Pădurariu Maria Rebecca

Clasa a XII-a F

The Beauty Myth

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women is a nonfiction book
by Naomi Wolf, originally published in 1990 by Chatto & Windus in the UK and William
Morrow & Co (1991) in the United States. It was republished in 2002 by HarperPerennial with a
new introduction.
The basic premise of The Beauty Myth is that as the social power and prominence of
women have increased, the pressure they feel to adhere to unrealistic social standards of physical
beauty has also grown stronger because of commercial influences on the mass media. This
pressure leads to unhealthy behaviors by women and a preoccupation with appearance in both
sexes, and it compromises the ability of women to be effective in and accepted by society.
Pădurariu Maria Rebecca
Clasa a XII-a F

Summary
In her introduction, Wolf offers the following analysis:
The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and
heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us... [D]uring the past decade,
women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic
surgery became the fastest-growing specialty... [P]ornography became the main media category, ahead of
legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that
they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money
and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel
about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.
Wolf also posits the idea of an iron maiden, an intrinsically unattainable standard that is then used
to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. Wolf
criticizes the fashion and beauty industries as exploitative of women, but claims the beauty myth extends
into all areas of human functioning. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we
want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic
pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and
politically". Wolf argued that women were under assault by the "beauty myth" in five
areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. Ultimately, Wolf argues for a relaxation of normative
standards of beauty.

Impact
Wolf's book was a quick bestseller, garnering intensely polarized responses from the public and
mainstream media, but winning praise from many feminists. Second-wave feminist Germaine
Greer wrote that The Beauty Myth was "the most important feminist publication since The Female
Eunuch", and Gloria Steinem wrote, "The Beauty Myth is a smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion
call to freedom. Every woman should read it. British novelist Fay Weldon called the book "essential
reading for the New Woman", and Betty Friedan wrote in Allure magazine that "The Beauty Myth and the
controversy it is eliciting could be a hopeful sign of a new surge of feminist consciousness."
With the publication of The Beauty Myth, Wolf became a leading spokesperson of what was later
described as the third wave of the feminist movement.

Criticism
In Who Stole Feminism? (1994) Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the claim
that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia in the United States, writing that the actual
figure was more likely to be somewhere between 100 and 400 per year.
Similarly, a 2004 paper compared Wolf's eating disorder statistics to statistics from peer-reviewed
epidemiological studies and concluded that 'on average, an anorexia statistic in any edition of The Beauty
Myth should be divided by eight to get near the real statistic.' Schoemaker calculated that there are about
525 annual deaths from anorexia, 286 times less than Wolf's statistic.
Humanities scholar Camille Paglia also criticized the book, arguing that Wolf's historical research
and analysis was flawed.
Pădurariu Maria Rebecca
Clasa a XII-a F

Connection to women's studies

Within women's studies, scholars posit that the Beauty Myth is a powerful force that
keeps women focused on and distracted by body image and that provides both men and women
with a way to judge and limit women due to their physical appearance. Magazines, posters,
television ads and social media sites are, in this hypothesis, among the many platforms today that
perpetuate beauty standards for both men and women. The daily presence and circulation of
these platforms, it is argued, makes escaping these ideals almost impossible. Women and men
alike are faced with ideal bodies, bodies that are marketed as attainable through diets and gym
memberships. However, for most people these beauty standards are neither healthy nor
achievable through diet or exercise. Women often place a greater importance on weight loss than
on maintaining a healthy average weight, and they commonly make great financial and physical
sacrifices to reach these goals. Yet failing to embody these ideals makes women targets of
criticism and societal scrutiny.
Perfectionistic, unattainable goals are cited as an explanation for the increasing rates
of plastic surgery and anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is one of the most prevalent eating disorders in
Western countries "affecting an estimated 2.5 million people in the United States alone. Of this
number, more than 90 percent of anorexics are girls and young women. They suffer from a
"serious mental health disease that involves compulsive dieting and drastic weight loss". This
weight loss is the result of deliberate self-starvation to achieve a thinner appearance, and it is
frequently associated with the disorder bulimia. Anorexia's deep psychological roots make it
difficult to treat and often extend the recovery process into a life-long journey.
Some feminists believe the beauty myth is part of a system that reinforces male
dominance. According to Naomi Wolf, as women increasingly focus their attention on their
physical appearance, their focus on equal rights and treatment takes a lower priority. The same is
argued in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, in which she recounts the effects of societies
that condition adolescent girls and young women to behave in feminine ways. According to
Beauvoir, these changes encompass a "huge array of social expectations including physical
appearance, but unlike the social expectations on boys, the social expectations on girls and
women usually inhibit them from acting freely". In her argument, Beauvoir cites things such as
clothing, make-up, diction and manners as subjects of scrutiny that women face but men do not.
Studies reveal that women today strive to achieve aesthetic ideals because they recognize
the correlation between beauty and social standing. According to Dr. Vivian Diller's book Face
It: What Women Really Feel as their Looks Change and What to Do About It, "most women
agree, reporting the good looks continue to be associated with respect, legitimacy, and power in
their relationships".In the commercial world, hiring, evaluations and promotions based on
physical appearance push women to place the importance of beauty above that of their work and
skills.
Over the course of history, beauty ideals for women have changed drastically to represent
societal views. Women with fair skin were idealized and segregated and used to justify the unfair
treatment of dark-skinned women. In the early 1900s, the ideal female body was represented by a
pale complexion and cinched-waist; freckles, sun spots, and/or skin imperfections led to scrutiny
by others. In 1920, women with a thinner frame and small bust were seen as beautiful, while the
ideal body type of full-chested, hourglass figures began in the early 1950s, leading to a spike in
Pădurariu Maria Rebecca
Clasa a XII-a F

plastic surgery and eating disorders. Society is continually shifting the socially constructed ideals
of beauty imposed on women.