How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women - The Beauty Myth

In the preface, Wolf states:
"A related fallacy is that The Beauty Myth objects categorically to images of glamour and beauty in mass culture. Absolutely not. If the icon of the anorexic fashion model were one flat image out of a full spectrum in which young girls could find a thousand wild and tantalizing visions of possible futures, that icon would not have the power to hurt them; fashion and beauty scenarios would be yet another source of the infinite pleasure of the intrigues of life in the female body.

"The third fallacy in the debate is that I am constructing a conspiracy theory. A backlash against women's advancement does not originate in a smoke-filled room; it is often unconscious and reflexive, like racism. A backlash against feminism that uses an ideology about beauty to keep women down is not an organized conspiracy with maps and pins, but a generalized atmosphere in which men's fears and women's guilt are addressed and elaborated through the culture's images of women, and its messages to women about the relationship between their value and their bodies."

Our society has turned the masses into pathetic excuses for human beings. The sensitive and intuitive are shunned, pushed aside, beaten down, and told to shut up by the power hungry and those whose minds they rule over, who daily spew their ideology of consumerism and male superiority in the most effective manner: subtly conditioning the victims themselves to accept it, even defend it.

My advice to those critics who belittle Wolf's claims: WAKE UP. This is the world we are living in, and that you continue to perpetuate by your ignorance and inability to delve both within and without to find the truth.

Think about it. A very unattractive man in his 50's could easily get to the top of any company he wished. Could a woman do so without far greater effort and sacrifice? If you can successfully and rationally argue that the answer is yes, I will be more than happy to cede that Wolf's message no longer applies today. But I hate to tell you that her message most certainly applies now, perhaps even more than at the time she wrote it.

I am 25 years old, 5'10, 118 pounds, and just did a fashion show last week. But I am intelligent and intuitive enough to have known, before I even reached the age of 18, that something in our world is very skewed. I am by no means the "ugly feminist," nor do I shun that which admittedly brings me pleasure, being taking care of my health and my body, wearing makeup, and dressing according to the style that makes me feel better about myself. There is nothing wrong with wearing makeup or making oneself appear and feel more beautiful. However, if you understand what Wolf is saying at all, you understand it is the general atmosphere of oppression she is attacking, not the means women use to get certain ends. I pray that in 100 years, they are reading things like this in schools, and shaking their heads at how confused the masses were in history.

The fashion industry is a 100 billion dollar a year industry, just in the United States! The cultural programmers, advertisers, and marketing psychologists have devoted much time, money, and brainpower into the problem of turning people into consumers - of how to make people feel "not right" unless they buy the consumer goods marketed to make them "feel right". And of course, the goal of becoming a plastic mannequin is unrealistic and unattainable, thereby ensuring that billions will continue to be spent in trying to attain the unattainable.

Naomi Wolf exposes the unrealistic and impossible standards of mannequin female beauty as a destructive form of social control. She chronicles the history of the beauty myth and the ways it affects every woman's home, health, and work. She challenges the fashion industry's ideal of feminine mannequin-like perfection as a culturally-programmed myth manufactured by the wordpushers from the fashion industry's various sectors, ranging from the diet industry to fashion magazines to cosmetics to Hollywood and Bollywood. She says that its a myth that ravages a woman's pyschological health and even imperils their health (many cosmetics are preserved with formaldehyde-releasing biocides commonly known as Grotan BK or Solvitose 2453 that cause scleroderma). Many women suffer from eating disorders because they feel that they do not have a choice in meeting the culturally-programmed obsession with mannequin-like beauty.

Lastly, Wolf says that the feminist movement is affected by the cultural programming too. She presents an abundance of evidence that artifical beauty standards are quietly undermining the work of feminism. This critical view of the fashion industry seems to echo similar complaints made by Judeo/Christian/Islamic/Sikh women and Hindu women who, in a nutshell, lament the backward direction of current society to a Pagan Rome of two thousand years ago.

This book altered my whole perception of beauty as it is presented culturally and socially. I just wish I had read it when I was an impressionable teenager. Furthermore, I wish that everyone who claims that feminists have nothing left to fight for would read this book. Wolf's well written and thought provoking take on Western society's obsession with beauty clearly proves that we unfortunately have a long way to go until men and women are truly equal.
Warning! This book may cause a great deal of rage and a sense of hopelessness. Don't be discouraged by all the depressing statistics that Ms Wolf presents - make a wow to yourself and all the other women out there to refuse to silently accept to be objectified and lessened. That, and not the latest miracle cream from L'Oreal, is what we are truly worth.

In the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf (NW) mounts a stunning array of evidence to establish a surprisingly basic thesis:

(*) That the media/advertisers/businesses use beauty as a standard standard that is applied solely to women

(*) That this standard is then used in the workforce, and is the basis for hiring, firing, promotion, denial of promotion, sexual harassment, denial of charges of sexual harassment, etc.

(*) That preoccupation with a media-imposed artificially-high and artificially-maintained standard of beauty keeps women preoccupied with things that are irrelevant to their jobs, skills, education, hard work, etc.

(*) That in order to keep their jobs, advance professionally, and maintain a romantic relationship, women have to spend large sums of money, plenty of time, and pay a lot of attention to their looks -- in order to maintain the kind of look they see in magazines and advertisements, and which seems to be expected of them.

NW makes many additional claims, and I, or any reader, for that matter, may chose to disagree with them. But the book is fascinating in the statistics and stories and facts it compiles. I found the book valueable if for no other reason than that it forced me to consider why beauty is applied only or mainly to women, and why it seems to be applied in areas to where it is irrelevant: Why should a female news reporter be expected to look like an anorexic fashion model? Why are her male colleagues judged by completely other standards?

In establishing her case, NW does a superb job. An astonishing job. Sometimes, she does too good a job, in that the book seems to fire in too many directions, some of which are not essential to her main thesis. For example, the book gives off a distinct foul odour of religion-bashing, which is not really necessary for the central theses the author makes. I thought it was a low point of the book, where NW "explains" the rationale behind various religious practices and then relates these to discrimination against women. There is no religion that is THAT clear about the rationale behind its practices: Claims such as "Jews do X because of Y" and "Catholics do Z because of T" are almost always bound to be gross over-simplifications of religious practices and beliefs. A book on the myth of beauty is the wrong place, in my opinion, for a Reader's Digest guide to world religions, and religion-bashing does not serve the author's purpose. On the contrary, most religious leaders today would otherwise agree with NW wholeheartedly that for whatever social/economic reasons, female beauty has been used, abused, and made a tool that has de-facto enslaved the hearts, minds and bodies of women.

NW has been generous enough, in the spirit of Betty Fridan's Feminine Mystique (which seems to serve as an inspiration for this book), to point out the toll that the [Feminine] Beauty Myth has taken on men as well: That genuine relationships are possible only when couples see each other as they are, and for what they are.

All in all, this is a good book, and one doesn't have to agree with each and every point in order to enjoy reading it. Get it, read it, and make up your own mind.

In her controversial bestseller, Wolf posits a relationship between female liberation and female beauty in which women pay for every economic and political success with another restrictive or subordinate measure at the hands of a brutalizing patriarchy. The backlash against everything feminism has achieved is a demanding and punitive "beauty myth" that keeps women in place by proscribing impossible models of femininity, creating insecurity and self-hatred that can then be easily exploited by the fashion world, Hollywood, glossy magazines, and the lucrative diet and cosmetic surgery industries. In an unforgettable move in her chapter on "Hunger," Wolf turns the tables and describes the mysterious disease ravaging America's best and brightest young men, ostensibly leaving Dartmouth's star quarterback and the editor of the Harvard Crimson resembling Holocaust victims. After six paragraphs of expounding on how "the future is committing suicide," Wolf reveals that in fact the apocalyptic phenomenon she describes is very real, but occurring among women rather than men. Like the Minnesota study, "Hunger" reminds us of the gravity and violence of anorexia and bulimia. Wolf's rhetorical trick might be even more powerful now than at its initial reception because it defamiliarizes eating disorders and shocks even those of us who have long been exposed to their reality; such a shock may well be the only tactic for communicating with young girls so steeped in disordered culture that reading online "tips and tricks" for throwing up from girls in hospital beds is assimilated unproblematically.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf argues that our culture's images of beauty -- found on television and in advertisements, women's magazines, and pornography -- are detrimental to women, as well as to the men who love them. She demonstrates that the concept of "beauty" is a weapon used to make women feel badly about themselves; after all, no one can live up to the ideal. Wolf DOES agree that beauty plays a legitimate role in our lives and in our attractions to one another. The problem, she says, is when beauty is defined as thinness, pertness, and youthfulness taken to extremes -- extremes that are literally unattainable for healthy women. And I agree.
Wolf's book explores 6 areas of life in which problems result from the beauty myth. Each has its own chapter that can be read on its own and still make perfect sense. I suggest starting with whichever interests you the most. They are as follows:
* WORK. Here, the author details the way the concept of "beauty" can be used to discriminate against women in the workforce. If women are too pretty, we're not taken seriously; if women aren't pretty enough, we can legally be fired for their perceived "homeliness." Then again, if we're too pretty, it's our own fault when they're sexually harassed; if we're not pretty enough, people doubt men would have actually harassed them. The author offers a dizzying list of legal cases lost by women which demonstrate the extent of this catch-22 -- compelling stuff.
* CULTURE. This focuses on the role of women's magazines (the sole arbiter of women's culture) in shaping our lives, by selling us on the need for beauty products by making us feel bad about themselves. It also notes that advertisers pressure the magazines into this, because only if women feel terrible about themselves will high-income women spend a quarter (yes, a quarter) of their each paycheck on beauty products.
* RELIGION. Convincingly argues that the quest for thinness has replaced the quest for moral virtue and heavenly salvation, and shows how this quest has the same effects that religion once did -- of keeping women submissive and preoccupied.
* SEX. Demonstrates that the beauty myth actually supresses female sexuality by making many women too self-conscious to engage in sex freely and comfortably, and moreover, that excessive dieting leads to a diminished sex drive. It also argues that the beauty myth hurts men by making them unaware of what real women look like, and by giving them the role of "appraiser of beauty" instead of the role of "partner" -- further impacting sexual relations.
* HUNGER. The beauty myth convinces women to "willingly" go hungry, to eat fewer calories per day than famine victims in third-world countries, which results in ironic weight gain and/or in eating disorders (compulsive eating, anorexia, and bulemia). Includes a compelling account of the author's own battle with anorexia.
* VIOLENCE. This is not about domestic violence, but rather the self-inflicted violence of cosmetic surgery, which is so painful and damaging to the body. Interesting comparisons with Victorian sexual surgery and with potentially deadly experimental medical research (which is unethical). The author questions why so many women are willing to risk diminished erotic responses and even death in order to be made thin or small-nosed or large-breasted or whatever. Her conclusion is that culture implies that women are better off dead than old or ugly-looking, making it a reasonable risk.
In conclusion, this is a very strong, compelling book. At times, some of what Wolf says is a bit hard to swallow -- but read as a whole, it presents a solid argument about the sickness of our society today. Men, read it for your wives; parents, read it for your daughters; and ladies, read it for yourself.
Highly recommended.

Some of the stats and facts contained in this book are a wee bit dated, but that's a small minus in light of the many plusses of this powerful book! I started reading it, hoping I wouldn't like it and could put it aside but from the first opening pages, I was hooked!

On page three, Ms. Wolf writes, "The stronger women were becoming politically, the heavier the ideals of beauty would bear down upon them, mostly in order to distract their energy and undermine their progress."

Wow. So, fiddling around with beauty is something that keeps us distracted and distressed, and inhibits the realization of our full potential! Further, she writes, "The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men's institutions and institutional power" (p. 13).

If you're ready to have you eyes opened to the facts of women's beauty, take a few hours and read this book. You'll never look at a glossy woman's magazine the same way again.

In "The Beauty Myth," Naomi Wolf crudely describes how women's identities are been destroyed by a myth of beauty, which proclaims physical appearance as the essential "thing" to go through this life successfully. The future of a woman is dark without being tall, having great legs, and a cute face. This horrible perspective has drawn women into low-fat and fat-free food. And not being this enough, women have got to the point, where they are starving in order to maintain their figures. Unfortunately all their effort to have the ideal body are worthless though anorexia and bulimia are the results of this insane idea. Advertising, movies, and magazines are threatening women physically and psychologically. Cosmetic and clothing companies make their money by making women believe they are ugly. And what is worst of all, we are taught since we are little that to be beautiful has nothing to do with personality, mental skills, or kindness, but instead witht physical appearance. Women grow with the obsession of being ugly and the despaired desire to be beautiful. Thick layers of makeup and extreme diets are the results of the low self-esteem that women have. They practically hate their bodies and have low self-image. Even though this myth has been around for so many years, Wolf presents a possible solution. According to her, a point to start will be the reinterpretation of "beauty." It is essential to clarify that beauty doesn't refer only to physical appearance but to women as human beings. Another clue point is to change women attitudes toward this myth. It is the way in which women respond to the media's bombarding what will make a difference.

Naomi Wolf has written a passionate, involved book, that analyses the 'Beauty Myth' from a perspective that is first a woman's, and second a sociologist. While parts of this book are a bit extreme and political, on the whole it provides a new framework for thought, and many fascinating angles to consider in any discussion of beauty, culture or women's media.
It is ironic that some of the criticism this book has received in these reviews ('Let her be ugly, or even average before she writes a book' , 'the way she throws her beautiful hair around') only goes to prove much of what Ms Wolf says - that her views as an author and a human being must be so inseperable from her looks, and that there is some quality of 'ugliness' that is absolute and which women should constantly strive to get out of.
Feeling attractive is certainly every woman's right, but it is a feeling, not an absolute state. Anyone who has travelled out of America, and experienced diverse cultures, will testify to this.

I actually wrote this comment as a reaction to one of the posts (under the comments section) but then realized that I meant it as a general comment on the book and people's reactions to it. I was fortunate in that I read this book in an academic setting. It was assigned along with many other supportive books, which together shore up any weakness in each respective argument.

But since that is not possible for everyone, I think that if you read this book along with Susan Faludi's "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women," you might find yourself surprised about the subject of a conscious conspiracy to keep women down. Susan Faludi, as opposed to some of the complaints against Naomi Wolf, actually uses real interviews and facts to back up her arguments about the state of the public sector.

I completely agree with many reviewers that say it is important to read the book and make up your own mind, but you might get a better understanding of the situation, and what Naomi Wolf is trying to say, if you also read Susan Faludi's book. I was shocked and amazed by what I read, and without substantial facts to back up her arguments I'm not sure I would have put as much stock in them.

A very well researched book and quite "thick", in that as a woman reading it, there were so many things to digest that would not go down easily. The prison in which women live now is inside their bodies, and though the patriarchal society built the walls, we women continue to maintain it. This well researched book comes to show us the multiple levels of which our prison is built, and by that offers us freedom.

Read this book for your own sake and that of your daughters. Sleeping beauties, it's time to wake up!

This book exposes the truths about American
society that are so deeply ingrained in the whole
system that their anti-woman nature is not immediately apparent
to the person raised in this country.
Even for me, who grew up in a totally different
society (that for the most part treated women no different than men, at least on the level of professional development and opportunity), this
book was an eye opener. It gave
me a powerful and sad realization that as a woman in America, I have to live with those truths every day.
I think that everyone will benefit from reading this book.
I bought my own copy after I read the one I borrowed
from the library, and I plan to forcibly lend
it to all people dear to me :).

Interesting to me that the male reviewers seemed to uniformly hate this book! Settle down, guys--we're not all going to stop shaving and exercising, and if you don't have Paris Hilton panting over you, believe me, it's NOT because of anything Naomi Wolf said!

Whatever I may think of the author and her philosophy, as a rule I like a book that makes me see things in ways I hadn't before. This was one of those books. I don't agree with everything the author writes, but after borrowing it from the library, I had to buy it for myself so I could write in the margins about all the "a-ha!" moments it prompted. Sadly for those who like black and white, beauty, like most things, is on a continuum. People cite Etcoff's "Survival of the Prettiest" in opposition to this book, but if the premises of "Prettiest" were completely true, then after thousands upon thousands of years of evolution, why aren't we all collectively lovely? Why aren't the women who have the most offspring (ie, the fittest) also the Cindy Crawford clones? One of my former evolution professors, David Wilson, just published a study showing that people who shared common goals and interests rated each other as more attractive than they rated strangers.

I'm short, overweight, and past my prime in years, but I'm evolutionarily fitter than average (3 children), and have a strong husband who is a good provider (the biologically desired currency for males), and he even loves me!--from where I stand, it looks like most women can safely drop a lot of their beauty obsession, and I think Wolf says a lot that would encourage us to.

This book is not a condemnation of beauty--Wolf herself is an exceptionally beautiful woman--but is rather a critique of 'beauty' as a saleable product. While some of the statistics are exagerrated, the basic concepts of the book are grounded in reality. The chaper that compares the marketing strategies of cosmetics companies to cult indoctrination is brilliant, and will be especially useful to older women. Though Wolf's fervor is sometimes embarassing, the book aids the reader in learning a "new way to see" that is pro-beauty and pro-woman.

The author would have made many valid points using actual data for the times when she penned this book. Turns out she over exaggerated many statistics through out which only invalidates what she was attempting to bring to the table for discussion.

Look for facts based on statistics and make your own decision from there.

much needed book... still.
Body image, starvation, handicap...
the only thing that bothered me was the absence of explanation about the ROOT. According to Wolf, both genders are being manipulated by the idea of lethal looks... but who? why?
She, however, describes the "how" extremely well.

1. Women Define Other Women's Beauty

Women create, monitor, and enforce the rules on beauty. Watch a 5-5 140 lb women with a short dress or a revealing bikini; the men will look, perhaps ogle, it will be the women who say the outfit is inappropriate, and in poor taste.
Take a look at a Playboy and compare it with a fashion magazine and you will notice that the women in men's magazine tend to be more curvy. The 5-11 115 pound women/girl is a woman's icon.

2. Criticism

The author gives short shrift to the cruelty with which girls and women approach others who do not meet societal expectations. Cheerleaders, sororities, and other group's condition membership on clothes and physical appearance. Women's magazine's discuss how other women need to remake their appearance to meet other women's expectations. Is it husband's who suggest women spend more money on shoes in a bad economy. Indeed straight men are nowhere near as knowledgeable about clothes and appearance as women and could not create and enforce standards even if they wanted to. If someone has a complaint about these standards, they should direct it to the women who enforce them.

I picked up this book by accident and literally every other page am surprised by how many things are relevant in my own life. A fascinating look at our culture, and the many unquestioned "truths" used to place a higher value on female beauty than male beauty. I would be interested in the authors take on the metrosexual movement that has emerged in the 10 years since she has written the book, and how that would fit into her arguments. But this is a book I will be buying for my my Mother, sister, and close girlfriends. An important book for men to read as well.

From the affluent, white female perspective, but still very relevant. Wolf explains how women adopt a third shift to take care of their beauty. It keeps our minds occupied and our pocketbooks empty so we don't start a revolution. I consider it a must read for feminists and pro-feminists.

Wolf offers a few intriguing, perhaps even useful, insights in her book, The Beauty Myth, but you'll have to put up with so much shoddy overall writing (including, but not limited to, lack of logical structure, as well as a seemingly endless torrent of conjecture), that you're just about guaranteed to walk away with a pounding headache.

Wolf seems to assume expert-level knowledge about various religions and their respective, complex traditions, market economies, and even gender studies, among others, molding her understanding of each to fit her preconceived notions and support her case. But as I said already, (and I'm not discrediting every idea she proposes), so much of each case she tries to build is based upon conjecture and unscientific theory that it is difficult to buy very much of what she's selling. (I thought higher ed was supposed to help make a more thoughtful, clear and critically-thinking individual ... I'm a little disappointed that this work came out of a Yale graduate.) Apparently Wolf also thought that using lots of big words and complex sentence structures is to be equated with good, clear, effective communication. In fact, it ends up being a bit of an insult to any reasonably educated, curious reader. (You don't want to have to ask if she's living in an isolated ivory tower, but it's the feeling that you get.)

The Beauty Myth is much less a thoughtful inquiry attempting to shed light onto a topic that any one of us could stand to benefit from than it is a biased, myopic, defeatist commentary (despite what may have been better intentions). I don't think I can say much more here than what other thoughtful critics have already offered, except, keep looking... :/

*Update:
I've continued to mull over some of the things Wolf proposed in this book and, while I continue to hold to my criticisms, I will concede that if you are willing to put up with those problems, some of her general ideas are worth considering. Objectification of women is still a problem today. I still believe her take-home message is much too defeatist and in that sense, poorly serves her reader, but I think that equality in the contex of choice is worth fighting for.

This book should be required reading for all freshmen girls. Even if you don't agree with its central premise or find its style infuriating this is something you should be talking and thinking about, especially as our culture increasingly sexualises young girls at earlier and earlier ages.

Wolf offers a few intriguing, perhaps even useful, insights in her book, The Beauty Myth, but you'll have to put up with so much shoddy overall writing (including, but not limited to, lack of logical structure, as well as a seemingly endless torrent of conjecture), that you're just about guaranteed to walk away with a pounding headache.

Wolf seems to assume expert-level knowledge about various religions and their respective, complex traditions, market economies, and even gender studies, among others, molding her understanding of each to fit her preconceived notions and support her case. But as I said already, (and I'm not discrediting every idea she proposes), so much of each case she tries to build is based upon conjecture and unscientific theory that it is difficult to buy very much of what she's selling. (I thought higher ed was supposed to help make a more thoughtful, clear and critically-thinking individual ... I'm a little disappointed that this work came out of a Yale graduate.) Apparently Wolf also thought that using lots of big words and complex sentence structures is to be equated with good, clear, effective communication. In fact, it ends up being a bit of an insult to any reasonably educated, curious reader. (You don't want to have to ask if she's living in an isolated ivory tower, but it's the feeling that you get.)

The Beauty Myth is much less a thoughtful inquiry attempting to shed light onto a topic that any one of us could stand to benefit from than it is a biased, myopic, defeatist commentary (despite what may have been better intentions). I don't think I can say much more here than what other thoughtful critics have already offered, except, keep looking... :/

*Update:
I've continued to mull over some of the things Wolf proposed in this book and, while I continue to hold to my criticisms, I will concede that if you are willing to put up with those problems, some of her general ideas are worth considering. Objectification of women is still a problem today. I still believe her take-home message is much too defeatist and in that sense, poorly serves her reader, but I think that equality in the contex of choice is worth fighting for.

This book should be required reading for all freshmen girls. Even if you don't agree with its central premise or find its style infuriating this is something you should be talking and thinking about, especially as our culture increasingly sexualises young girls at earlier and earlier ages.

As an author who also has television experience, Naomi Wolf knows the difference that beauty can make in addition to competence. Here reflections are informed and powerful. As a woman who typifies the ideal of beauty in American culture, Wolf has an interesting perspective.

This book claims that girls and women are sold images of beauty that in the worst case cause 10's of thousands of deaths due to things like anorexia. Firstly, this is not true. The actual number is closer to one hundred. Secondly, the basic idea makes little sense since it blames others for the beauty myths women buy. Each of us are every day subject to salesman who would sell us everything conceivable until our last penny and then some was exhausted.But this doesn't happen.Even if it did it would say more about women than it would say about salesman. And, if women buy stuff Ms. Wolf doesn't like because they want to be as pretty as Ms. Wolf(she is georgous) why should she object anyway? Let her be ugly, or average, or at least hide her beauty, before she writes such a book! In fact women try to be beautiful to attract men. It is what biology intended. Men become doctors lift weights and do all sorts of silly and practical things to attract women too;again as biology intended. Since we can't overcome biology anymore than we can overcome,say, hunger why not seek harmony rather than conflict. Many books take a broader and more intelliectual look at beauty than Ms. Wolf's purely political tract. Try "The Descent of Woman" by Morgan or "The 91% Factor:Why Women Initiate 91% Of Divorce" for a non-partisan look at why biology really created beauty.

I bought this book to further explore the idea of the "beauty myth". Though the book is informative, it is very one sided. I even agree with most of the stuff, but i feel it needs to be backed up with information and facts that may dispute the authors point of view. It would of been more interesting if not so one-sided. The way the information is presented, and all the research that had been done, it doesn't appear to be a myth at all. So i read another book that contains both sides of the story, and the fact of the matter is women very much participate in the ideals of our own beauty, if not presently working in the business finding it as a "creative" outlet. The book is very informative, if you are to read it for a book report, but not very captivating.

"Women are psychologically coerced to believe that, in order to be attractive and successful, they has to be thin, ideally just as thin as the women portrayed in the media. Feminists argue that by following their desire to adopt the thin ideal, they waste their time, mental resources and money on extreme dieting and other procedures (e.g. Bordo, 1993). It is important to convey the message that healthy can be just as attractive as thin is and this can be achieved without side-effects."

"The main problems that have been associated with the overweight condition are, arguably5, the development of physical (e.g. type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension6) and mental illnesses (e.g. dementia7; depression8; social anxiety) and early mortality. For example, binge eating disorder has been reported by nearly twice as many obese individuals, compared to normal weight individuals (i.e. 2.9% versus 1.5%).9 The National Audit Office report (2001) showed that 6% of all deaths were attributed to obesity with an average of 9 years off life expectancy.10

However, the direction of the causality may not be the one described above. Some propose that "... much evidence suggests that insulin resistance is a product of an underlying metabolic disturbance that predisposes the individual to increased fat storage due to compensatory insulin secretion.11-16 In other words, obesity may be an early symptom of diabetes as opposed to its primary underlying cause".5 On a similar note, "to what extent hypertension is caused by adiposity, [...], is unclear".5 BMI is more strongly associated with blood pressure than percent body fat.17 This indicates that the association between BMI and blood pressure may result from higher fat free mass as opposed to fat mass. In addition, compared to subcutaneous fat, visceral fat (i.e. fat located inside the abdominal cavity, found between organs like the stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, etc.) is more strongly associated with greater metabolic disturbance18 and risk factors for cardiovascular disease19. "[...] a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004 found that liposuction removal of subcutaneous fat (up to 23 pounds of it) in 15 obese women had no effect after three months on their measures of blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, or response to insulin. Weight loss through diet and exercise, on the other hand, triggers many changes that have positive health effects. A larger waist measurement also predicts the development of high blood pressure, regardless of total body fat, according to a 10-year study of Chinese adults published in the August 2006 American Journal of Hypertension" 20. Though it is likely that more overweight and obese people have high levels of visceral fat, not all people that present high amounts of visceral fat are overweight or obese, according to BMI measurements.20

In addition, `consider, for example, the findings of a study which examined the "healthy obese" and the "unhealthy normal weight" populations.21 The study identified six different risk factors for cardiometabolic health and included subjects in the "unhealthy" group if they had two or more risk factors, making it a more stringent threshold of health than that used in categorizing metabolic syndrome or diabetes. The study found a substantial proportion of the overweight and obese population, at every age, who were healthy and a substantial proportion of the "normal weight" group who were unhealthy'5. According to psychologist Deb Burgard (2010), around 31% of the population is wrongly considered ill or healthy when BMI is used as a replacement-measure for health. This leads to high levels of unaddressed illness in normal weight people and higher-than-needed costs for the over-treatment of overweight people.22

There is also considerable debate on the reduction of mortality following weight loss.23, 24"

References

5. Bacon, L. & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight Science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10:9.

6. van Dijk, E., Kampen, J.K., Hiddink , G.J., Renes, R.J., van Binsbergen, J.J. & van Woerkum, C.M.J. (2012). A longitudinal study of changes in noticing and treating patients' overweight by Dutch GPs between 1997 and 2007. Family Practice, 29(S1), i61-i67.

7. Hassing, L.B., Dahl, A.K., Thorvaldsson, V., Berg, S., et al. (2009). Overweight in midlife and risk of dementia: a 40-year follow-up study. International Journal of Obesity, 33(8), 893-898.

8. Heo, M., Pietrobelli, A., Fontaine, K. R., Sirey, J. A. & Faith, M. S. (2005). Depressive mood and obesity in U.S. adults: Comparison and moderation by sex, age, and race. International Journal of Obesity, 30, 513-519.

9. Lo Presti, R., Lai, J., Hildebrandt, T. & Loeb, K.L. (2010). Psychological treatments for obesity in youth and adults. Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, 77(5), 472-487.

10. The National Audit Office. (2001). Tackling Obesity in England. Available online at: [...]

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Let me explain my circumstances while reading Beauty Myth. The book was used and someone made comments throughout the book in the margins. The comments enlivened the book a bit. The previous reader essentially called Wilde a whiner and a liar as the author presented her view of women as resentful, man-made beauty queens.

After thinking about Beauty Myth over a series of months, I find this book does overly victimize women. Women are not stupid. We buy the magazines, watch the news, watch commercials and watch the shows that continue to idolize the thin female. Women have money and money dictates what is acceptable.

No one is forcing women to look skinny. We're kidding ourselves. If we really wanted to start a revolution and dispel the Beauty Myth we'd stop watching soap operas, stop watching shows were the starlet is 10 pounds underweight, we'd stop buying magazines that tell us how to loose twenty pounds in 2 weeks and we'd stop making dewy eyes over merchandise that is sold by supermodels. Are we doing this? No.

We are telling the advertisers that want and need to make money that they don't need to change what they are doing, because we (educated women with money) are still buying.

This whole thing is not about Beauty anyway. It's truly about feeling loved. This is an ancient and eternal issue. It will not find resolve in books, but in the lone heart of a woman as she does battle and makes due with her self-esteem.

well, there are a few points about this book that is confusing and ridiculous.
First, she argues that those magazines control the BRAINS of 3 billion women and make themselves believe that "slenderness" is beauty. However, just think about this, women have brains, what is beautiful is beautiful, they don't need a magazine to tell them what is beautiful, they know what is beautiful themselves. I guess no one would say a fat women is sexy and pretty.
Also, she argues that cosmetic surgery is harmful to women and that medical surgeries are supposed to be operated on people who NEED medical treatment.
Well, cosmetic surgery can help women establish their confidence and faith in themselves, which she never mentioned.
Overall, she exaggerated a lot of the PROblems in society which aren't really a big deal, the concept is somehow repetitive and arbitrary and the figures are questionable. however, there are certain big ideas that still stick, unless you are very intereated in feminine studies, I would suggest you to save your money for another book.

Ms. Wolf decries the 'beauty myth' while using the very standards she claims to abhor to sell her book. Her image on the book jacket and in television interviews display the same perfectly-coiffed, makeup-enhanced images that she claims are keeping women subjugated.

I can't help thinking about those poor trees slaughtered for printing this book!!!
This is the silliest and faultiest book I've read in years. It's an insult to the intelligence of readers and an insult to women. The pseudo-scientific tone with lots of statistics is just a disguise for a weak and biased thesis. Logical fallacies abound and the notes are a mess.
Here's my interpretation of Wolf's ideas: Beauty is a very recent thing invented by men, women's magazines, the cosmetics industry and the plastic surgeons. It's an invention aimed at keeping women busy and unhappy. Since women are much more productive than men are, men would succeed in keeping women out of the power structure by keeping them busy in trying to look pretty. By keeping women unhappy for not being as pretty as the models in the magazines the cosmetic and plastic surgery industry would make billions of dollars by taking ever increasing shares of women's paychecks. Wolf ends the book with a sort of manifesto in which she invites all women to slow down with the grooming in order to free themselves from the tyranny of men, cosmetics and plastic surgeons. Ugly women of the world unite - she could have written.
Now the problems with the theory:
* Beauty is not a new invention
It's not even a human invention. For more details on this check Desmond Morris' books such as The Naked Ape or Intimate Behavior or check the excellent Nancy Etcoff's Survival of the Prettiest.
* Women have brains
Men, women's magazines, plastic surgeons and the cosmetic industry cannot control the minds of over three billion women. If that sort of control were possible the ice-cream industry would use it as well and promote fat as beautiful therefore increasing tenfold its sales.
* The idea that women can unite against the "Beauty Myth" is tremendously naive. The reason why women use beauty as a strategy is because it works. If a significant part of the female population were to listen to Wolf's ideas and stop grooming themselves the rewards for the few women who would ignore the manifesto would be very high. With the increase in the number of women following Wolf the reward for not following her would grow exponentially since there would be less competition for men or whatever other reward there is for looking pretty. It would be an unstable system and very soon it would fall apart.
The book is very weird. At a certain point, just out of the blue, the author states that she is still a virgin. Her virginity is not my business, actually nobody's business other than her own so why declare it? It sounds like Britney Spears. Now for me, reading on a book written by a Doctoral candidate a statement that she is still a virgin sends alarm bells going off everywhere.
On another weird chapter the author gets very personal and describes again out of the blue how she became anorexic by the age 13 and all the suffering that followed. I take that as an insurance policy - you might not like my book but if I tell you how much I have suffered you might at least like me.
Take my advice, save your money, save your time, and, for God's sake, save those innocent trees. Look around and get yourself a better book.

Diet, exercise, make-up, orthodontia, Rogaine, plastic surgery, well-chosen clothes...Do whatever it takes to be beautiful! It's an eternal value, not something invented by Madison Avenue. As you grow old, just pray your erudition, compassion, and material success compensate for your accumulating wrinkles.
"Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God." --Jean Anouilh
A recovered anorexic and grad school virgin, Naomi Wolf is stuck in a 1960s and 70s victim-mongering feminism. Even Wolf soulmate and "Backlash" author Susan Faludi started to see that female beauty confers intimidating status and sympathize with the powerlessness of men in her latest book "Stiffed" (1999).
"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want--an adorable pancreas?" --Jean Kerr
When Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer, and Betty Friedan wrote about women's belittling mistreatment 30 or 40 years ago, it was called for. MUCH has happened since then. Naomi Wolf missed the train. Women are now 60% of North American college students and climbing. They're at the center of families and enjoy custody privileges when a family breaks up. They live seven years longer than men and have much lower rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, learning disabilities, mental retardation, and disorders such as autism and hemophilia. If a woman is beautiful besides, this is icing on the cake.
"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: You can smell it and that is all." --Somerset Maugham
Naomi Wolfe should go have chi tea and hommus with Andrea Dworkin (followed by a game or two of Scrabble?). They can picnic in the shadow of the Ugly Tree from which one of them fell (Ms. Dworkin) and commiserate about how vicious men are. They can then go off and be "roommates" together in a grass hut, away from all that men have done to culture--like the telephone, the computer, the airplane, and electric light.
"Everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence." --Friedrich Nietzsche
[...]P>"Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature." --Camille Paglia

I understand if this book was groundbreaking and controversial when it was first published in 1990, and I respect it for bringing these issues to a forefront and empowering women during a particularly tough time, but the book does not age well.

In general, Wolf's arguments and justifications are extremely flawed, and her deductions are illogical. From a modern feminist perspective, she makes statements and generalizations about men and women (even as she tries to debunk other generalizations and myths) that aren't exactly progressive or feminist.

This book does not hold up to the test of time, and even then it has serious flaws.

is good. She's privilegded by the same beauty standards she decry so much in her debut book. Beauty standards are fluid, never rigid, as she thinks they are. Her book fails to acknowledge that fact. Women, not men, control the beauty industry. Estee Lauder comes to mind. Women are individuals who choose their own images. Also, this book ignores women of Color, whose beauty standards are different from her own.

I say read this book with caution.

You know recently I went through a sort of extreme trauma where I was assaulted and had some people say very negative things about my body at vulnerable moments in my life. Before this event, this feminist issue did not ring for me and I didn't relate to women who talked about it a lot. I'm more aware about how body image is a very important issue these days. They even made an issue about Abraham Lincoln's looks while he was running and in office, I'm told. A lot of great men and women weren't particularly lookers, which seems to me an indication that focusing more on other things might help you out in life. Strange how important it is to people that even great men get critiqued about such a un-revalent issue in terms of character and ability.

For a while there, and even now sometimes I have developed an unbelievable paranoia about my body where there was none before and what once seemed like a non-issue to me has really been on my radar. I think both women and men are guilty of inflicting this suffering on people, but sometimes women are used more to make women feel well - like crap. Anyway, beauty is not a myth, it effects people to varying degrees, how we express our beauty is very diverse. Growing up it was not a problem for me until people commented on it. I began to believe I was ugly where before I genuinely felt lovely. Maybe, because I like different forms and textures, art and music, it just seemed natural to me to see different self-expression as normal. I like rivers for veins and that weird mustache on Frida Kahlo (I don't support her politics necessarily for those gathering information who think everything is a code and it means I'm her political slave.) I wasn't aware that the mainstream is very, very glossy type beauty oriented. I've seen some major changes lately in terms of different body types on TV which seems positive step forward.

Although I liked my own body I was aware others might not, so sexuality became difficult for me. After the people in my life said a few cruel things, I began to feel pretty ugly strangely. I gained some weight, suddenly developed a self-consciousness about everything - partly due to other traumas. It's unbelievable how this effects people, I understand why anorexia and bulimia and all that now, because something about being different physically attracts all sorts of comments, "helpers," and aggressors. If it wasn't an issue it will be whether you like it or not because people will just go nuts about it. All of sudden everywhere you go people will conveniently mention it and help you lose weight, or change your style etc... Ironically, unless it's a health issue, it might be better to just celebrate the person't own body as it is, instead of basically saying we will help your ugly self change. To me a tree with flowers is beautiful because of the rough, ugly, bark and soft flowers. Sometimes I like cellulite and nobbly things and beautiful soft faces and hair. That's how I felt before and I want it back. The big earth mother is beautiful to me. As is the muscular the store type, or the soft delicate flower type, or the balanced regulated body. The only look I don't like is that that leads to un-health. Sorting out body image has also been about function to me, though. Can I move and do physical things I like, can I start physical hobbies like riding or hiking or dancing? Will it effect my health? Do I feel love-able and can I love others with different body images? Part of it was me - glossy eyed over images of manufactured perfection, it was a little disconcerting to meet up with a couple people I knew personally to have a visceral angry reaction to my weight. Looking it over now, I wish I could choose more my body image for political reasons. Sometimes I think that the reason that women who are women's rights advocates have these convenient experiences and are encouraged to champion the downtrodden "ugly" woman is because some people think it's funny to create ugly feminists. I do side with the body image people in terms of I genuinely agree about body image, but in terms of the tricks and players it might be best to develop the best image you can. Having said that, there is no greater feeling that shclopping around when you're depressed and not giving a crap about your looks, it's a thing men can do sometimes and it feels great to let the details go sometimes. Being aware how it fits into your life is important though, you don't look right, the mainstream might not take you seriously if you want your voice out there in the glossy media age. It would be great if we could change that and be more comfortable so real people can deal. I'm inclined to think if it's good enough for Lincoln and Stanton it's good enough for me.

Also you might be aware that Christians use the word wolf to call women's rights advocates wolves - so some author writing a book with the last name wolf is a "wolf in sheep's clothing" ironically the christians calling names are predators and carnivores themselves and aren't really the gentle, pure, vegan types. Some of these authors are unaware that they are bio-engineered talking billboards for politics they wouldn't even agree with. She could be entirely sincere and still be used by the "right" (wrong, rather) to promote their own propaganda. They like to trick ya.' Animal codes and others are all used by male supremacist religions like Christianity and Judaism, such as in the Kaballah or some bible codes. Subversive codes are usually lying predatory types so be aware. The terrible, though perhaps just, thing is.... is that by the codes they are being taught the Christians themselves are the wolves. They have been tricked into practicing child sacrifice and torture, slavery of women, and carnivorous animal killing and abuse. They thought they were gentle pure sheep, but were submissive dogs and wolves - as their women are taught to be in their many tracts teaching women to be submissive. Like a dog - get it? Dog is god spelled backwards - they can be trained for anything. They are being "Left Behind" while progressives are "progressing." "God" works in mysterious ways I'm told, perhaps he thought they were too submissive and god doesn't like a b*tch that will kill it's children. It turns out that's all of us. Child torture and sacrifice, abortion, war, abuse, slavery and submission of women and our daughters sacrificed to men's greed and lust for power and dominion over them. The real wolf is everywhere.

Great. Now, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie will be coauthoring a book called "The Work Myth" describing what an utter waste of time our national preoccupation with resume' writing, pouring over want ads, professional preparation and vocational education, networking and the like are, while in other venues, mocking those who are not wearing the latest designer labels and owning the latest expensive toys.