The Beauty Myth

After spending seven chapters on the far-reaching, negative impacts of the beauty myth, Wolf dedicates the final chapter to searching for constructive solutions. Her solutions include dismantling hierarchies, honoring the cycle of life and its different stages, promoting individuality and body positivity, as well as encouraging women’s solidarity. She argues that much remains to be done in the realm of rights and protections under the law. This combination displays the cross-over between second-wave feminism, which focused on obtaining economic and social rights, and third-wave feminism, which was concerned with more nebulous categories like representation and identity.

At the same time, the author remains realistic about mass culture and efforts to simply diversify the images sold to us. She states that “advertising aimed at women works by lowering our self-esteem. If it flatters our self-esteem, it is not effective” (276). This is one of the rare moments in which the author criticizes the market and gets closer to a critique of the capitalist system at large. It is this system that provides the superstructure in which the beauty myth operates. It is useful to recognize the way more diverse—in terms of age, ethnic and racial background, and body type—representation will inevitably become commodified and reduced to stereotypes. First, the diversity of representations is indicative of a more specific target market than before. That is to say, seemingly more individualized portrayals of women in 21st-century media still reduce women to consumer segments, such as “women over 50 buying collagen pills,” rather than showcasing them as authentic individuals. Second, these representations are invariably linked to the products that they are promoting. In other words, ads still display certain positive feelings to engender the desire for a given product. If the consumer wants to feel the same way as the glowing model, even if she represents a more diverse demographic, the consumer must buy the product first.

If Wolf were to update The Beauty Myth for the digital age, she would also discuss the way social media advertising is even more invasive than the magazine ads of the 1980s and 1990s. Not only are these ads harder to escape—available at one’s fingertips—but social media platforms thrive on negative emotions such as envy or anger. Negativity keeps users scrolling longer. The author would probably conclude that despite women’s legal, political, social, economic, and professional advancement, the beauty myth has in some ways become even more damaging and insidious. After all, many of the same damaging concepts about the links between looks, beauty products, and women’s identity still persist; they just hide under the guise of more inclusive representation.