Olivia Li

AP Language and Composition

August 24, 2014
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1991. Print
The Beauty Myth Book Review
Naomi Wolfs The Beauty Myth explores the standards of beauty expected by women in
society to uphold and the role of these standards as a limit on the political and economic
successes able to be achieved by women. I love the way the book analyzes this ongoing
phenomenon in a unique way that really made me think about the underlying causes of the
pressure exerted on women to meet standards of beauty. However, the examples provided
throughout by the author are sometimes tedious and overwhelming.
The Beauty Myth that gives the book its name is explained in the first section : as
social, political, and economic barriers for women have been broken, so has the pressure for
women to conform to an image of beauty that the author calls an unconscious hallucination
(17). Women who are pursuing professional careers must also uphold to these standard of
beauty or be discriminated against. Girls and women subconsciously judge their self-worth by
their appearance and are told by society that beauty is character. Self-restriction has become a
norm in our culture; dieting has become somewhat akin to religious discipline. Religious guilt
also suppresses women from being sexually autonomous, and women are taught that being
sexually desirable to men is sexuality in itself. Wolf documents the rise in anorexia in past
decades and the measures women will take in attempt to attain the image of perfect beauty.
Next, the risks taken by those who undergo cosmetic surgery are examined, as well as the
increasingly obligatory nature of taking these measures to become beautiful.
One of Wolfs assertions is that The beauty myth is always actually prescribing
behavior and not appearance (14). So really, what we women are really experiencing when we
undergo the pressure to look a certain way is the restriction to acting a certain way -- in short,

the way todays male-dominated society wants us to behave. Yes, society would like us to think
that we strive for beauty because its a biological phenomenon, but its actually just another
political hinderance. Wolf wants to leave the reader of The Beauty Myth thinking differently
about themselves; she believes that perceiving that the beauty myth is just that- a myth- is the
key to unlocking another step towards liberation.
I liked the way the author presented the main ideas of The Beauty Myth in a way that I,
as a female, could directly relate to. Wolf is great at asserting the direct correlation between
womens freedoms and the expectations of womens beauty as a factor used by society to
control the limits of female power, and why we should care about this. Reading the arguments
presented by the author forced me to see the inherent dangers of the females mindset,
something that I had never before viewed as significant. However, Wolf does go a bit overboard
with examples and statistics, making some sections in particular a very tedious read. Some of
these examples span several pages, which leads to the reader not being able to keep track with
what was originally being discussed. I would have preferred the examples be shorter and more
concise; with more discussion linking them all together.
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, with its examination of what drives womans pursuit of
an unattainable ideal of beauty, was overall an excellent read despite being occasionally
wearisome when documenting evidence. Id recommend this book to everyone because of the
powerful and much-needed message it sends. It truly helps the reader break free from an
unhealthy opinion about the standards set for women and understand that believing in the
Beauty Myth strips women of their humanity and of beauty itself.