Summary Of The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf

In the “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf, she briefly outlines the “violent backlash” against feminism that uses a form of ideology of how women are supposed to be perceived socially. Wolf noted that these images are in place as a “political weapon against women’s advancement”, where women are having more shame, guilt and denial and is wondering if it isn’t “neurotic” but something important in women rights (1990, p.9). Many of these liberated women who gained legal and reproductive rights in the early 1970s are feeling inadequate due to trivial things such as physical appearance. These physical inadequacies are things such as weight, looking youthful, clothing and body hair. These women are trying to discover a relationship between liberation and beauty where years of liberation, are making the older generation of women feel as they are “burnt out” while the younger generation show little to no interest in political stands for feminism.

Wolf noted since the movement in the 1970s many women feel that “collective progress has stalled, compared to the early days, there is dispiriting climate of confusion, division, cynicism and above all exhaustion” (1990). The Beauty Myth points out that many women have more money, power, a better understand of life, legal recognition, however,, “…in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmother”(Wolf, 1990, p.10). It seems like Wolf is explaining that due to women having a physical obsession of how they look, that is more important than achieving legal rights on something important, such as equal wages in the workforce as our male