Beauty Myth

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Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries was published as a sequel to The End of America: Letter of warning to a young patriot. Here she reviews that throughout history there has existed an unending power struggle. She shows how ordinary people have fought back for their rights. One such example that she gives is of the American war for independence.

One of Wolf’s most recent books which was published in 2012, is Vagina: A New Biography, it was subjected to harsh criticism. It is a combination of science and cultural history. It understands feminism from a whole new perspective. It brings out hidden, female desire in female identity, creativity, and confidence, from interviewees of all walks of life.

Fire with fire, Wolf complains that feminism has failed to capitalize on its gains. The 1980’s has become a time when women fewer women had come forth as a feminist. She simply states how there exists a vacuum of power. Women can now go forth and take it, but are things as easy as they seem?

Also one of her most popular books The Tree house: Eccentric Wisdom From my father on how to Live, Love, and See. The book runs on three different tracks, the self-help advice, and next account of a lyrical summer spent with her father who was a poet as well as a philosopher, and finally a biographical reminiscence about his life and her own.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is the debut book which provides a new voice to feminism. It discusses the effects of a male dominated society up on women. In a time and age where women are crossing all boundaries which as she calls it the “last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the power to control those women” .According to Wolf the myth was created to keep women trapped inside their own bodies. The petrol was added to the fire as women entered the job market and the beauty industry.

Her first work The Beauty Myth was a hit and run success, and even made her a celebrity on the small screen. However it is important to note that the book did not go well with all feminists as many found the work to be outrageous. Even though Wolf never completed her thesis at Oxford, it cannot be called a total failure. For this thesis became the core for, The Beauty Myth. One of the major causes for her becoming such a rebel is that she is due to her highly liberal childhood.

The Beauty Myth went above and beyond and standards that could have ever been set for it. It became one of the bestselling books of 1991 which later influenced the third wave feminist movement. It is a collection of the experiences of various women from different walks of life. There are no common factors which unite these women in terms of appearance. The fear of aging has is not contained within women of a specific age; however it present from the minds of teenagers, young adults, those who in their midlife, etcetera.

There are also life stories of women who come from various ethnic groups, as in today’s society a subaltern encounters different various roadblocks that women of other races would not even dream of.

First of all Wolf argues that the concept of beauty is something that is created by today society. This is a concept which is not new to human beings, ever since the beginning of time, women have been judged according to one type of criteria or another. In our time Wolf has again identified such actions occurring and has called it The Beauty Myth. Women have been forced to succumb to preset standards which cannot be archived by any human being. These unrealistic ideals are projected through the media thus obstructing both their social and political advancements.

In her view this is the reason which causes women to put their bodies through many unnecessary pressures. This makes women to go for nonessential invasive cosmetic surgeries which may lead to eating disorder. Also there is a mood of competition among women created which divides them from each other. This competition again has no age limits, and has seen to have affected girls as young as nine years old. So in order to help such women to recover there have been articles in magazines such as American Girl which try to encourage them. It attempts to explain how they must begin to appreciate their own bodies and that they must not compare their bodies with that of celebrities and become discouraged.

This text details the personal experiences of women from seventeen countries around the world. One of the issues that Wolf attempts to explicate is that the definition of beauty has been has been monopolize by the west. It has even become an integral part of their political stands as it is created to keep the male social domination intact.

One thing that must be understood is that The Beauty Myth was created mainly to prescribe behaviour and not appearance. But this does not mean that Wolf now wants women to lose their femininity or feminine characteristics. On the other hand Wolf wants to give women a choice on creating their own appearance and their own beauty rather than follow the definition of beauty given by the society.

We tend to automatically believe that once we read the name beauty myth that the topic of discussion has to be on women. And that it must contain subtopics such as evolution, sex, gender, etcetera. However in reality The Beauty Myth is not about women at all but it talks about men’s intuitions and the power that such intuitions have.

One of the major enemies of the myth is aging, it is presented to women as undesirable and how it will make them unbeautiful, this is the social perspective given. But many sociologists refute this idea and say that the belief of aging being negative itself in false. Since women grow more powerful as they age, and will be able to overthrow any society developed by man. If they are given the chance then the world we live in will be entirely different. In order to keep that relationship of and superior and inferior in the minds of future generations as well the myth was formed.

The myth itself gives and false image of women in our society. Women of today’s society are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality. They are more powerful in reality and the image we are given is purely and manmade illusion. The purpose of the illusion is to show a world where women are weak and unable to do anything for themselves. Through this method men believe that they can maintain their patriarchal world. But the question still remains on how much longer they can do so.

Less than 50 years after being published, The Beauty Myth is already being called a classic. Even though Julia Courage defines it as being repetitive after the first few chapters, she still recommends it for a