A self-proclaimed beauty obsessive, author Autumn Whitefield-Madrano spent more than a decade working at women’s magazines, where she witnessed firsthand the crafting of mainstream messages about beauty. In FACE VALUE: The Hidden Ways Beauty Shapes Women’s Lives (Simon & Schuster; 2016), she thoughtfully examines the relationship between looks and science, social media, friendship, language, and advertising to show how beauty actually affects us day to day. Building on the tradition of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth she complicates and modernizes the issues for this generation.
