About this title: A sweeping indictment of the idealization and commercialization of female beauty by the American patriarchal culture as a backlash response to the feminist movement.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. slightly bent cover but overall good readable copy. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 368 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780688085100ISBN:0688085105
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Near very good, a little edge/wear corner bumping/creasing. Flexible. Clean pages. Sewn binding. Paper over boards. 348 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very Good. 0385423977 Paperback. Moderate Highlighterning/Underlining, otherwise, Binding, Cover/Title, and Pages in excellent condition. Thanks for your business! read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. clean, tight and straight, hightlighting and parenthesizing scattered throughout the book, bumped corners, one with a crease. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 368 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow & Co
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780688085100ISBN:0688085105
Description: Good in Good jacket. First Edition. 77-Y-Add Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow & Co
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780688085100ISBN:0688085105
Description: Good in Good jacket. 217-U Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
"From the reputation of The Beauty Myth, I expected to find it difficult to digest, but in fact it's an easy read. I suppose I simply forgot to take into account the presence of the usual anti-feminist messages in nearly everything we hear. Funny how we're expected to do that.
Wolf's thesis is that women are constantly bombarded with images of unnatural beauty. The resulting expectation that all women meet these standards in addition to doing whatever is necessary to carry out our jobs places a heavier burden on us in the workplace and hampers our ability to compete. Although Wolf's statistics are now out of date because the book is 18 years old, she does a pretty even job of supporting her premise throughout. The chapter on religion is a rough patch because she argues successfully that the beauty myth and religions, especially cult religions, employ similar tactics, but she makes a jump to referring to the beauty myth as a religion, which doesn't follow. She may be speaking metaphorically there, but the section is clunky nonetheless. However, Wolf recovers in later in sections and sums up well in the conclusion that
The real issue has nothing to do with whether women wear makeup or don't, gain weight or lose it, have surgery or shun it, dress up or down, make our clothing and faces and bodies into works of art or ignore adornment altogether. The real problem is our lack of choice.
I think of myself as making independent choices, but I am frequently reminded of how much resistance there is to the idea of women doing that. Just last week a woman in a shop asked me where I get my hair cut, and we commiserated over how often we have to talk a stylist into cutting our hair as short as we like it. A coworker told me I'm lucky that people often assume I'm younger than I am--apparently that's a bigger asset than having people believe I'm experienced. I'm glad I finally read this classic that articulates some of the problems third-wave feminists have faced/are facing."
"I tried. I wanted to read it, and I wanted to like it, and I wanted to learn from it. I just couldn't master the reading part.
The style can only be described as "this is the reason so many people are afraid of non-fiction". While her actual points are not difficult to grasp, especially since they are so often re-hashed in other place that they don't feel new, the language makes me feel like I'm not smart enough to read this book. The word "academia" comes to mind, along with a number of feminist bloggers who I no longer read because the education privilege is unbearable. I'm not uneducated. Just not in the right topics apparently.
I am justifying quitting because this book is nearly 20 years old. The issues remain, but the examples and the culture are laughably out of date. For the parts I did read, the out of date-ness was more interesting than the content. Examples of how far our society has come are numerous, as are examples of how much worse the beauty culture is getting."
"Part of my problem thus far is the elusive notion of an intended audience. This book is pseudo-academic but not exactly handing itself over to everyone else. As for the "point" so far: standards of beauty ARE shifting, though treated as fixed in this West and in this way used as a kind of "objective" benchmark for judging women. However, this abstracted patriarchy often alluded to might just be a stand-in for capitalism itself (which Wolf suggests), which poses problems of our status as victims. Even if we buy in, we're victims? Even if we're complicit, we're victims. Even if we love high heels and makeup and don't have a problem with plastic surgery, we're victims. Because we subscribe to the false notion of self-esteem, we're victims. Where is our own accountability? Do we have to completely opt out to be triumphant? Also, what about one's personal aesthetic -- is it too brainwashed no matter what? And if it isn't possible to triumph within the system, what is the prescription? And what about men who have self-esteem issues? Or is that a post-90s problem?"
"I especially liked the chapter on sex. A lot of women I know and have known and likely will know certainly have issues with their own sexuality and thinking about it in terms of 'am I sexy to HIM' rather than what makes me feel sated or what makes ME feel sexy. We are a very image based society. But I have also seen a turn around where men are starting to obsess about being good enough too, however, they are nowhere near the overload of an IDEAL BODY we women have to suffer through. Now that I have a daughter heading into her teen years, I realize even more how society makes women feel bad about themselves if they aren't some air brushed ideal. I don't know ONE woman who does not feel bad about herself physically be it her breasts, weight, hair, etc. Even though this book is a bit outdated now, i find it sad a lot of things still have not changed."
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