hours a week
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  Speaker 6: in like appointments like a laser hair removal or I
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  Speaker 6: don't know something, And I started counting all the things
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  Speaker 6: and I was like, that's about ten hours a week
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  Speaker 6: that guys don't spend.
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  Speaker 1: And that's if I'm not really working.
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  Speaker 4: You could learn another language, you could volunteer, you an instrument,
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  Speaker 4: or you could sleep.
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  Speaker 1: You could realize what you could do so many things
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  Speaker 1: with that time.
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  Speaker 4: I talk to a lot of women about this, and
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  Speaker 4: some will say, well, it's not about the money.
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  Speaker 5: I have plent in money, I buy whatever I want.
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  Speaker 5: I'm like, well, okay, lucky you. But I don't know
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  Speaker 5: any women who feel like they.
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  Speaker 4: Have enough time.
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  Speaker 6: No, and not we spend I mean time online shopping
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  Speaker 6: to stay with the trends.
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  Speaker 1: There's so many examples.
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  Speaker 7: And you didn't even mention all of the like specialized
• 9:00
  Speaker 7: fitness classes to try to turn your body shape into
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  Speaker 7: this other shape, right, Like, that's a job for a
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  Speaker 7: lot of people.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
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  Speaker 5: Instead of a joy, right, instead of feeling like, oh,
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  Speaker 5: it's a privilege and it's fun that I could move
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  Speaker 5: my body, right, it turns into sort of whipping your
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  Speaker 5: body into shape, or punishing your body or trying to
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  Speaker 5: reshape it.
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  Speaker 6: I realized that we never defined what beauty sickness is.
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  Speaker 1: We jumped in.
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  Speaker 4: I know, I jumped right in.
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  Speaker 1: I'm so excited too. Will you just tell everybody what
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: beauty sickness is? Right?
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  Speaker 5: So, beauty sickness is a term I use for what
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  Speaker 5: happens to women when they get so worried about and
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  Speaker 5: so focused on how they look that they don't have
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: enough energy and resources left for the other things in
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: their life that matter more. So, it's not a literal illness,
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: it's sort of a state of being right.
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  Speaker 4: And people ask me, qu ill, how do I know
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  Speaker 4: if I have it?
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  Speaker 8: Well?
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  Speaker 4: Like, so, maybe you feel fine, right, Maybe you're completely
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: comfortable with the amount of time you spend thinking about
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: how you look or working on how you look or
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  Speaker 4: sort of moditoring it.
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  Speaker 1: And if so, that's great, right, But there are.
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  Speaker 5: A lot of women who are not happy in that domain, right,
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  Speaker 5: who feel a constant sort of distress around it.
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: Part of what I love about your research and your
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: book is that it feels very applicable, like it's not judgmental.
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  Speaker 6: It doesn't feel like you're saying like we should all
• 10:25
  Speaker 6: not care at all, because I don't think that's realistic.
• 10:28
  Speaker 6: Like you said, human nature is somewhat aesthetic. So I
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: love the things that you point out that that can
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: we can make, like incremental changes. Can you just talk
• 10:38
  Speaker 6: about some of those that you think help.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd love to. I also think this is really individual, right.
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  Speaker 4: I'm actually not a particularly radical.
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  Speaker 5: Person, so I'm not trying to convince anyone that they
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: need to immediately stop caring about how they look. I
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: don't think that's realistic. I don't think that's how the
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: world works, and I don't think you need to do that.
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: But you can take small steps to make more conscious
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: choices around your beauty practices. So one of the things
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: I encourage women to do is think about the time
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: and the money they spend on beauty and think if
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: there isn't something there that they don't really want to do,
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: Like maybe you have a practice you actually like, that's
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: that's cool, right, But is.
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  Speaker 1: There something that feels like a burden?
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: And then try cutting it out? Right? Stop doing it?
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: See what happens if you're using twenty different cosmetic products
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  Speaker 5: and implements every day.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: What would happen if you cut a couple out? What
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: would happen if you didn't collar your hair? What would
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: happen if you did some of these things?
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: And I think a lot of times that we realize
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: is that we get mostly benefits from some of those changes.
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: So it's not about don't think about how you look
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  Speaker 5: at all, right, But it's about being more in touch
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: with your values and letting the things that you value
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: more than appearance guide your life, right, And I think
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: that's very intuitive to a lot of people. Another immediate
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: change that I wish all women would make is to
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: really cut down on the appearance.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Talk tects the most out of all of the things.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: Do you hear it? Do you do it? What do
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: you think?
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: I don't after reading your book because I have I
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: didn't notice it. I think a lot of women like
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: the go to chatter or the go to compliment is
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: you look so thin, or your hair looks great like that,
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: or oh my god, I love that shirt. And I
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: learned from reading your book that anytime you compliment somebody
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: on their appearance and actually makes them think about their
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: appearance more and in a negative way, which you would
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: think you're trying to do the opposite when you compliment someone.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: Right, people get really angry at me about this because
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: are you saying I can't give compliments someone. I'm not
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: saying they do whatever you want to write, but I'm
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: just saying that there's something very straightforward about this is
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: that when you talk to a woman about how.
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: She looks, she's going to think about how she looks. Right,
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: This is just completely straightforward. And the other pieces, when
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: you talk to women about how she looks, you're choosing
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: not to talk to her about something else. That's the
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: bigger issue. Right, What conversation could you have? Had a
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: lot of them?
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: And we're talking about women and other women.
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: A lot of us just habit. Right, This is how
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: we greet each other. This is just how we connect.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: It's a way being non threatening, like.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: Oh, I like your shoes. I like your hair, I
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: like your dress.
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: Right, it's making you feel like I'm not in competition
• 13:14
  Speaker 6: with you. I actually like want.
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: To connect right right, I think we can connect in
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  Speaker 5: other ways. It's just a habit. It's like most habits,
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: it can be broken. I still catch myself almost doing it,
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: but I don't anymore. And it's actually been really fun
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: to think of, well, what do I really want to say?
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: And a lot of times what I really want to
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: say is I'm so happy to see you.
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I found that mine is like your energy is
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: so good or you're so vibrant, like I'm getting something
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: from you, you know.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: I love like the conversation that would start instead of
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: your hair looks good?
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Also, are you look thin?
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: You've lost weight? I can hardly count the ways that
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: that is not a good thing to say to someone, because,
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: first of all, you're suggesting that however they looked before
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: wasn't okay.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: And because we know that ninety five.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: Percent of dieters gain back the way they lost, you're
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: also suggesting probably that a future version of them will also.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Not be okay.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: There just don't need to comment on someone's body size.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: You also don't know why they lost weight. If they
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: lost weight.
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: Right, they could have been sick, they could have been depressed,
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: they could have an eating disorder.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: Right. I think you need to know someone really well
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: to make it okay to be commenting on their body.
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: Right, And even then, you need to really have a
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: sense that you have consent from them to have that
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: kind of conversation.
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: I even find it frustrating or harmful when I'm in
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: the presence of someone commenting on their own body, because
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: it makes me think about my own body. And this
• 14:39
  Speaker 6: is a fight my mom and I now have because
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: I have I am determined to not pass this on
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: to my daughter, and in order to do that, it
• 14:47
  Speaker 6: must stop with me. Yeah, and I've made changes, I
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: still have progress to make.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: I've talked to so many women who learned from their
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: moms that what it means to be a woman is
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: to not like how you look.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what it.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: Means is that your full time job is making your
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: appearance acceptable. And I don't think most moms mean to
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: send that message.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Some do.
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: Something I can do about those moms, right, But it's
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: they learned it from their moms. They're just passing it down.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: But yeah, all it takes is one generation to knock
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: it off.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we can do it.
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: Bear with me while I sift through this with you,
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: because I've been trying to figure out a succinct way
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: to ask this question and I just can't. When I
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: think about the way forward, I think about like the
• 15:34
  Speaker 6: why behind all of this, and I think in a
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: heteronormative society.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And that's a big assumption. But that's an assumption I'm
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: making right now. So much of women's.
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: Beauty sickness comes from the fact that we are getting
• 15:50
  Speaker 6: social currency or accolades from men based on that, and
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: I don't know how to change that.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: It's really hard.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: You can't change that too much without asking men to
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: change too.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But they take a value proposition.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: But I will also say that a lot of women,
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: a lot of their beauty practices are for other women.
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: A lot of it is this sense of competing, right.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: It's also really hard to I don't think you.
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: Can separate beauty from romantic attraction, right, Like, I think
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: that's not that you could never in any case, right,
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: But those two things are always going to be wound
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: up with each other. But for the heterosexual women out there,
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: for any women, who are looking for male partners.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: I think you want to ask yourself, do I want
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: to look for a.
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: Male partner who only thinks I'm attractive in makeup because
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: that's the only way he see me, and you know
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: that's what drew him to me initially.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: Or do I want to present myself in a way
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: that is I don't know, maybe more natural, more authentic,
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: so that I know when I'm loved it's not for
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: my performance of myself, right, but it's for who I
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: really am.
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: You don't want to partner who only loves the Instagram
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: version of you, right? You want someone who loves you
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: in sweatpants. And it's hard, but I could, I should
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: say this is another place I'm just lucky. Like my
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: partner just now is like, oh, putting on makeup and
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: I was like, oh, I have to because I have
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: to do.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: This camera and did not be shiny.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: I'm like, don't worry, it's just a little I'm just
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: so little. And I come out and he goes, you
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: don't look like you. And in some ways, that's one
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: of the sweetest.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: Things I've ever heard.
• 17:27
  Speaker 5: There's something so deeply like healing and powerful about somebody
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: who really loves you just as you are, who doesn't
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: need you to pretend to be someone else or to
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: impress other people. I wish everyone could find someone like that.
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: I think that that's how you start to dismantle this, right,
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: is being clear about these are my values, and I
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: want somebody who lines up with these values.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I love you enough.
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: The boys that we raise eventually, right, like, how do
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: we shift their values as well?
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: So another reason to knock off the body talk in
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: your home, particularly if you have children. It's not just
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: daughters who are hearing that, right, All kids are hearing that.
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: And when women talk about how they look all the time,
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: the message to men is that it's okay to think
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: about how women look all the time.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: It's like, well, this is what's important to women, so
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: why shouldn't I view them from that.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: Lens as well?
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I never thought about that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: It's tough, right, It's hard. But I had some people
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: email me and they're like, would this book be okay
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: for my daughter because here are my politics? Right?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Which is always an interesting email to.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Get because it's like I can't select books for you.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Like I had one dad email me and say, is
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: they're swearing you're like no, And I was like, well,
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: there's some quotes that have swearing, but you know, like
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: when it was people's words, so it's probably okay.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: And then he said, but do you mentioned patriarchy because
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: I don't want to be I don't want my daughter
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: reading about patriarchy.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, you just want.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: To living in it, but not about But what it
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: made me think about, well, like, who is this book for? Right?
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: It's not a particularly radical book, and is it possible
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: that like people on one side of the political spectrum
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: versus others will connect with it more? And what I
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: actually thought like, well, this is really just a book
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: about values, and so to think about beauty, sickness, it
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: could be for anyone, right, because it's just about thinking
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: about what matters to you.
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: And I think the word values has come to be
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: sort of loaded, right, as if only people have certain
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: political persuasions have values. We all have values, we all
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: think certain things are more important than others. So it's
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: really about being deliberate about where beauty falls in your
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: list of things that matter to you.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Did writing this book heal anything in you? I don't
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: know that I had.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: I feel like this book might have broken something in
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: me more than he like. I don't think I had
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: anything in particular that needed to be healed, but writing
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: this book meant that I had to be just miird
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: in this stuff.
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: I wrote about eight hours the day when I was
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: finishing it up, and it meant, I know, that's that's hard.
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: But if I hadn't been such a procrastinator, let's say,
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: I wouldn't have had to write eight hours, eight hours
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: a day of hearing all the ways that women worry about,
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: how they look, all the ways that they suffer as
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: a result. And then I'm still running a lab right
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: at the same time where we're getting all of this,
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: like truly heartbreaking data from women. And so in a
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: way I think it, Yeah, it didn't. It didn't heal anything.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: It's the more you see how broken everything is. I
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: don't know, maybe I've gotten the more cynical. I hate
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: to say that, but it wasn't that I didn't think
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: these kinds of struggles were widespread, obviously, And.
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: I want to be clear, the book doesn't feel cynical
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: in any way just for people listening, because it's not
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: like there's so many issues. It's like it really just
• 20:52
  Speaker 6: opens your eyes and your mind and your heart to
• 20:55
  Speaker 6: like seeing yourself in a different way, and I think
• 20:58
  Speaker 6: like asking yourself different questions.
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: You guys, you said that, like, I don't think it's
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: an angry book, but I think it left me.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: It left me angry. Still, that's totally fair.
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it left me angry on behalf of like my
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: four year old niece and like wondering what kind of
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: social media hell landscape she's going to enter when she
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: becomes a tween, and whether there's anything I can do
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: to protect her from it, you know, wondering why already
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: you know, her brother gets haircuts, but her hair grows long, right,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: and why already she's into princesses and what does that mean?
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: And Okay, so maybe Elsa's a little more empowered, but still,
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: you know, a lot for young girls to deal with.
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: So you're a professor of psychology, and I feel like
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: you could have gone in a lot of different directions.
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: And I've never asked you this before. Why beauty sickness?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So I had no.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: Idea what I was going to do with my life,
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: and I was I was like a lot of people.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: And the first class I taught when I was a
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: graduate student It was kind of an accident. It was
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: a professor got sick or had to cancel last minute.
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: It was a summer class on the psychology of women.
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: You know, it's maybe like a week before the class
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: was going to start, and I was like, I'll do it,
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: I'll do it. I didn't know anything, like, I just
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: got handed a textbook and you know, told to figure
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: it out.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: And I have to say, even though I was a.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: Graduate student in psychology, I don't think I had a
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: good understanding that this was.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: A field, right that you could really.
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: Like study these issues about women's lives and women's psychology
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: and how our culture shapes those things. And that was
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: just immediately interesting to me, in part because I liked
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: teaching so much, and I couldn't separate my teaching from
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: my research because in my teaching I would see these
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: young women struggling, and then I wanted to study that.
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: I wanted to I wanted to understand it more. And
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: so that's how I got into this field. And then
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: it just sort of stuck. And part of why it
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: stuck is because I am so lucky to be surrounded
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: by these brilliant young women who want to do research
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: and They're into this topic, right, This topic really matters
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: to them.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: They want to talk about it, they want to know more,
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: they want things to change.
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: And so how could I ever stop, right stop when
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: I've got such a such a vibrant group of young
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: people who are like yay, yeah, like I want to
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: hear about this.
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: So it's just what I what I kept doing.
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: There's a section at the beginning of your book that
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: is the reason that I kept going before I read
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: the whole thing and was just amazed. But you cite
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: an escort your study that I'm wondering if you can
• 23:44
  Speaker 6: share with people.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Studies. It's so disheartening and so true.
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: That study was a lesson in poor citations, which is
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: like all the college students out there just.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: Grown who heard that there'd been this thing going around
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: for a while. And internet means something like fifty fifty
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: four percent of and remember the number of women would
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: rather be.
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: Hit by a truck than be fat. And I had
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: talked to the women in my class about that. I
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: was like, what do you think, right, And they're the
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: ones who asked me like how fast.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Is it going, and like is it permanent damage and weight?
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Be able to walk afterward, and so I got really
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: curious about that statistic. Where did it come from? And
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: I spent hours trying to track it down. It wasn't
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: from an academic source. It ends up it was from
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: Esquire magazine. It was really hard. I had to get
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: like a hard copy of that issue, and so it
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: wasn't a scientific data point. But I got really fascinated
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: by the way women reacted to it, the way they
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: saw it as something to think about, like would you
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: rather get hit by a truck or be fat? And
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: the answer should be fat? Right? Why? Like I don't
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: want to get hit.
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: By a truck, And instead the answer was always like, like, well,
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: that's that they were saying when.
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: I read that, because the Danielle in high school would
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: have said hit by a car or a tray, which
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: is like, what the hell?
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: I feel like I've had a lot of learning to
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: do myself around this topic. It's it's like anytime you
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: write something you know two years later you're like, I
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: want to go back and fix.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: It, right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: And part of what I've really learned a lot more
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: about since writing this book is about the deep, deep
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: groups of roots of anti fat bias in our culture,
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: right and how painful that is for so many people,
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: and the sort of real everyday barriers people face as
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: a result of that. And so when I first heard
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: that statistic, I heard it as being about body image.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: I realized now that that was in part because of
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: this is the academic jargon, would because of my own
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: positionality as a thin ish woman or like a medium
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: sized woman, right, that I was able to hear that
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: and think, well, that's about body image, right.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: And then you think later, no, there's something much ugly there. Right,
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: there's something in that about how much we fear fat
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: as a culture, particularly for women.
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: And there's something in there that is not even implicit,
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: about how we treat women who are fat. Right, If
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: that's the curse, if that's worse than getting hit by
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: a truck, What is it like to live in a
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: world where people think your body is worse than getting
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: hit by a truck.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: What is it like every day to move around in
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: that body? And that's something I've really been thinking about
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: a lot that I don't think I paid enough attention
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: to the first time around.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. I don't know if I've ever considered it
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: in that frame. It feels like too scary for me almost.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I don't think I'm psychologically ready.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: It's been interesting.
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: I yeah, you know, I'm a psychologist, like I should
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: know better, right, I should be aware of, like how
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: how my position in the world influences what I do,
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: And I think that was a real blind spot for me.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: I got an email after I wrote febe sick from
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: a woman.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: I don't remember exactly what it said. It was basically like,
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: I weigh three hundred pounds and there's nothing in this
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: book to help me. And I thought about that for
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: It wasn't a mean email, actually, but that makes it sound.
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: Like it was kind of aggressive, but it wasn't. It
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: was actually a pretty gentle email. And I actually think
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: she had a point that as a psychologist, a lot
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: of what I focus on is what we can change
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: in ourselves, right, how we think, how we feel, how
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: we act, and those things matter absolutely and when you
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: pound them up right, they can make a big difference.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: But that doesn't do a lot to address systemic issues
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: in our culture.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: And I think that, you.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Know, we're all trying to figure that out, right.
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: I think it would have been hard, just to be
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: fair to you, it would have been hard to and
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: it was almost a whole different book.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but it makes me think about what voices we
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: hear from and what voices we don't. There's been a
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: lot of criticism about there's a body positivity movement getting
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: hijacked by thin white women, right, I haven't heard that. Yeah,
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: and if there's a real point that a movement that
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: has activist roots went from thinking about body positivity as
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: how we treat bodies to how we feel about.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: Our own bodies. And I'm a psychologist, so I'm focused
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: on I'm focused on how we feel about our own bodies.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: That's what we do.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: But I've thought a lot more since writing Beauty Sick
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: About I think how important it is to separate those things,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: to realize that no matter how you feel about your body,
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: it's not a guarantee that other people will respect your body.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: That's the hard dissonance.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: That's kind of I know that I want to sort
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: of dark there. Sorry, that's not a.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Feel about it.
• 28:40
  Speaker 6: It's realistic. I think that's the that's what we all feel.
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: That's the like push.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Back with the idea of beauty sickness is I want
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to be as as free of it as possible.
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: And I also, if I'm being honest, still care how
• 28:54
  Speaker 6: the world perceives me.
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: Of course, right, and you still and you benefit, right, yeah,
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: and I benefit right.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: And I've been it's been interesting for.
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: Me that the age I am now has given me
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: some experiences that I that I didn't have before. Right,
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: as you start to sort of you disappear from culture
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: a little bit as an aging woman. And that's something
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: that women face that that men really don't.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Right entirely, it's almost for them.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: Right, you can't have gray hair. It's not going to
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: make you distinguished. You just don't do it right.
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: There's there are many people have written about how it's
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: almost impossible to find a woman.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: Newscaster with gray hair.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've never seen one, right, or I.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Don't know if there must be one somewhere, right, there
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: has to be. Maybe this is the challenge for the
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: internet find one.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Right, But men are.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Allowed to gray, right, and they're allowed to age, And.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: As I like move more firmly into middle age, it's
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: been it's been an interesting set of contradictions.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: In some ways, it's free.
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: It's easier for me now to won't playing that game anymore, right,
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: quarantine is been good for that too.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: I think like every decade and depending on some of
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: your life choices and where you're at, it changes. I
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: had a therapist one time tell me that, and it's
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: something I never thought of that the first time she
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: recognized how much other people's attention affected her was when
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: she was pregnant and around the five six month mark
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: when she started showing the male attention went away that
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: she used to receive, and she was like, it was
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: the first time in my life that I felt that shift.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really interesting. You just sort of, yeah, you disappear,
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: You become sort.
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: Of desexualized by your culture, and in a way that's
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: really freeing.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: Maybe it means you get to walk down the street
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: with that being cat called al though it's no guarantee, right,
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: it's still not guarantee. But it's also reckoning with what
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: does it mean to live in a culture that values
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: women so much for how they look and you're aging
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: out of that, Like, what does that mean?
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: I have talked to many women who find it, who
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: find it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: Terrifying, right, And it's why all of these cosmetic procedures
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: are becoming so popular. I can't even keep up with
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: the statistics like the minimally invasive stuff especially right, like
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: the fillers and the botox and stuff like that. It's
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: so easy to understand that pressure because if the message
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: you get is like once you don't look like you're
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: in your thirties anymore, we don't care to hear from you, right, go.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Go hide in a cave somewhere. We don't want to
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: see you anymore. Right, you upset our version of what
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: womanhood is unless you want to be like a grandma.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: That's cute, right, you can, you can. You can come back.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: In as a sweet, nurturing, grow invisible phase.
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but there's no space in between. And I would
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: think people that women in the public eye.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: In particular must really struggle with that, because the power
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: that beauty gives you is it's not good power, it's
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: not real power. It's a super weak form of power.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: It's short lived, it's other people are in control of it.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: But it is power, and you are going to lose it.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: And I wish we were having more honest conversations about that.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I sometimes I'll talk to young.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: Women about that and they sort of shake their head
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: like no, And I was like, well, congratulations, Right, you're
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: going to be the first person who doesn't age.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You know what the alternative is, right, right? I don't
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the alternative.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: I know they imagine, like if they eat enough vegetables
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: and go to enough spin classes that they're going to
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: look twenty forever. And I'm like, you aren't right, And
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: this is a culture that values that twenty something look,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: So why don't you try to change that culture instead
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: of trying to cling right to this thing that you
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: can't really hold on to.
• 32:37
  Speaker 6: You touched on something that I found so interesting that
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: anger about beauty sickness can actually be activating.
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we have an interesting push pull in
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: this culture with women in anger. Right, we don't really
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: like angry women. It makes everyone a little bit uncomfortable.
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: But where I talk about this the most is when
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: I hear from mothers who say, what do I do
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: with my with my tween teenage daughter? Like how do
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: I get her thinking about this?
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: And I'm often like, it's easy, get her angry, or
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: just get her angry. I think like teenagers have this
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: deep reserve of anger already, so it might be pointed
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: at you like, let's just like redirect it or something good.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: We need anger.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: When there's injustice, right, because it's the heat.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: It's the fire that makes you do something about it.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: And when I talk to teenage girls and I say,
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: who is benefiting from this? Who is benefiting from the
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: fact that you hate your body?
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: Who benefits from the fact that you feel like you
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: have to have ten coats of makeup on before you.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Walk out the door? Who benefits from this?
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: And if you dig far enough, they realize like, oh,
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: it's mostly a bunch of rich.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Men who benefit. Right.
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: That's anger provoking for a lot of people. Right, it
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: should be.
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: Anger provoking that there are industries designed to make you
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: feel vulnerable about how you look so that they can
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: sell you things with the false promise of alleviating that vulnerability.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: Because it's never going to be enough. You know, it's
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: never going to be enough. Right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: No one's ever bought that one beauty product.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: And then been like, oh sweet, I feel good now,
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: I feel totally confident. I'm done.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Check.
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: That's not how it works.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: Your book made me realize how much advertising has affected this.
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: I never really realized it because a lot of the
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: messages are sort of unspoken they're not talking about it.
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: They just show a woman who looks a particular way
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: doing something right.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: The people at the helm of advertising and media. I
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: think if we saw a shift there and not a
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: fake shift, because you mentioned the Dove ads that I
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: think are so interesting in your book and there's been
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: a lot since then that are similar to that, an
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: actual shift, I don't.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Think we're going to see it right. The thing is advertisers' jobs.
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: Their job is to sell you something, and if you
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: don't feel like you need to change how you look,
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: you're not going to buy beauty products, right.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: So I feel like we're asking too much now. I
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: think there are more and less destructive ways to do that. Yeah,
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: but it's asking a lot to tell people whose job
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: it is to sell.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: You things, not to make you feel like you need
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: those things.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I see some changes.
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: I met this woman, Joanna Nix, who started Nix, which
• 35:17
  Speaker 6: is like an undergarments line for women out of Canada,
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: and her branding does not prey on our insecurities at all.
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: And I would bring her up as an example because
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: I think as we see more women who have that
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: ethos create companies, we might see it at least some.
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: Shift, yeah, and I think even small changes help. But
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: what we have to look out for with advertising now.
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: Is that you know, it used to be twenty years
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: ago you knew what was an advertisement and what wasn't.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and now, thanks to social media, you don't.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: So you might think you're just looking at Instagram, you're
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: just following celebrities or influencers.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: I did scare quotes there, right.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: The idea that we think influencers a benign word blows
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: my mind, Like this person calls them solve an influencer,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: and you haven't thought about the ways in which they
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: are trying to influence you and made sure you're okay
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: with those ways. And maybe you are right. They're all
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: kinds of influencers influencing us in all different kinds of ways.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: But a lot of our advertisments not don't.
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: Look like advertisements, but they are still selling you something.
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: They're still selling you a version of womanhood that you
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: were supposed to aspire to, and it's often a version
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: that requires you to change how you look.
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: So I sent I'm glad you brought up Instagram. I
• 36:31
  Speaker 6: sent a group text to ten girls that don't really
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: know each other and I said before this interview, and
• 36:38
  Speaker 6: I said, can you respond to me individually? I won't
• 36:41
  Speaker 6: say your names, but what makes you feel worse about
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: your appearance? One thing in the world makes you feel
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: badly about your appearance?
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Kind of Instagram? Yeah, I have. I mean, college women
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: tell me this all the time.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: They say, I hate it. It's ruining my life and
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: I can't stop. I'll tell you a secret about me
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: and Instagram. I have an Instagram profile or a professional one,
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: a personal one, and I post. Oh, I mean to
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: post once a week, but let's say it's probably not
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: quite that often.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So I do like once a month. But they're great.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: There two weeks I try, I download it, post it,
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: leave it on my phone for twenty four hours, and
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: then I delete it again. Really, yeah, I just even
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: when I.
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: Was so careful about who I followed, and I really am,
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: and there there are people I follow that I really
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: learn a lot from, and so I check in once
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: in a while on that. But I found that it
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: was on my phone it was so easy to mindlessly scroll.
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you say, and keep quoting you because I love
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: the book so much. But you say that if we
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: stop thinking about our looks and start thinking how we
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: can change the world. But that's another tool, and I've
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: I almost think that it's like a trick. That's Societyiety
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: has told us to keep thinking about this and this
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: and this and this and this, and we're not thinking
• 38:06
  Speaker 6: about like our el set and all these other things
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: that we could be thinking about, even asking ourselves simple
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: questions about like am I present right now?
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: How do I feel? Like little things?
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: It's I'm not a conspiracy theorist, right, Like, I don't
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: think there's this massive cultural.
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: Movement to keep women focused on other things. But there
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: doesn't have to be. It's just what's happening. And I'll
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: hear a lot of.
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: Women say, listen, I can worry about how I look
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: and change the world. Of course you can. You're awesome, right,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: But don't believe from a moment that there aren't trade offs.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Right. It's like you.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: Mentioned those ten hours a week.
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: With those ten you're both thinking, like there's certain things
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: I can't give up, and that's a personal choice, right,
• 38:55
  Speaker 6: but at least to acknowledge it, right and be.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Conscious about it. The way I think the metaphrase in
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: the book is.
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: Like how hard are you willing to swim against that
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: current to get more of what you want in your.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Life, to be able to work toward other goals.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: Because the thing is beauty goals are losing proposition in
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: a way that other goals are not because.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: You will never be beautiful enough.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: Right, Like, talk to.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Beautiful women you think you want and then there's another benchmark. Hey,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: like living you live in LA, you probably know women.
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: Who are sort of universally regarded as beautiful and do
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: they feel beautiful enough?
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Probably not?
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So, you know, teaching my basement on zoom.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: Like we are right now, and I thought, do I
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: need to put on some makeup and get trusted off
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: to teach from my basement?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And I have this moment where I just said, no,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I'm just not doing it.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: do it. And I've talked to other colleagues who like,
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: know it makes me feel.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Better when I do it, and I think, good, right,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: it makes you feel better?
• 40:01
  Speaker 8: Okay, But what did I wear my favorite V neck
• 40:05
  Speaker 8: T shirts, a hoodie if it was cold, and sweatpants
• 40:09
  Speaker 8: no one saw and which I'm also wearing now, right, That's.
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: All, But I think you hit on like everybody has
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: their personal litmus, and so the question is does this
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: make me feel better or does this make me feel worse?
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And if the answer is worse, like, think about that, right, and.
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: Don't This is so controversial thing to say, but don't
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: kid yourself that your choices are completely free.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: They are not. I hear it, particularly young women saying, well,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: I choose this, I choose to focus on my sex appeal.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: I choose to do these things. And I think, really,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: how is it possible that you've freely chosen every single
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: thing our culture wanted you to do?
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Anyway?
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: Oh, you freely chose to do the things that are
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: completely in line with every message you've been getting since birth.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: You freely chose this. You don't know what's free, None
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: of us do. I don't either.
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: I don't know what I might choose in a different world,
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: because we've never gotten to live in that better world,
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: and we won't unless.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: We start making it.
• 41:08
  Speaker 6: We have to collectively try to make it for the
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: next generation of girls and women.
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: I also don't want to attack women for doing what
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: they need to do to get buying this culture.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: But if you tell me that what makes you feel
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: good is posey in a bikini and having lots of
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: people tell you how hot you are. I want to know,
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: how are you going to feel when your body changes?
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: And if your immediate reaction is my body's not going
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: to change, I want to say good luck.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: I love about that. How are you going to feel
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: when that's not an option for you anymore? And will
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: you look back and wish that you build a different foundation. Now,
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: there are women who have been able to pivot in that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: Way, who are able to sort of harness their youth
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: and their beauty and their sex appeal and sell it
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: for a while, and then as they got older.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: They became business executives. You know, so great, right, But.
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: When you look at how many young women are doing
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: this on Instagram, I don't think that's the plan for.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: All of them.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: And every picture you see that looks so effortless. I mean,
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: you know your industry, right, that wasn't effortless. Now, maybe
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: an hour of time maybe more right, with the multiple
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: shots and the editing and the makeup and the lighting
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: and all of it, fighting everything right, that was a
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: real investment of time. And the question is in ten
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: years and twenty years and thirty years, will you look
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: back and feel like, I'm really.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Glad I spent my time that way. Maybe maybe right,
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: but be open to other answers to that question.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's so beautiful.
• 42:38
  Speaker 6: So I have I'm going to send this to you,
• 42:40
  Speaker 6: but I have a pretty smart card deck, so I'm
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: going to ask you.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to shuffle these. There's fifty two questions. I'm
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: going to ask you one. Oh, this is a good one.
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: Okay, a mistake you made along the way you'd like
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: to save other people from.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: Okay. This has been actually on my mind a lot because.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: Each so many college women and they will say, well,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: I'm majoring in psychology because I'm bad at math, and
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: it seys this immediate alarm off for me.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Because I teach at Northwestern, I'm.
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: Very lucky to very academically talented students. They are not
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: bad at math, period right, some of them are extraordinarily
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: gifted at math.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: But no one there is bad at math. If you
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: talk calculus in high school, you're not bad. And so
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: the reason that really gets to me so much is
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: because a mistake I made when I was.
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: Young was deciding that when I had to work hard
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: at things, that meant I wasn't good at them, and
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: math for me was something I had to work a
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: little harder at than other fields. And my mom made
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: a mistake too. She knows I love her, so I
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: can say this, which is she let me get away
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: with it. She let me say like, oh, I'm just
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: not very good at it, when what I was really
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: saying was I don't like it as much, or I
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: haven't been inspired by the teaching, or maybe nobody taught
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: me why it was important yet, or something like that.
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: And so I think that's a mistake too many young
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: women in particular make is thinking that if something doesn't
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: come easily to you, that you're bad at it, instead
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: of using that tension, the fact that it doesn't come
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: easily to you, as a sign that you need to
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: work harder or that you need a better teacher.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: Sometimes right, but just.
• 44:24
  Speaker 6: Focus on it in general, Yeah, work harder.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: Like when people say, oh, I'm just not good at names,
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: say go get a book on memory.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: And try harder.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Right, you can do this, try harder. We can do
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: hard things.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: We can do hard things.
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: It doesn't mean you want to be doing them every
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: second of every day. But the stories we tell ourselves
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: matter and I think there are way too many women
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: doing the I'm just not good at X.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: Instead of maybe what you want to say is I
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: don't feel like doing X. Okay, right, that can be
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: a valid choice.
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: Or I haven't found a good way to learn X.
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: I haven't had enough time to study X. I think
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: that's a mistake I made when I was young that
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: I try to back away from now. When I start
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: to feel that tension, I think, try harder.
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: After I read your book, I thought about the most
• 45:13
  Speaker 6: beautiful women I know, and I asked people who the
• 45:17
  Speaker 6: most beautiful women they knew were, Like who came to mind?
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: And not one person, including myself, said you know a
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: famous person or put somebody on a billboard or from Instagram.
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: They all said like their mom or their grandmother, or
• 45:32
  Speaker 6: somebody who was authentic and had bruises and resilience.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: And that is real beauty.
• 45:38
  Speaker 6: And so that is why I named this podcast pretty smart.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: It's the type of pretty that matters. Pretty bold, pretty witty,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: pretty strong, pretty smart.
• 45:45
  Speaker 6: And it is undoubtedly because of you and your book,
• 45:50
  Speaker 6: and I just I feel so grateful. I think you
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: will have inspired a whole culture shift. I don't know
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: if you recognize that.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: That is so That is so good to hear.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: I think we're all just trying to do our best
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: right and if I can.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Point people in that direction a little bit.
• 46:08
  Speaker 6: I'm so happy to do that. Yeah, I think you did, so.
• 46:12
  Speaker 6: Thank you again for your time.
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: It was great talking with you.
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: All Right, today's a good day to have a good day.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.