Bri Lee - Beauty

Join us for a very special evening as we host Bri Lee to celebrate the release of Beauty, a powerful meditation on beauty and body image from the author of Eggshell Skull.

Bri will appear in-conversation with Georgie Dent, author of the acclaimed Breaking Badly. 

Event tickets are $9 each. A combination Event & pre-ordered Book Ticket is just $24 (a saving of $5). 

About the Book

Beauty is a powerful meditation on beauty and body image from the author of Eggshell Skull.

 

You were either fit and trim or you weren't working hard enough.  Your body was how you conveyed wealth and status to your peers, it was a  personality trait, a symbol of goodness and values: an ethical ideal.  

In  recent decades women have made momentous progress fighting the  patriarchy, yet they are held to ever-stricter, more punishing physical  standards. Self-worth still plummets and eating disorders are more  deadly for how easily they are dismissed.  

In Beauty, Bri Lee explores our obsession with thinness and asks how an intrinsically unattainable standard of physical 'perfection' has become so crucial to so many. What happens if you try to reach that impossible goal? Bri did try, and Beauty is what she learned from that battle: a gripping and intelligent rejection of an ideal that diminishes us all.         

Praise for Beauty

"Beauty is, unequivocally, my book of the year. This memoir provides a startling insight into the societal pressures placed on women in western society to attain unrealistic standards of beauty, as Bri confesses her darkest struggles around body image during her rising fame. I often found myself having to stop reading to sit with her extraordinarily vulnerable, yet revelatory prose. We follow her amid the release of her wildly successful debut book, Eggshell Skull, as she is made to pose for magazines and speak on countless talk shows. Bri’s raw, and honest recount reveals how truly self-destructive we can be in attempts to reach unattainable, unrealistic standards of beauty."  - Katherine, Better Read Than Dead. 

Praise for Eggshell Skull

"Scorching, self-scouring: a young woman finds her steel and learns to wield it" - Helen Garner 

"Brutal, brave and utterly compelling . . . I can't remember a book I  devoured with such intensity, nor one that moved me so profoundly"  - Rebecca Starford, author of Bad Behaviour and co-founder of Kill Your Darlings  

About the Author

Bri Lee is a writer and editor whose work has been published in The Monthly, Harper's Bazaar Australia, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The Guardian, Griffith Review, i-D, VAULT Art Magazine, and elsewhere. She regularly appears on The Drum on ABC TV, various ABC Radio National programs, and often gives talks on writing, law, feminism, fashion, pop culture, and art. As the Founding Editor of the quarterly print periodical Hot Chicks with Big Brains, Bri commissioned and published diverse non-fiction about women and their work from 2015 to 2018.  

Her first book, Eggshell Skull, was published by Allen & Unwin in June 2018. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in non-fiction, winning the 2019 People's Choice Award, and also won the 2018 People's Choice at the Nib Awards for research in writing, and the 2019 ABIA for Biography of the Year. Eggshell Skull has also been shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and longlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize. 

About Georgie Dent

Georgie Dent is a journalist, an editor, and a passionate advocate for  gender equality. She edits Women's Agenda and writes regular columns for Fairfax Media & Marie Claire. She makes regular appearances on TV & Radio. Her acclaimed 2019 memoir, Breaking Badly, is a firm staff favourite at Better Read Than Dead.