The Beauty Myth

Here is an excellent excerpt from The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf - its kinda long but interesting!

We are bombarded today with images of the "perfect" woman. She is usually a gorgeous blonde, although sultry brunettes, redheads and exotic women of color are also shown. She is tall and willowy, weighing at least 20% less than what her height requires. She rarely looks older than 25, has no visible flaws on her skin, and her hair and clothes are always immaculate. One "perfect woman" looks pretty much like the next; she is essentially not human, interchangeable and disposable. In fact, quite often she is presented in bits and pieces like a mannequin- -a torso, some legs, a shapely fanny--completing the assembly- line metaphor.

Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. We forget that "beauty pornography," as Wolf calls it, pictures underweight models that are usually between 15-20 years old. We never see a picture of a woman who is not wearing makeup applied by an artist, hair professionally coiffed, clothes professionally designed or chosen. Any natural flaws or wrinkles in her skin are airbrushed out. Unsightly lumps or anomalies in her body are also airbrushed out. Even when we see a photo of an older actress we know must have character lines on her face, they are never shown--the focus is fuzzed or the airbrusher strikes again to remove them. These are the pictures they show us of the "average woman." Yea, right!

The Beauty Myth standard of the "perfect" weight is especially interesting to explore. If you watch a movie made before 1970 you'll see what I mean. Women and girls shown in the hottest, cutting-edge movies of the 50s and 60s actually have hips and a fanny!!! They actually look like real women!!! Judged by today's standards, we look at these movies and think that the women in them look a little fat. It's striking to notice that the beautiful women shown in movies and TV these days never have round, feminine, bottoms and thighs. We've all been trained to believe that this boyish silhouette is the way healthy women should look, but the reality is that healthy women rarely, if ever, look this way.

The attitude portrayed by the media in the 80s and 90s "includes and aspirational, individualist, can-do tone that says that you should be your best and nothing should get in your way." This attitude contributes to women's guilt about their bodies by saying that if you don't look "perfect" you have only yourself to blame: If you don't look as gaunt as the fashion models, then you should starve or exercise to get that way; if you have lines on your face, you should have them cut or burned off; if your breasts are small, inject them with chemicals; if your thighs are round, have a doctor stick a vacuum cleaner under your skin and suck the fat out. In other words, the culture of today puts incredible pressure on all people, and women in particular, to look "beautiful," whatever that really means. And it maintains that if you don't look perfect, there must be something wrong with your willpower, because if you really wanted to you could.