The Beauty Myth, first published in 1991, is an excellent book by Naomi Wolf that looks at the concept of outer appearance as a demand as well as a standard of passing judgment upon women in the developed world. Subtitled How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, the book is carefully thought out and supported by extensive investigations.
In 2002, the book was published again to include a new introductory note by the same author. The Book provides explanations on the role of the beauty myth in the spheres of employment, traditions, religious affiliation, and in sex and sexual relations. Wolf also examines the hostile behaviors that exist between women and men and between women themselves, which comes in the way of eating disorders and cosmetic surgery.
Wolf categorically asserts that to concede to the beauty myth problem can assist in advancing it with more devastating results instead of alleviating the situation. In the last chapter, Wolf plainly states practical suggestions on how to get rid of the societal machinery that insists on upholding standards of physical beauty among women. She argues that beauty myth exists to induce the society to regard women’s look above everything they may have.
The Beauty Myth looks at the scope to which attractiveness has influenced females search for equality and how the same scenario occurs in our own lives as well as in the larger society. The concern that Wolf raises about the issue is personal, since it is applicable to any female, and it is backed by historical data and the necessary statistics to illustrate her views. In this publication, the author’s thesis statement draws a relationship that exists between female liberation and female physical appearance. She writes:
“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. During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical specialty.
Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the attractive, successful working women, there is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control (Wolf, 2002, p.10)”
The author’s main point of argument is drawn from the fact that there exists no historical or biological validation for what she terms as the beauty myth. Wolf posits that the beauty myth came into the public limelight soon after the emergence of the second wave of feminism. In view of the fact that women were subsequently unlimited to their responsibilities of being wives and mothers, another input was required to maintain them in their positions in the society.
The myth postulates that beauty “objectively and universally exists” and is a vital ingredient that women must posses to win men to their side. Although grounded on the notion that beautiful women have high fertility rates and are therefore more advantageous to the world, this false claim influences most things from power relations to fitness standards thus depriving women the capability of appreciating their own womanliness.
The falsehood puts good looks, sexuality, aptitude, and power to be at loggerheads, complicating the possibility of females acquiring all these attributes at the same time. To be more precise, if a woman has a predetermined standard of attractiveness, she is usually categorized to own these attributes.
No recognition is based on the inner “beauty” that a woman may posses as the emphasis is laid on perfecting the outward appearance. This excellent book shades more light on the emerging cultural issues encountered by women in this century. The book tells women’s magazines off for not making enough efforts to lessen the force of the myth, in spite of the fact that they are one of the important fundamental tools for transforming the role of women in the society.
Naomi Wolf records her dissatisfaction with these publications as most of their advertisements have models, who present themselves as the perfect women. This practice only serves to propel the fallacy of the myth instead of assisting the vulnerable females who are trying to run from it.
The message that these publications carry are influential because they stand for the female mass culture. The magazines have acted as a vehicle of spreading the feminist ideas at an increased rate in modern times. Since the publications are common among women from all lifestyles, they are capable of setting the standards of physical beauty faster than any other means of communication.
The claim that Wolf puts forward is true, because it is in the course of interacting with these visual media that women discover what the “correct” physical attributes they have to posses even if they have to injure themselves to get it. Women find out that they have to resemble the images they see in the magazines even if they adore their men.
The author states plainly that females get the shaft due to the beauty standards, that women are their bodies and that they are initially perceived as women, then secondly as human beings. Wolf even goes ahead to equate the moisturizers with wrinkle-preventing ingredients to “holy oils.”
At this point, she gets so much into the myth such that she asserts that the quest for physical attractiveness is a religious conviction in its own right. Women ought to become conscious of the fact that with or without the beauty products, they would remain to be women who need to feel better about themselves.
Women are not to take precedence at how Hollywood or Cosmopolitan has a very different view of their femininity; they are to believe that their own delight in beauty will ultimately triumph. The worst part of this notion of enhanced beauty is that it makes females to go up against one another.
It opposes the objective of the feminist movement as it makes women to disregard the importance of others. The society must allow women to be human beings first and women must have the faith that what can be of benefit to one of them is able to benefit all of them. A distinct separation has to be made to distinguish between sexuality, femininity, aptitude, good looks, and power from one another and assessed according to their own terms.
Currently, the beauty myth is still being enforced in our society, and may persist if the women do not combine efforts to alleviate its force. We are anticipating for a time when every woman would value her own beauty and simultaneously acknowledge other women’s beauty. That is the concern raised by Naomi Wolf, in The Beauty of Myth, and it is a concern that should trouble every one of us.
Reference List
Wolf, N. (2002). The Beauty Myth. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.