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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2016 by Ginger
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2018 by Kindle Customer
Format: Paperback
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The cumulative scattered flakes of various women’s lives congealed into the impetus to finally read this book, one of the classics of feminist literature: A truly beautiful woman who truly thought she was ugly (and was not just fishing for compliments); an accomplished professional woman with an imperceptible lump on her nose who had to go through the horrors (as Wolf so well describes) of a “nose-job”; women who have to get breast implants that destroy the beauty and feel of a breast. And then there was all this generalized dissatisfaction with who they were – physically – far more so, than mentally. Another “flake” that underscored what I felt was wrong about this book came from one conversation with an NGO “activist,” in Hanoi of all places, who was on a campaign to have landmines banned. Again, I was a “receptive audience.” Landmines were a scourge of some countries, notably Angola, Cambodia, and to a lesser extent, Vietnam, in which landmines were just one subset of the perils of unexploded ordinance, all of which were just one subset of the damage done to the country, which included the use of chemical weapons, such as Agent Orange. The NGO activist was trying to impress me with her many hard quantitative facts that fit so neatly into a spreadsheet… but as I pressed her on the methodology… the “how could you possibly know have many landmines were originally buried… how many remain… how many injuries were caused in time of war, and latter… I could tell she was largely just making it up. Good intentions, no doubt, and a shield of quantitative analysis, but isn’t that how McNamara operated? With Naomi Wolf, the dubious stats starts early, and I noted another reviewer was disconcerted by the blunt, conclusory statement made on page 22: “Women work hard – twice as hard as men.” The worst chapter that contained a staccato machine-gun fire of dubious factoids is the one entitled “Hunger.” Consider: “One fifth of women who exercise to shape their bodies have menstrual irregularities and diminished fertility” (p192). At Treblinka, 900 calories was scientifically determined to be the minimum necessary to sustain human functioning” (p195). Scientifically?? “For women to stay at the official extreme of the weight spectrum requires 95 percent of us to infantilize or rigidify to some degree our mental lives” (p199). “Nothing justifies comparison with the Holocaust; but when confronted with a vast number of emaciated bodies starved not by nature but by men, one must notice a certain resemblance” (p207). Men?? Other chapters contain similar dubious factoids, like the percentage of rapes, and the extraordinary high percentage of rapes that occur between individuals who know each other, including spouses. Or, in the chapter on “Work”: “In the United States, partners of employed women give them LESS help than do partners of housewives” (p23). ‘Tis a pity, all of the above. Because there is so much to like about this book, and Wolf’s critical thinking about why “things are the way they are.” For example, I felt that her chapter entitled “Religion,” in which she describes how “the Beauty Myth” came to replace and utilize many of the techniques of organized religion, particularly in regards to the control of women. Likewise, the chapter on “Work” was strong, and I thought her discussion on the legal arguments, and abuse of the legal system in the promotion of something called the “Professional Beauty Qualification” most beneficial. In essence, can you fire a “Playboy bunny” which she gets to old, fat, or ugly… and how that concept might spread to any job held by a female. The chapter on “Violence” mainly describes not rape, as one might assume, but the assault by the underbelly of the medical profession (and some other assorted hucksters) who essentially convince women that they are not “real women” without some surgery… and how some women actually become “surgery addicts.” Who are “the who”? Wolf never discusses who actually creates and enforces “the Beauty Myth.” Are they the proverbial five guys, in the backroom, with the cigars and brandy, who decide how they will control the rest of us? Or, is it something much deeper, about the human condition, relating to fundamental competition for a sexual or economic “prize”? This book was originally published in 1991, thus, it was, for all practically purposes, pre-internet. Wolfe includes a new introduction written in 2002, in which she discusses the progress… and the steps back… which occurred in the intervening decade. And now, a decade and a half later, another update would be most appropriate. In particular, yesterday I was treated to the very battered-face of Ronda Rousey, as the lead article on the CNN website. She was the Ultimate Fighting Conference loser, in 47 seconds, to her Brazilian opponent. ANY discussion about “pornography” should commence with that battered face, the “fans” who spend so much to see it, and a mainstream news source that would published that face – without criticism – while shielding its tender readers from the pictures of the dead and wounded from the many wars we fight. Wolf’s account carries numerous footnotes, but these are not directly tied to her quotes, a sampling of which were provided above. She references the works of several other leading feminists, for example, Betty Frieden, Susan Faludi, Catherine McKinnon and Andre Dworkin. The latter, and her influence, in particular, has concerned me. I gave Dworkin’s Intercourse a 3-star review. On the other hand, I was most impressed with Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women which I gave 5-stars to. As indicated, I was disappointed with this work, which, in addition to the above, contained serious redundancies and other editing problems. Overall, 3-stars.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2017 by John P. Jones III
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: 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!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2014 by Alison Keehn
Format: Kindle
It is rather unusual to associate the word "beauty" with negative ideas, as in this book. After all, isn't beauty in its various forms a sort of a blessing to lighten up the human burden in the face of an increasingly troubling world? Are there things more comforting and relaxing than the beauty of a sunset, or falling snow flakes, or the rainbow, or the reflection of the full moon on the surface of a lake...? But, the author here is more concerned about women's beauty and how it has been harmful to them in so many ways. An issue not totally unfamiliar to us, is the pressure imposed on pretty women, not only from business, but also from the media, men's interaction and the female community itself . Consider, for example, the case of Ms. Craft who sued her employer for firing her claiming that she stopped looking beautiful ! On the face of it, such a reason sounds outrageous! Yet, the judge ruled: Yes, in some business beauty is essential (e.g. sales of beauty products, stewardesses, singers, actresses... ), and, therefore, the employer has the right to hire and fire the appropriate employees as he sees fit. How much then is beauty worth? Interestingly, employers value beauty by the number of customers the attractive female brings in. The pressure on women, to be and to remain beautiful comes not only from business but also from various sources. Witness the influence of the media where advertisement for beauty products as well as fashionable clothes and shoes crowd the pages, urging women to look modern and attractive. This need not be a problem except for women's need to compete with others and also to stay up to date. Anecdotes about women with moderate means spending almost all their monthly salaries on beauty products are abundant, but also saddening. This weakness in the female population is well perceived by the producing companies and is exploited to the fullest. The problem does not stop at the purchasing of products. Magazines like Vogue, Playboy and lately videos of pornography (estimated sales $7 Bl.) have been influencing women's images about how their bodies should look ( tall, white and thin? ) and what products they need . The search for a beauty formula was difficult but the answer for weight control was found : food deprivation, anorexia and liposuction! Lately surgery became a popular option especially for face-lifts and breast implants - cruel and expensive surgical solutions, all to improve the looks of the female body. How could all this be justified and accepted by women? Is it true that they are more vulnerable than men? It is said that women feel lesser and more insecure than their male counterparts? This feeling, it seems, goes back even to creation. It is said that God created Adam first and then Eve (Genesis 2:21). Not only that, we are also told that man was created 'perfect', whereas woman was created from a piece of meat - one of Adam's ribs. Did this give woman the feeling of being 'secondary' in this life? But, what we witnessed about the role of women in the past century - from farming and factory work to prime ministers and queens, negates all these assumptions. Is it not true that women these days compete on practically all of men's professions? Why then these feelings of insecurity and a lesser status? Fuad R. Qubein Oct., 2016
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Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2016 by Fuad R Qubein