Ask a Literary Lady: Books on Looks, and Why They’re Not That Important?

I think almost all books can help diminish our collective preoccupation with how people look. Whenever you read a book, it’s up to you, and you alone, to decide what the characters look like. When a book describes a protagonist as a beautiful person, you can picture them however you like, and that’s incredibly liberating. Your idea of a breathtaking Anna Karenina or a dreamy Mr. Darcy might look nothing like someone else’s, and it shouldn’t.
In a world where we are bombarded with images, books are the rare exception. They never say, “look at this, this is the definition beauty.” If we’d all just read more books, we might have more diverse, expansive, and perhaps more forgiving, ideas of beauty.
But let me get off my soapbox and respond to your question – yes, there are definitely some books that I have read that have challenged how I think about looks.

I credit Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk with being the first book that really jolted me into questioning beauty and whether it’s really worth all the trouble. It’s a wildly entertaining novel that pokes our most superficial notions of beauty, happiness, and “having it all.”
I also loved The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi. It’s part mystery, part satire, and cleverly absurd. Somewhere in there, though, is thought-provoking story about two friends who suffer crippling insecurities despite, or because of, how they look.
13 Ways of Looking At a Fat Girl by Mona Awad has some bitingly funny words when it comes to our fixation on body-image. The novel follows an acerbic but endearing teenage girl as she struggles with her weight, her sexuality, and her self-esteem. There are moments in the novel that are so brutally honest that they’re funny and heartbreaking at the same time.

I also want to give a shout out to children’s books and young adult novels that have addressed the fixation we have on how we look. I’m dead serious when I say The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch is one of my favorite books of all time, and grown-ups should return to it regularly. I also loved L.M. Montgomery for creating the timeless Anne Shirley in Anne of Green of Gables. Anne was the first fictional character to teach me that everyone hates something about how they look, and you will always encounter a host of different opinions about your physical attributes. What’s important is how we move on and cultivate other qualities.

I hope that these books will challenge your friend’s thinking the way that they did mine. If not, however, I still think you should keep recommending books—any books—to her. Reading might give her some reprieve from all the messages and images telling her what to wear and what to look like. Books are the best example of not judging anything by its cover, and I think we all need a reminder of that sometimes.
Love and paperbacks,
Literary Lady