"The Beauty Myth"

(How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women)
-by naomi wolf
1991
Perhaps the most brilliant, flawed book i've ever read.
It examines the ways we value physical beauty in women, and subject them to judgments and demands not faced by men. It examines how the myth arose as a response to sexual freedoms and the incursion of women into the work force in the second half of the 20th century, and how it functions as a capitalistic backlash, subjecting women to huge burdens of time and money, and devaluing any woman who might have the wisdom that comes with age. It studies how the myth replaced the feminine mystique, moving us from a system wherein a woman's virginity was her greatest treasure, to a system wherein her physical approximation to an adolescent girl is how she is measured. This change is neatly pointed up in a comparison of two movies. In 1979's 10, george webber's fantasy is shattered when he finds out the woman is not a virgin. In 1999's AMERICAN BEAUTY, lester burnham's obsession wilts when he discovers she IS (cinematic contrast courtesy of me).
I can best describe the book as a burst of buckshot across the landscape. Buckshot is powerful, but a goodly amount misses the target. The primary flaw is a lack of distinction between "Truth" and "a truth". There are many truths, but they're often contradictory. And generalities have limits; within the complexity of human behavior, individuals cannot be understood through generalities. She acknowledges these things, but not enough.
Her views on censorship align a little too closely to radical feminists who posit any form of female erotic imagery as degrading. The flaw in this is that social advances for women have always come hand in hand with times of freedom in literary and artistic expression.
I also take exception to some of wolf's thoughts on fat. I agree that the body images women feel they must live up to are all too often anything but the way real women look, but she makes no allowance for the fact that we live in the fattest society in the history of the world, and that it's not only okay to be disturbed by that, it's also needed. The words, "Honey, you're a little overweight" cannot be allowed to be seen only as an utterance of misogynistic oppression.
It's been remarked that wolf occasionally plays a little loose and fast with her numbers. And whether the creation of the beauty myth was as intentional as she implies, is also an interesting question. Yet her deconstruction of the submissive impulse in some women, and how it comes from identifying with one's own objectification, is utterly fascinating.
Critiques aside, this book is simply scathing. I recommend it as required reading for every teenager. To put oneself in these shoes, to relate to each other and ourselves as physical beings through the eyes of this paradigm, is to come away with a sensitivity which can only move the human race forward. There is a whole lot of horror and damage to get past. Wolf also focuses on how we are entering the "surgical age", where perfectly healthy women (and to a much lesser extent, men) allow their bodies to invaded and mutilated by the doctor's scalpal, killing some and damaging the rest in ways we've barely begun to understand. At the very least, people who are mutilated thus are engaging in a psychologically perilous exercise in self-negation. For a person capable of empathy, reading these sections is disturbing and physically hard.
Flawed. Brilliant. Mostly brilliant.