The Beauty Myth

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The Beauty Myth, published in 1991, is a book by Naomi Wolf. It examines beauty as a demand and as a judgement upon women. Subtitled How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, Wolf examines how modern conceptions of women's beauty impact the spheres of employment, culture, religion, sexuality, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgery.

Wolf argues that women in Western culture are damaged by the pressure to conform to an idealized concept of female beauty—the Iron Maiden throughout modern society, from Victorian Times to today. She argues that the beauty myth is political, a way of maintaining the patriarchal system. It allows women to enter the labour force, but under controlled conditions. She also claims that this system keeps women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. The beauty myth is sometimes viewed as succeeding The Feminine Mystique, which relegated women to the position of housewife, as the social guard over women. In this sense, Wolf claims that public interest in a woman's virginity has been replaced by public interest in the shape of her body.

It was republished in 2002 with a new introduction by Wolf.

Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the claim that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia.^[1] Sommers claimed that the actual number is closer to 100, a figure which others, such as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, claimed to be much too low. In the same interview, Sommers stated that Wolf had retracted the figure.