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In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women.
Dangerous, triggering sensationalism. What an awful book this is. On the pretext of telling women not to be preoccupied with their looks and weight, Wolf has written several hundred pages about women's looks and weight. Her intentions, I am sure, were righteous; but the "empowering" framing message fades away in comparison to the hypnotically graphic struggle-porn that forms the bulk of the text. As I read these horror stories about breast surgery and analyses of cosmetics advertisements, I had an all-too-familiar feeling of prurience. The cumulative effect was similar to that of the women's magazines Wolf deplores, but more inimical. I am a college-educated female with a history of mild eating disorders, and I closed the book feeling more insecure and depressed about my looks and weight than I had in years. In conclusion, anyone with a history of bulimia and / or anorexia ought to stay well away from "The Beauty Myth" unless she has total confidence in her immunity to triggering materials.
Another not-so-minor quibble: Wolf's chapter on "Religion" exposes her total ignorance of Christian doctrine, be it Catholic or Protestant. She writes from the premise that Christianity is anti-woman, apparently expecting that her readers will accept this common canard without any logical arguments to back it up. This further stains her intellectual credentials.
It's not about Beauty anyway Let me explain my circumstances while reading Beauty Myth. The book was used and someone made comments throughout the book in the margins. The comments enlivened the book a bit. The previous reader essentially called Wilde a whiner and a liar as the author presented her view of women as resentful, man-made beauty queens.
After thinking about Beauty Myth over a series of months, I find this book does overly victimize women. Women are not stupid. We buy the magazines, watch the news, watch commercials and watch the shows that continue to idolize the thin female. Women have money and money dictates what is acceptable.
No one is forcing women to look skinny. We're kidding ourselves. If we really wanted to start a revolution and dispel the Beauty Myth we'd stop watching soap operas, stop watching shows were the starlet is 10 pounds underweight, we'd stop buying magazines that tell us how to loose twenty pounds in 2 weeks and we'd stop making dewy eyes over merchandise that is sold by supermodels. Are we doing this? No.
We are telling the advertisers that want and need to make money that they don't need to change what they are doing, because we (educated women with money) are still buying.
This whole thing is not about Beauty anyway. It's truly about feeling loved. This is an ancient and eternal issue. It will not find resolve in books, but in the lone heart of a woman as she does battle and makes due with her self-esteem. Deeply Flawed Central Thesis The first edition of this book had several factual errors and exaggerations. To her credit, Wolf has corrected some of these errors. However, the main thesis of her book, and a deeply flawed one at that, has remained unchanged. Wolf argues that having been scared by the increasing successes and power of women in the West, some men decided that the best way to put women in their rightful place is to occupy their thoughts with self-appearance and starve them.
Some concern with self-appearance is not difficult to understand. Humans have a basic aesthetic sense and desire attractive mates. Therefore, where one ranks on an attractiveness scale should be somewhat of a concern to many people because one realizes that others also desire attractive mates. Women often tend to be very selective with respect to choosing a male partner, and the men whom they desire, usually having their choice of women, will naturally go after the more attractive ones. Hence the reason many women are preoccupied with their looks...they want the best man they can obtain and know that men value beauty. If women were less choosy about men, they would need to be far less concerned about their looks because some men will sleep with almost anything. Surely, patriarchy cannot be blamed for making women choosy about men because most men would prefer that women have lower standards.
It is true that female high fashion models tend to be young and skinny; however, these models also tend to have multiple traits more typical of men, i.e., they tend to closely approximate the physique of adolescent boys. This should not be difficult to understand if one considers the fact that the typical high fashion designer is a male homosexual. See a newly published book in this regard: "The Nature of Homosexuality: Vindication for Homosexual Activists and the Religious Right." For a visual comparison of haute couture models vs. glamour models, see the supporting materials for this book at amazinginfoonhomosexuals.com.
Influenced by the high status of haute couture models, several women diet unnecessarily and may also indulge in excessive exercise. Male [...] fashion designers are to blame for this, not patriarchy. Once you control for the influence of high fashion models-courtesy male [...] fashion designers-and fashions, the beauty industry is largely responding to a mostly innate desire among women to make themselves attractive but is not generating this desire.
