The “Beauty Myth” is a reading that talked about the standard that men decide is necessary to be beautiful. Naomi Wolf shows us how as women have become more liberated the standards of what makes a women considered beautiful have become stricter. Throughout her story Wolf shares with us that beauty is completely subjective in that it changes with cultures and with age. Women were actively gaining more legal and material rights through the women’s movement. Wolf states, “Many women that women’s collective progress has stalled; compared with the heady momentum of earlier days, there is a dispiriting climate of confusion, division, cynicism, and above all, exhaustion.” (10 p.2) As the movement had died down women were beginning to feel that effects
As of recently, the media has been flooded with positive interpretations of beauty standards all over the world. According to various sources, beauty ideals, in women especially, are socially constructed in order to judge a person’s value based on physical attractiveness; therefore, it is highly encouraged that people pay attention to their looks and take care of themselves, in order for others to create a positive first impression of one’s character. It is no secret that beauty standards vary from one culture to the next and it is difficult to establish a universal principle of what is considered beautiful. Many countries’ ideals contrast one another and, as a result, allow for stereotypes to emerge. This is the case between American
“Because of countless millions of women, who planned, organized, lectured, wrote, marched, petitioned, lobbied, paraded, and broke new ground in every field imaginable, our world is irrevocably changed. Women and men in our generation, and the ones that will follow us, are living the legacy of women’s rights won against staggering odds in a revolution achieved without violence” (para.1)
“The Beauty Myth” written by Naomi Wolf is an essay written to present how the advancements of women in social power lead to a societal backlash that lead to a woman’s value being equated to her appearance by both sexes. This devaluation of women has led to a harmful relationship with food and women subjecting themselves to mental and physical torture to be thin. Wolf describes in the 1920s was the first time that women became “preoccupied with dieting and thinness” after receiving the right to vote. In the 1950s, women’s curves were celebrated again because “their minds were occupied in domestic seclusion.” According to Wolf, when women were in male spheres, “that pleasure had to be overridden by an urgent social
The argument of The Beauty Myth is that as women have received more eminence, the standard of their personal appearance has also grown. Wolf’s position on the issue is that this type of social control is potentially just as restrictive as the traditional roles of women. The Beauty Myth discusses how society’s viewpoint of beauty is detrimental to women because it causes many emotional and psychological problems to women who strive to become “perfect”. This book is important due to the fact it raises awareness to the issues that many young women are currently facing.
Raina Kelley covers society's issues and cultural controversies for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.’s. In her article “Beauty Is Defined, and Not By You” aims to convince her readers that women success or not is not depends on beauty. “When I’m on m deathbed, I hope to be smiling in satisfaction about all I accomplished, not that I made it to 102 without any cellulite.” One of her goals is to remain all girls do not get influence by this society, just be brave and continue to reject that beauty is the only way to get ahead. Kelley used personal experiences, facts and examples, also counter argument to create a convincing argument.
The Beauty Myth’s central argument is the growing standards of physical beauty of women as they grow stronger. This standard has affected women in many ways, such as in the workplace, culture, and religion. The standard has taken over the work of social harassment. The beauty myth expands the belief an unbiased measurement of beauty exists and that women want to express it and men would want that women. The author, Naomi Wolf, states that the beauty myth is not about women themselves, it is about the power of men and their society. The myth supplies power to multibillion dollar cosmetics industries and it keeps women from rising too high in the workplace. Within this book, Wolf shows how the beauty myth functions and affects women in the workplace, media, sex, religion, culture, violence against women by men, and by women themselves in the configuration of cosmetic surgery and eating disorders.
This history shows how society since ages has focused on the beauty of women discussing how a woman should appear, objectifying her and setting up standards for a beautiful life for women. It is hard to follow the standards when all that is presented by the world is not hundred percent true, instead, it is a made-up need and not all women want to or need to follow these beauty standards. But however, women worry a lot about beauty that the how they appear physically, which is worthless after death and women should be prouder of herself as she is, rather than aiming to achieve a certain standard of beauty that is set up by society by the means of media where common people see models in each shape, size, color, dress, makeup, and much more. Models have a living through this looks where they die to get thin, tall, pale, long hairs but no body hairs.
The Beauty Myth, published by Doubleday in New York City, hit the shelves in 1992. Naomi Wolf wrote this 348-page book. Wolf attended Yale University and New College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Her essays have been printed in many well-known magazines and newspapers, including Esquire and the New York Times. The Beauty Myth was Wolf’s first book. She has also written two other books, Fire With Fire and Promiscuities. Wolf is a recognized feminist. She has done a lot of writing and has spoken to many audiences about issues involving feminism.
There is a cliché quote that people say, “Beauty is in the eye of beholder.” But in the essay “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” (1998) Dave Barry argues about how women who spend countless hours on their so called “beauty” whereas men seem not to care. Barry uses juxtaposition and exaggeration to poke fun at men and women behavior and shed light on the harm that the beauty industry is doing. When Barry argues his point of his essay he addresses both genders, but more specifically teenage to middle age men and women, but he writes about it in a humorous and light-hearted manner.
In today’s society beauty is a very important component to everyone. In order to be liked you must be thin, pretty, and smart, and if you don’t possess one of these qualities then you must buy products that will help you achieve them. Women especially have to face these standards every day for the rest of their lives. The beauty myth is a way for the patriarchy to control women through power, control, and consumerism.
The book by Wolf (1991) redefines the relationship between beauty and female identity by introducing the concept of the beauty myth. To explain the origins of this idea, the author mentions the rebirth of feminism in the early 1970s. Even though in most cases women were treated equally by law, there was a significant division in gender in society. Women were expected to follow the beauty trends and they felt unsatisfied with themselves when they failed to look like the “role model”, indicated by fashion industry, advertisements and pornography. According to the author, the beauty myth does not come from evolution, sex, gender, aesthetics, it is not even about women themselves, but about men’s institutions and institutional power.
Women go through so much pain and heart ache in order to achieve beauty or what they consider beauty. The truth is that beauty lies in women’s individuality and their personality. It is in their strength and their ability to care for others. Unfortunately nothing will change until something is done to change what is considered
It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.
The Beauty Myth is the last (and most dangerous) of a long line of lies concerning the "rules" of feminine attributes and behavior. It is the most dangerous because it has succeeded in effecting women's internal sense of themselves. It has created a standard of
“Girls’ self-esteem peaks when they are 9 years old, then takes a nose dive,” clinical psychologist Robin F. Goodman writes on the New York University Child Study Center Web site. People have a strange obsession with beauty, so much so, that after the age of nine we are no longer content with our bodies. In the essay A Woman's Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source the author, Susan Sontag, explains that women feel the need to be perfect, meanwhile men are privileged enough to not feel this need. I agree with Susan Sontag’s statements regarding beauty; and believe that men and women are completely responsible for women’s obsession with beauty. In the essay she also explains the history of how beauty became almost synonymous with femininity and how although beauty is a privilege and a form of power, it “negates itself” (489). Society as a whole, made up of both men and women, is the reason that women feel the need to be beautiful. I agree with Susan Sontag’s statements regarding beauty; and believe that men and women both hold responsibility for women's obsession with beauty.