The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.
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 maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.
Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.
Tags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.
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
Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.
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
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Naomi WolfTags: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging diets cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.
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
Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage.
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
Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together.
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
In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women in the name of beauty, you may do what you like. It is illegal to claim that something grows hair, or makes you taller, or restores virility, if it does not. It is difficult to imagine that the baldness remedy Minoxidil would be on the market if it had killed nine French and at least eleven American men. In contrast, the long-term effects of Retin-A are still unknown--Dr. Stuart Yusps of the National Cancer Institute refers to its prescription as "a human experiment"--and the Food and Drug Administration has not approved it yet dermatologists are prescribing it to women at a revenue of over $150 million a year.
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
Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom industry because it is influentially placed to create its own demand through the pairing of text with ads in women's magazines.
The industry takes out ads and gets coverage; women get cut open. They pay their money and they takes their chances. As surgeons grow richer, they are able to command larger and brighter ad spaces.
Tags: 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
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