Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced "beautiful" images? Though unconscious personal anxieties can be a powerful force in the creation of a vital lie, economic necessity practically guarantees it. An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An idealogy that makes women feel "worth less" was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not require a conspiracy; merely an atmosphere. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see.
Naomi WolfTags: self-esteem beauty society advertising magazines marketing eating-disorders images
As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.
Naomi WolfTags: self-esteem beauty advertising media marketing images scoiety
The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while "beauty" is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, "beauty" is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is an accident of nature, a fickle consensus of mass perception, a peculiar coincidence--but it is not a moral act. From the "beauties" in male culture, women learn a bitter amoral lesson--that the moral lessons of their culture exclude them.
Naomi WolfTags: self-esteem beauty advertising images
If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.
Héloïse d'ArgenteuilTags: friendship friends letters pleasure memories portraits regret longing company missing consolation absence pictures images
Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
A consequence of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified, which is the basis of female identification. If a woman loves her own body, she doesn't grudge what other women do with theirs; if she loves femaleness, she champions its rights. It's true what they say about women: Women are insatiable. We are greedy. Our appetites do need to be controlled if things are to stay in place. If the world were ours too, if we believed we could get away with it, we would ask for more love, more sex, more money, more commitment to children, more food, more care. These sexual, emotional, and physical demands would begin to extend to social demands: payment for care of the elderly, parental leave, childcare, etc. The force of female desire would be so great that society would truly have to reckon with what women want, in bed and in the world.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography self-love eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman--known, marked, lined, familiar—-who hands him the paper every morning.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography images plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
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