The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf

In the book ‘Two or Three things i know for sure’, Dorothy Allison who tells her story growing up in a memoir and she uses her experiences to explain the two or The things she learned. What makes this her story stand out is not just that it 's a memoir but also because the main point is beauty and how women in her family were put down and abused because of their appearance. Throughout this whole book Dorothy tries to send out one important message on beauty which from my understanding beauty is not based on what men say or society says, we live in a world where a woman 's beauty is determined whether a man find hers beautiful and that must stop. Timothy Dow Adams who read’s ‘Two or Three things i know for sure’ writes his review on it, and his understanding of Dorothy Allison 's points of views.

Jane has gotten used to cruelty and biased behavior towards her average looks, and develops a miserable self-esteem that believes the only possible way to describe her exterior is “plain”. This self-esteem prevents her from even beginning to recognize that anyone could appreciate her or find her beautiful in any manner. The society’s typical reactions and judgments shaped Jane’s self-esteem, and prevented her from receiving equal treatment as that of a beautiful woman.

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.

The Ugly Truth About Beauty by Dave Barry is a humorous essay, which uses techniques like satire including exaggeration, that gives the reader a funny yet accurate portrayal of women and their beauty standards compared to standards set for men. Barry uses satire, humor to criticize the faults of others, to connect with his audience. Although Barry loves to make funny points throughout his essay he constantly weaves in serious facts and examples of this issue. Barry will make a valid point then immediately follow it up with exaggeration. His use of satire in the essay makes the reading light and enjoyable while showing the reader the double standards of beauty.

It's no secret that women are significantly less represented in literature. However, once in awhile, a novel comes around that challenges this overwhelming lack of representation. This rings especially true within the pages of Libba Bray's, "Beauty Queens." The underlying message of Beauty Queens is to combat patriarchal society using satire as a pedestal.

Maya Angelou, William Faulkner, and Marge Piercy all came up with a common theme that society has so many expectations for women and sometimes they lead to terrible things such as insecurities and even death. In Piercy’s story, “Barbie Doll,” a girl is told she is ugly many times so she kills herself by cutting her legs and nose off. Once she is dead, everyone finally says that she is pretty. “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner is about a woman that has always been overprotected by her father and when he dies, she goes crazy, leading the town to talk. Maya Angelou touches the subject of ugly woman with beautiful character when the men in the story cannot figure out why they like the woman in her story, “Phenomenal Woman.” These texts make use of imagery, irony, metaphors, and similes in order to communicate the theme.

Miss Representation is a documentary that examines the impact that media have on society as a whole. Many people believe that as adults we have the most impact in the consistent pressure to be perfect, but actually children are expose it to at an early age. It difficult for mostly girls, since “girls get the message early in age that the most important thing is their looks and their values and worth depend on their looks”. For young boys that notice that media portrays women to be “perfect”, then they want their significant other to be perfect as well. Our society is an appearance driven society where it does not matter if a person is an intellectual.

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

Beauty’s innate commentary to Society Concepts of beauty can be portrayed in everyday life. Jane Martin’s play entitled Beauty is the perfect example of how society perceives beauty and the subsequent benefits of possessing these unrealistic attributes. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, this is a phrase that many may relate to and Jane’s play is a representation of this, making it a commentary to society’s unrealistic views of beauty. An in depth look, at how society’s perceptions of beauty affects not only those who measure themselves up to these standards but also those who fit into the mold themselves and this will be the aim of this essay.

It explains how in the 1920’s society didn’t value the intelligence of women instead they valued a women looks and simplicity because they were seen more as an

A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source? Susan Sontag, a jewish-american writer, argues about how the external beauty influences the inner beauty. She starts giving a paradoxical and accurate example of Socrates, where she said that he was everything but beautiful and for the Greeks it was kind of contradictory because they had always thought that the inside beauty would be compatible with some other kind of beauty. According to the writer, people were used to say that a woman was beautiful depending on her inside and outside beauty, but we are also amazed “when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent and talented” (Sontag 387).

One’s perspective about such a controversial topic like beauty can be easily influenced by everyday situations. The theory of social comparison states, “women are negatively affected by constant exposure to models that fulfill the unrealistic media ideal of beauty”. Society has been corrupted by the negative messages portrayed in the media. As beauty continues to evolve the media and other social networks begin to introduce the concept of universal beauty. People continuously create an image and portray it as an ideal self.

The Beauty Myth written by Naomi Wolf describes the story of the objective “beauty”. Women want to embody the beauty while men want to possess the beautiful women. Wolf also carefully analyzes the social understanding

“What is a beautiful woman?” (Darius Washington 2014) There are a lot of deep scars in society. Thanks to the media, we have become use to extremely unrealistic standards for beauty. The exemplary that has been dragging society down for the past few millennia is that everything is wrong with you and you need to change yourself to be accepted as beautiful. The media is driving the public’s view of beauty by sending strong messages about physical perfection everywhere we turn. To certain people the media is considered the most influential education resource in today’s

Men are cherished for their abilities, together with alternative mental skills. As a women beauty in this society is unfair, women examine all aspects of their bodies which leads into narcissism, reinforces dependence and immaturity. In addition is also causes worry, and anxiety, this ends up guiding into never being completely satisfied or acceptance of oneself. In my opinion, though some women pass the test of society’s standards of beauty they will never be completely happy because standard of beauty change all the