The Beauty Myth

In the “Sex” chapter of The Beauty Myth, Wolf addresses several themes including the relationship between religion and sex, patriarchal societal norms and gender roles, and the way pornography, sex, and romantic relationships are portrayed in mass culture. She links the rise of “beauty pornography,” in which female beauty is linked to sexuality, with the growing desensitization toward violent imagery that features women as targets in music, film, and advertisements. Ultimately, there are real-life consequences to this desensitization such as the troubling rates of date rape and intimate-partner violence.

First, Wolf argues that religious guilt suppresses both women’s enjoyment of sex and female sexuality in general. There are several historic examples across the world ranging from clitoridectomies to chastity belts. The author suggests that patriarchal societies view women’s sexuality as a problem, and the new religion of commodified beauty maintains the tradition of eliminating their sexuality altogether. However, unlike these direct methods, the beauty myth primarily relies on human psychology in which women are conditioned to replicate the beauty myth’s tenets themselves.

The author provides several examples of seemingly innocuous products like Reebok shoes or Triton showers, which feature nude, female torsos in various suggestive poses linked to softcore pornography: These images link positive, sexual feelings with the given product, indicating that women must consume these products to feel sexual pleasure. Other advertisements, such as Newport cigarettes or Hermès perfume, go even further. Their ads depict “beauty sadomasochism,” in which women are bound, dressed in leather, pulled by their hair, and screaming. Violent images of women began to appear elsewhere in the 1970s, from punk rock iconography to thrillers and horror films.

According to the author: “These images above evolved with history: Sexuality follows fashion, which follows politics” (133). It is no coincidence, argues Wolf, that Playboy magazine launched around the same time as the contraceptive pill and abortion were legalized in the US and parts of Europe. Whereas the legislative and medical advancements freed women, beauty pornography in advertising sought to reel them back into bondage.

Furthermore, the entrance of pornography-inspired imagery into the accessible, mass culture created a deluge of explicit images against which women compared themselves. With the sexualization of most cultural images of women, the link between being admired by the male gaze—the result of adhering to commodified beauty standards—and women’s sexuality became the norm. Mass culture became filled with both softcore-porn-inspired imagery that objectifies the body and violent, hardcore pornography—and its references in advertising. Wolf argues that the problem is not with explicit imagery per se, but with censorship that only allows sanctioned imagery of specific body types in specific poses.

Censorship also affects the differences with which men and women are portrayed in the media. Exposing women’s sensitive body parts is acceptable, whereas the male counterpart is usually not. Wolf links this difference to social and political power, as states of undress are used to emphasize power differences. For example, she cites how “male prisoners are stripped in front of clothed prison guards; in the antebellum South, young black male slaves were naked while serving the clothed white masters at the table” (139).

The psychological aspects of pornography-style imagery in mass culture also affect people’s fantasy lives and their worldviews at large. For example, Wolf argues that violence in media makes men and women alike trivialize real-life violence against women. She argues that there are even legal decisions that stem from the belief that women have rape fantasies, such as a 1989 case in Britain where a woman was sexually assaulted by her physiotherapist.

According to Wolf, the Iron Maiden shapes women into stereotypical representatives of sanctioned beauty. Women, therefore, become fetishized objects: For men of high social status, women who fit the required parameters are trophies rather than individuals. Therefore, even those women who manage to adhere to the beauty myth’s standards find themselves disappointed.

The author argues that mass culture’s pornographic elements undermine heterosexual relationships, harming both men and women. Women have to fit the commodified, Iron Maiden mold, and boys grow up to have sexual tastes dictated to them. Generic representations of beauty also hinder sexual attraction because the latter is specific, argues the author. Wolf believes that true love would value the individuality of each woman, such as scars and signs of childbirth. The beauty myth, therefore, teaches men to avoid loving women, as men and women forming equal, respectful bonds would threaten the patriarchal establishment.

This imagery is also a way to get money out of the consumer and distract them from truly relevant issues. Wolf believes there is a direct link between the rise of violent imagery targeting women in the media, such as Guns N’ Roses songs and music videos, and violence against women in real life. She argues that desensitization to violent imagery and its normalization in mass culture are to blame. For example, she believes that the introduction of beauty pornography led to the rise of troubling sexual-assault statistics on college campuses across the United States. The author argues that also women have unhealthy ideas about sexual assault as a result of media propaganda. According to one statistic at the time of her writing, women are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted by someone in their social circle. Another 1980 study showed troubling numbers of domestic violence within marriages (159). A 1986 UCLA survey demonstrated that 30% of men said they would commit sexual assault if they could get away with it; this number almost doubled when the word “rape” was replaced with “forced sex” (159). Child sexual abuse is also a significant problem because it “links sex to force very early in a quarter to a third of the female population” (160).

Overall, Wolf reduces the problem of “deflected sexuality” in the era of beauty ideology to three main factors. First, she argues that young girls are tended to by female caregivers, whom they see adhering to the Iron Maiden concept. Heterosexual women, therefore, grow up with conflicting feelings about the female body, including envy and hostility. Second, mass culture links sexual feelings in women with being looked at and objectified rather than actual pleasure. For this reason, society forbids female masturbation and privileges penetrative sex over other sexual activities. The third factor is the preponderance of sexual violence targeting women and the way it shapes individuals, culture, and society at large.