Buy Now, Pay Later
As low as
$5
/ mo
Learn more
- – 4-month term
- – No impact on credit to apply
- – Instant approval decision
- – Secure and straightforward checkout
Ready to go? Add this product to your cart and select a plan during checkout.
Payment plans are offered through our trusted finance partners Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Zip, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. No-credit-needed leasing options through Acima may also be available at checkout.
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Free shipping on this product
30-day returns
Learn more
This item is eligible for return within 30 days of receipt
To qualify for a full refund, items must be returned in their original, unused condition. If an item is returned in a used, damaged, or materially different state, you may be granted a partial refund.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
Availability:
20 left in stock
Arrives
Oct 24 – Oct 26
Recently Viewed
Description
The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty." Read more
Listening Length : 13 hours and 23 minutes
Author : Naomi Wolf
Narrator : Suzy Jackson
Publication date : March 20, 2013
Language : English
Publisher : Audible Studios
Version : Unabridged
Program Type : Audiobook
Best Sellers Rank: #32,215 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #5 in Beauty, Grooming & Style #36 in General Gender Studies #53 in Feminist Theory (Books)
Frequently asked questions
If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is:
Oct 24 – Oct 26
Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
- Klarna Financing
- Affirm Pay in 4
- Affirm Financing
- Afterpay Financing
- Zip Pay in 4
- Financing through Apple Pay
- Financing through Google Pay
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Similar Products
Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Kindle
With the statistics in this book coming from before the 90's, one would hope this excellent exposure of the beauty industry's insidious political and social role in maintaining the misogynist status quo would be merely historical. Sadly, this is not the case. Wolf's systematic, brilliant, and addictivly readable analysis is an amazing antidote to the low female self-esteem artificially created by this industry, the propaganda of which is, today, also increasingly aimed at men. Tracing long ago and recent history, this book covers why the beauty myth is misogynistic, how it serves those in power, how it contributes to financial injustice for women, and what those top-down controllers of the world's wealth would have to give up if women stopped being distracted by beauty's no-win games and started organizing. I learned that skin creams don't work, aging in women doesn't have to be ugly, and dieting is just another political technique to take the steam out of the women's movement. After all, the starving are notoriously easy to control! This book opened my eyes and made me see myself, other women, and society differently. This book is for anyone of any gender who wants to truly love what they look like and who they are. It gives readers a powerful scope to see through the beauty myth propaganda machine to who we really are, which is more magnificent than we can imagine.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2016 by kpoling
Format: Paperback
This book transformed my perspective on "my beauty." Since then, I'm feeling free and loving myself. These days I'm just wearing mascara; I stopped foundation, concealer, etc. I'm going on a no-makeup/clothes/beauty cream buy for at least a year. I stopped torturing myself with very high heels and tight skirts. I stopped giving a damn about the male gaze. Funnily, men's attention/harassment has increased, which shows that self-confidence, self-love, and indifference to other's opinions on your physique, are the only "beauty" regimen a human needs. Thank you Naomi, you've changed my life.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2020 by Géraldine
Format: Paperback
Naomi Wolf uses this book to slap all of society in the face. This smart and angry book testifies that women are confined by the single idea of “beauty” on the grounds of work, culture, religion, sex, hunger and violence. Wolf promises to enlighten readers with feminist ideas and enlighten readers about how enslaving the ideal “beauty” image truly is for women. The Beauty Myth expands on the statement that “beauty” is a way to keep women as inferiors. Women fought for their rights and earned them, so society had to find a new way to suppress them. This book portrays a unique inequality beyond one of monetary value that women face between them and men; women are bound by impossible standards of appearance alongside working day in and day out to achieve status, while men simply must work hard to be successful. "What women look like is considered important because what we say is not,” Wolf tells us, illustrating this profound point in a such a simple way, showing readers that the facts would all be this simple if they were not purposefully hidden from us. This book serves to expose the unfairness of the images of beauty. This seems so simple, but Wolf manages to separate her arguments into six main chapters, each filled with anecdotes and authorization through supported research. Reading through her novel as a woman, I felt that she was speaking to me personally. With each statistic, any woman reading this is faced with a simple fact that she is part of these numbers. While the book may emotionally appeal to women, I feel it would also be a great read for men. Men are often oblivious to the fact that the images of women around them are designed to put normal women’s appearances to shame, and could use this book to learn to not fall prey to ignoring a woman’s intelligence because of the way she looks. The only weakness I see in Wolf’s writing is her absence of a counter-argument. There are parts of the novel where skeptical readers may be left with their doubts since she never addresses the opposing side of the argument. The Beauty Myth promises to leave both male and female readers haunted by Naomi Wolf’s passionate fury towards the feminism movement.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2016 by Ginger
Format: Paperback
I know that Naomi seems to now be an anti-vaxxer (which is not so great), but this book is probably one of the best I have ever read. It is enraging and insightful, and opens our eyes to the reality of society's manipulation of women.
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2022 by A
Format: Paperback
I had high expectations from this book, and I must say that while in general it was by no means disappointing, it wasn't quite what I had hoped it would be. I found the first 3-4 chapters to be really interesting and engaging, but the rest of the book struck me as a rehash of the ideas and facts already presented in the first part. More than that, I thought that the author had an unlucky tendency to forget that she is unraveling a discussion in a text, and switch to a writing style that would be more appropriate for a public speaking event. In the same vein, it is sometimes difficult to follow Ms. Wolf's reasoning and conclusions, possibly because she is not lucid enough in her argumentation, or because solid argumentation was, in fact, lacking. Another issue that I had with this book is that there doesn't seem to be enough evidence for many of the claims that Ms. Wolf makes. Yet she doesn't state directly, either, if she is merely presenting her own point of view or interpretation of certain aspects of culture and society that she observes, making it sound as if she is citing objective facts. Finally, one more feature of "the Beauty Myth" that stood out as being out of place was that while she explicitly says that her book is not against men and she doesn't necessarily aim to juxtapose male and female in a battle, throughout her book she portrays women as being oppressed by men. At the same time, it follows from her examples that perhaps both men and women in our society are oppressed by the media, the money-moving and eating corporations that are responsible for creating fixed gender roles and standards for both men and women to attain. Towards the end of the book, the author seems to fall deeper and deeper into the trap of "women-are-goddesses" feminist thought which I personally found to be a bit of a let down from what otherwise could have been a serious and level-headed work. That being said, it is definitely a book worth reading if you are interested in understanding better where our ideas of what our bodies, relationships, and lives should be like come from; and if you are looking to break out of the box and roles imposed on you by the society. The chapter "Religion", in my opinion, was particularly captivating: Naomi Wolf draws a convincing and fresh analogy between the beauty cult and religious following, which is an idea that I hadn't encountered before, but one that made a lot of sense.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2015 by The fat cat
Format: Kindle
This book changed my perspective on myself, other women, and the media. It is a wonderfully entertaining book while also explaining phenomena that I think most women think are their own personal neuroses, rather than the common and natural result of a misogynistic beauty culture. I would recommend this book to any woman, and also to any man because it could help him understand women's struggles as well as shed light on what I perceive to be the (so far less intense) spread of the beauty myth into male culture since this book was published.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2018 by Kindle Customer
Format: Kindle
I can't really say enough about the complete and utter brilliance of this book. I will read it again and again in the hope of soaking up enough of its deep insight and wisdom to help heal the beauty myth that has been operative inside of me, implanted there by this commercial culture we live in. This book changed my life, and I don't say that lightly. I am a stronger, more compassionate, more robust woman because of it. I'm all fired up, for sure! Thank you, Naomi Wolf!
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2014 by Alison Keehn
Format: Paperback
You taped it up and charged me for a new book, Amazon. You're not fooling anyone. The back cover is torn off 1/5 of the way. I don't know if I care enough to return it. I have only read a little bit of it. But it's an excellent book. So 5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2020 by Rachel Naylon