Is there anything more sad in our society than cosmetic breast-implant surgery? What does it say about our values? What does it say about how we view women?
What it says, according to ”The Beauty Myth,” by Naomi Wolf, is that
”what women look like is considered important because what we say is not.”
Wolf`s analysis of a culture that censors ”real women`s faces and bodies” is available on cassette in abridged form from Harper Audio (three hours, $16). Although it is, at times, a touch polemical and overstated, ”The Beauty Myth” is a fascinating piece of social criticism that offers a provocative view of what Wolf sees as forces being used to stall women`s social, political and economic progress.
”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,” Wolf writes.
The myth keeps women ”vulnerable to outside approval.” Underlying it is ”conscious market manipulation” by, for example, the cosmetics and dieting industries and the dissemination of millions of images of the current female ideal. The myth is summoned out of political fear on the part of male- dominated institutions ”threatened by women`s freedom. And it is supported by female guilt and apprehension about their own liberation-latent fears that they might be going too far.”
For women, catering to the myth is time-consuming and expensive, and leads to an undermining of self-esteem. In younger women, the myth has contributed to an epidemic of eating disorders and a wholly unnatural preoccupation with being thin.
Wolf points out that false notions of beauty prevent men from really seeing women and loving them as people.
Is she arguing against attractiveness? Definitely not. ”I`m not attacking anything that makes women feel good, only what makes women feel bad in the first place. We all like to be desirable and feel beautiful,” she writes.
Wolf`s reading of her book is certainly effective, though on occasion her voice takes on a smug, self-righteous tone. That might be because she knows she`s on to something.
Perhaps this: ”As soon as too many women look like the ideal, the ideal will always shift.”
