The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf Summary

All over the world, women are being corrupted by the impact set by the media. In the essay “ The Truth About Beauty” by Virginia Postrel, it exposes companies like Dove, giving women hope they can eventually gain the appearance of the models they broadcast if they use Dove’s products. It is commonly said that “ Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, but who is the beholder? I believe it is the media. Not all physical beauty is evenly distributed unfortunately.

THe Beauty Myth:CHapter Beyond the Beauty Myth Naomi begins this chapter looking at how we can move past the beauty myth. After analyzing the beauty myth and what it means to women, she wonders about what kind of life there would be for women, if ideal of the beauty myth was gone. She examines what the problem is, “The real problem is our lack of choice” (Wolf, 272). A woman’s reasoning behind her motives to change or alter herself to fit into society standard of beauty is why women have a lack of choice. The choice is made for them, they just have to adhere to the pressures society places on women.

Even though media vaunts an iridescent image of what every girl should look like, the simple fact is just, it is impossible. It is because the pictures in the media are not true—they all have gone through lots of Photoshop. Only 5 percent of women have the body type seen in almost all advertisements. Besides, most of fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women. However, women still continue to do whatever they can in order to fit into that idea of ‘perfection’. Eating disorders have harassed who want to feel like they are ‘beautiful’, for years. Women are willing to do anything even though it can cause harm to their own self due to low self-esteem. Do you want your sister, friends or girl friends always feel depressed and doing harm to themselves, as they feel dissatisfied about their

We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.

The basic premise of The Beauty Myth is that forced concordance to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women as they gained power in other societal fields. Wolf argues that this standard of beauty has taken over the work of social force formerly left to myths about motherhood, domesticity, and passivity, all of which have been used to keep women powerless. In the author’s view, the myth of beauty spreads the belief that an objective measurement of beauty exists, and that woman must want to embody it, and that men must want such women. However, Wolf argues that the beauty myth is really not all about women, it is also about men’s institutions and power.

After taking a glimpse of what “Finding My Eye-Dentity”, More and More Young Women Choose Surgical ‘Perfection’”, and “Before Spring Break the Anorexic Challenge” were about, you can see that we are slowly wiping out our naturally beautiful females and males. Parents, girls/boys, lovers, and friends are very influential in our lives. However, how much can we let someone else control the way we look? Beautiful is different and comes in different shape, color, and size. If we continue to place models and actresses/actors on a pedestal, then nothing will change. Women and men will continue to ‘perfect’ their body. Beautiful. Everyone wants to look beautiful,

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

Women have let the idea of looking beautiful take over their self-confidence and life. Healthy Place, an online magazine teaching women about living a healthy life, says that, “today's fashion models weigh twenty-three percent less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a seven percent chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a one percent chance of being as thin as a supermodel.” So why do women push themselves to be excessively thin when these models are anomalies? They do it because the media tells them that this look is the only look that can attract men. Even if a woman is “beautiful” according to the media’s standards, she will always find something about her body that she hates, whether it is her hair or her belly button, no women is completely satisfied. Our society is very accepting of different religions and lifestyles, so why can we not accept different types of beauty as well?

Throughout the years, the definition of beauty constantly changes. In our society today many children are told to be true to themselves, to be unique, to be who they are, etc.; But on the other hand social media and the celebrities on there are a constant reminder that there is a certain type of beautiful. The juxtaposition between being yourself and being what is “beautiful” has consistent grey areas and blurred lines making it almost impossible to keep up with what’s “beautiful”. The media, whether intentional or not, portrays this certain body image that you have to be in order to qualify as beautiful.

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

In the book The Beauty Myth, the author, Naomi Wolf uses language that is very powerful, influential, and didactic. Her writing style was not very formal which i thought fit this book because it makes it easier to connect with the audience and get her arguments across. As i was reading this book there were times where i Wolf was right about our society and it gave me a sense of powerfulness. In her writing you can feel the power in her words even though she is arguing her power still shines through. For example when Wolf discussed our culture she says, “culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence- without- beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both.” (Wolf,

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.

Society creates a standard of beauty for women that often changes along with society due to a new perspective on what it means to be beautiful in our culture. These standards for beauty create what our society believes makes a woman desirable, attractive, perfect, and overall beautiful.  Which then enforces unhealthy and unrealistic beauty ideals that negatively affect women's self-image and their body image because society has attributed beauty to self worth. The result is with the ever changing standards of beauty means women use various ways to alter their bodies and appearance by clothing, makeup, hair, dieting, exercising, and even taking extreme measures to perfect their looks through surgery.

It was revealed that “It’s better to be average and good-looking than brilliant and unattractive” (Bennett). In a society fueled by appearance it is only natural for it’s public to take the necessary measures to fir the desired look; consequently, ‘chemists, perfumers, beauty salons, drug stores… and department store – began to establish a profit-making infrastructure for new notions of beauty” with a “dominant message, that every woman could achieve beauty” (Mankiller).

Think about what you consider to be beautiful. The majority of people will say something along the lines of a good personality is attractive. Every person that says this is lying to some degree. Our primordial nature as a species causes us to be predisposed to judge others based on their appearance. This was developed as a survival tactic in order to choose the best mate who would be most likely to ensure the survival of the species. Today being beautiful means being thin, feminine, and curvy. To be beautiful means to wear makeup, but not too much, and to have high cheekbones and sparkling eyes. To be beautiful means to have straight, white teeth and a proud smile. But how can our society expect to find a smile on the face of someone who is constantly bombarded with images of photoshopped, unrealistic beauty? The amount of compiled research on women who are found to have low self-esteem is massive, and yet we still continue to wonder “why?”. As a culture we turn a blind eye to the fact that the expectations of beauty and feminism that are enforced on the female mind daily are mentally harmful. The constant pressure to think, act, and look a certain way is reason enough to know why women struggle with self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders, among many other things as a result. The constant bombardment of society’s standards of beauty on women is negatively affecting the mental well being of the female population in the United States.