The Beauty Myth

Wolf’s first chapter shares the title of the book because it defines the beauty myth and touches upon some of the book’s key points and takeaways. In this sense, it functions as an introduction to this text. The beauty myth is the sine qua non that connects the chapter-specific themes such as religion, culture, sex, and violence. Each chapter has an evocative, one-word title that the reader may associate with specific historic and cultural trends before even reading them. The first chapter also mirrors the last chapter, “Beyond the Beauty Myth.” If the first chapter summarizes the problems that women face, then the final chapter offers predictions and constructive solutions.

One of the longest chapters in this study examines patriarchal values in religion and their link to mass culture, the beauty myth, and women’s self-worth. These issues are addressed in greater detail later, but Wolf lays the groundwork here for her thinking on Religious Imagery in Consumer Advertising. For example, she cites the way emerging mass media disseminated ideas about the cult of domesticity, providing images and articles that glorified women’s roles as virtuous and beautiful angels in the house. Religion comes up on numerous occasions in this book, which means that Wolf views it as an important factor in women’s history.

Wolf also underscores the paradox between gaining labor, economic, political, and reproductive rights while feeling unfree because of the trap of beauty ideology. The beauty myth is a commodified, aesthetic ideal to which women must adhere in order to gain social and professional mobility, and it is used to control women psychologically. It is not always easy to recognize it for what it is, and women become trapped within the myth through feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame, and frustration. Whereas the author stresses that the beauty myth interferes with feminist goals, such as battling institutional gender-based discrimination, she also highlights the individual turmoil that women experience in their lives and relationships.

The author finds the source of the modern beauty myth in the Industrial Revolution. The proliferation of images is a significant factor in the myth’s development. During the High Middle Ages, an ordinary person’s access to pictures would have primarily come from church. This limited access to visual arts stands in contrast with the advent of mass media in the 19th century when printed images became widely available for the first time. From the earliest fashion magazines­—Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar debuted in 1848 and 1867, respectively—to the advent of print pornography, 19th-century women were exposed to a more centralized and curated concept of beauty. In 21st-century visual culture, people see hundreds of images each day through television, film, posters, and magazines (to say nothing of social media and the internet, which emerged in earnest after this book’s publication). This constant bombardment of pictures and concepts impresses on one’s mind, and the psychological effects of this cannot be trivialized or minimized.

As feminists won suffrage and other fundamental rights for women, patriarchy shifted the way it evaluated and suppressed women; as Wolf says, “as a woman’s primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty.” (18) In other words, the struggle for basic rights and representation transformed into a battle for women’s mental space. This makes the beauty myth particularly dangerous, as many issues that stem from it, such as anorexia or body dysmorphia, are often defined as individual or family problems rather than societal problems. This persists despite obvious links between the portrayal of women in mass culture and individual body image.

As aforementioned, Wolf accurately traces the birth of mass culture and its beauty myth to the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was one of the major developments in capitalism—an economic system that relies on unequal power relations between big business (capital) and the employees (working class). Consumer advertising became one of its key features starting from the late 19th century. This system produced the beauty myth and turned beauty itself into a commodity. However, Wolf does not engage in an in-depth, systemic analysis of capitalism. At times, it appears that she thinks capitalism can be reformed to ensure that consumer advertising discards the beauty myth. On other occasions, Wolf argues that presenting different and realistic body types in media is ultimately a band-aid solution and does not address fundamental questions like institutional discrimination.