The Beauty Myth
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. Many women sense 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. After
years of much struggle and little recognition, many older women feel burned
out; after years of taking its light for granted, many younger women show
little interest in touching new fire to the torch.
During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile,
eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the
fastest-growing medical specialty. During the past five years [sic], consumer
spending doubled, pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate
films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told
researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any
other goal. More women have more money and power and scope and legal
recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about
ourselves physically, we may actually
be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers. Recent research consistently
shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful
working women, there is a secret “underlife” poisoning our freedom; infused
with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions,
terror of aging, and dread of lost control.
It is no accident that so many potentially powerful women feel this
way. We are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses
images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement: the
beauty myth. It is the modern version of a social reflex that has been in force
since the Industrial Revolution. As women released themselves from the feminine
mystique of domesticity, the beauty myth took over its lost ground, expanding
as it waned to carry on its work of social control.
The contemporary backlash is so violent because the ideology of beauty
is the last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the
power to control those women who second wave feminism would have otherwise made
relatively uncontrollable: It has grown stronger to take over the work of
social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and
passivity, no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo
psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for women
materially and overtly.
from p. 12-18 The Beauty
Myth by Naomi Wolf. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1991.
Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf raises
awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. She
encourages people to take charge of their lives, voice their concerns and enact
change.
Wolf’s landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged
the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty,
launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s. The New York Times called
it one of the most important books of the 20th century. In her long-anticipated
book, Vagina: A Cultural History, she asks, “could a profound connection
between a woman’s brain and her experience of her vagina affect her greater
sense of creativity—even her consciousness?” She argues that this connection is
not only real—and long-overlooked—but that it is fundamental to a woman’s sense
of self.
Wolf’s New York Times bestseller, The End of America: A Letter of
Warning to a Young Patriot, is an impassioned call to return to the aspirations
and beliefs of the Founders’ ideals of liberty. The New York Times called the
documentary version “pointedly inflammatory.” Her latest book, Give Me Liberty:
A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, includes effective tools for citizens
to promote civic engagement and create sustainable democracy.
Her international journalism includes the investigative report
“Guantánamo Bay: The Inside Story” for The Times of London, and as a columnist
for Project Syndicate her articles have been published in India, Philippines,
Egypt, and Lebanon. She’s a frequent blogger on The Huffington Post and writes
cultural commentary for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Harper’s Bazaar.
Her TV appearances include Larry King Live, Meet the Press, The Joyce Behar
Show, and The Colbert Report.
A graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Wolf was a
consultant to Al Gore during his presidential campaign on women’s issues and
social policy. She is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership,
an organization that teaches leadership to young women, and The American
Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose
mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.