Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth Before Kate Moss there was Twiggy, and before Twiggy, well,

women werent expected to look so slim-not at least, if we judge by Marilyn Monroe !nd for "aomi #olf $b %&'(), thats exactly the problem *ontemporary standards of feminine beauty ha+e de+ol+ed to a point that can only be described as anorexic, and !mericas young women are paying the price through a near epidemic of bulimia and anorexia The most effecti+e way to combat this epidemic, #olf argues, is to show how what we call ,beautiful- is a cultural myth that has been framed for certain purposes-essentially, #olf belie+es, to keep women under control by imprisoning them in their bodies ! prominent figure in feminist and neofeminist circles, "aomi #olf is the author of The Beauty Myth $%&&%), from which this selection is excerpted, and .ire with .ire $%&&/) At last, after a long silence, women took to the streets. In the two decades of radical action that followed the rebirth of feminism in the early 1 !"#s, Western women gained legal and re$roducti%e rights, $ursued higher education, entered the trades and the $rofessions, and o%erturned ancient and re%ered beliefs about their social role. A generation on, do women feel free& The affluent, educated, liberated woman of the first world, who can en'oy freedoms una%ailable to any woman e%er before, do not feel as free as they want to. And they can no longer restrict to the subconscious their sense that this lack of freedom has something to do with(with a$$arently fri%olous issues, things that really should not matter. Many are ashamed to admit such tri%ial concerns(to do with $hysical a$$earance, bodies, faces, hair, and clothes( matter so much. But in s$ite of shame, guilt, and denial, more and more women are wondering if it isn#t that they are entirely neurotic and alone but rather that something im$ortant is indeed at stake that has to do with relationshi$ between female liberation and female beauty. The more legal and material hindrances women ha%e broken through, the more strictly and hea%ily and cruelly images of female beauty ha%e come to weigh u$on us. Many women sense that women#s collecti%e $rogress has stalled) com$ared with the heady momentum of earlier days) there is a dis$iriting climate of confusion, di%ision, cynicism, and abo%e all, e*haustion. After years of much struggle and little recognition, many older women feel burned out) after

years of taking its light for granted, many younger women show little interest in touching new fire to the torch. +uring the $ast decade, women breached the $ower structure) meanwhile eating disorders rose e*$onentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest growing medical s$ecialty. +uring the $ast fi%e years, consumer s$ending doubled, $ornogra$hy became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty(three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen $ounds than achie%e any other goal. More women ha%e more money and $ower and sco$e and legal recognition than we ha%e e%er had before) but in terms of how we feel about oursel%es $hysically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers. ,ecent research consistently shows that inside the ma'ority of the West#s controlled, attracti%e, successful working women, there is a secret-underlife$oisoning our freedom) infused with notion of beauty is a dark %ein of self(hatred, $hysical obsession, terror of aging and dreaded lost control. It is no accident that so many $otentially $owerful women feel this way. We are in the midst of a %iolent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a $olitical wea$on against women#s ad%ancement. the beauty myth. It is the modern %ersion of a social refle* that has been in force since the Industrial re%olution. As women released themsel%es from the feminine mysti/ue of domesticity, the beauty myth took o%er its lost ground, e*$anding as it wanted to carry on its work of social control. The contem$orary backlash is so %iolent because the ideology of beauty is the last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that has the $ower to control those women whom second(wa%e feminism would ha%e otherwise made relati%ely uncontrollable. It has grown stronger to take o%er the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and $assi%ity no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo $sychologically and co%ertly all the good things that feminism did for women materially and o%ertly. This counterforce is o$erating to checkmate the inheritance of feminism in the li%es of western women. 0eminism ga%e it laws against 'ob discrimination based on gender) immediately case law e%ol%ed in Britain and the 12 that institutionali3ed 'ob discrimination based on women#s

a$$earances. 4atriarchal religion declined, new religious dogma, using some of the mind( altering techni/ues of older cults and sects, arose around age and weight to functionally su$$lant traditional ritual. 0eminists, ins$ired by Betty 0riedan, broke the stranglehold on the women#s $o$ular $ress of ad%ertisers for household $roducts, who were $romoting the feminine mysti/ue) at once the diet and skin care industries became the new cultural censors of women#s intellectual s$ace, and because of their $ressure, the gaunt, youthful model su$$lanted the ha$$y housewife as the arbiter of successful womanhood. The se*ual re%olution $romoted the disco%ery of female se*uality) 5beauty $ornogra$hy-( which for the first time in women#s history artificially links a commodified 5beauty- directly and e*$licitly to se*uality( in%aded the mainstream to undermine women#s new and %ulnerable sense of se*ual self(worth. ,e$roducti%e rights ga%e western women control o%er our own bodies) the weight of fashion models $lummeted to 678 below that of ordinary women, eating disorders rose e*$onentially, and a mass neurosis was $romoted that used food and weight to stri$ women of that sense of control. Women insisted on $olitici3ing health) new technologies of in%asi%e, $otentially deadly 5cosmetic- surgeries de%elo$ed a$ace to re(e*ert old forms of medical control of women. 9%ery generation since about 1:7"#s has had to fight its %ersion of the beauty myth. 5It is %ery little to me,- says the suffragist ;ucy 2tone in 1:<<, 5to ha%e the right to %ote, to own $ro$erty, etc. if I may not kee$ my body, and its uses, in my absolute right.- 9ighty years later, after women had won the %ote, and the first wa%e of the organi3ed women#s mo%ement had subsided, =irginia Wolf wrote that it would still be decades before women could tell the truth about their bodies. In 1 >6, Betty 0riedan /uoted a young woman tra$$ed in the 0eminine Mysti/ue. 5;ately, I look in the mirror, and I am so afraid that I am going to look like my mother.- 9ight years after that, heralding the cataclysmic second wa%e of feminism, ?ermaine ?reer described the 5stereoty$e-. 5To her belongs all that is beautiful, e%en the %ery word beauty itself@. 2he is a doll@ I am sick of the mas/uerade.- In s$ite of the great re%olution of the second wa%e, we are not e*em$t. Now we can look out o%er ruined barricades. A re%olution has come u$on us and changed e%erything in its $ath, enough time has $assed since then for babies to ha%e grown into women, but there still remains a final right not fully claimed.

The beauty myth tells a story. The /uality called 5beauty- ob'ecti%ely and uni%ersally e*ists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to $ossess women who embody it. This embodiment is an im$erati%e for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, se*ual and e%olutionary. 2trong men battle for beautiful women, and beautiful women are more re$roducti%ely successful. Women#s beauty must correlate with their fertility, and since this system is based on se*ual selection, it is ine%itable and changeless. None of this is true. 5Beauty- is a currency system like the gold standard. ;ike any economy, it is determined by $olitics, and in the modern age in the West, it is the last, best belief system that kee$s male dominance intact. In assigning %alue to women in a %ertical hierarchy according to a culturally im$osed $hysical standard, it is an e*$ression of $ower relations in which women must unnaturally com$ete for resources that men ha%e a$$ro$riated for themsel%es. 5Beauty- is not uni%ersal, or changeless, though the West $retends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one 4latonic Ideal Woman) The Maori admire a fat %ul%a, and the 4adung, droo$y breasts. Nor is 5beauty- a function of e%olution. its ideals change at a $ace far more ra$id than that of the e%olution of the s$ecies, and Aharles +arwin himself was uncon%inced by his own e*$lanation that 5beauty- resulted from a se*ual selection that de%iated from the rule of natural selection) for women to com$ete with women through 5beauty- is a re%ersal of the way in which natural selection affects all other mammals. Anthro$ology has o%erturned the notion that females must be 5beautiful- to be selected to mate.9%elyn ,eed, 9laine Morgan, and others ha%e dismissed sociobiological assertions of innate male $olygamy and female monogamy. 0emale higher $rimates are the se*ual initiators. not only do they seek out and en'oy se* with many $artners, but 5e%ery non$regnant female takes her turn at being the most desirable of all her troo$. And that cycle kee$s on turning as long as she li%es.- The inflamed se*ual organs of $rimates are often cited by male sociobiologists as analogous to human relating to female 5beauty-, when in fact that is a uni%ersal, nonhierarchical female $rimate characteristic. Nor has the beauty myth always been this way. Though the $airing of the rich men with young, 5beautiful women is taken to be somehow ine%itable, in the matriarchal ?oddess religions that dominated the Mediterranean from about 6<""" B.A.9. to about !"" B.A. 9., the situation was

re%ersed. 5In e%ery culture, the ?oddess has many lo%[email protected] clear $attern is of an older women with a beautiful but e*$endable youth((( Ishtar and Tammu3, =enus and Adonis, Aybele and Attis, Isis and [email protected] only function the ser%ice of the di%ine 5womb--. Nor is it something only women do and only men watch. Among the Nigerian Wodaabes, the women hold economic $ower and the tribe is obsessed with male beauty) Wodaabe men s$end hours together in elaborate makeu$ sessions, and com$ete($ro%ocati%ely $ainted and dressed, with swaying hi$s, and seducti%e e*$ressions(in beauty contests 'udged by women. There is no legitimate historical or biological 'ustification for the beauty myth) what it is doing to women today is a result of nothing more e*alted than the need of today#s $ower structure, economy, and culture to mount a counteroffensi%e against women. If the beauty myth is not based on e%olution, se*, gender, aesthetics, or ?od, on what is it based& It claims to be about intimacy and se* and life, a celebration of women. It is actually com$osed of emotional distance, $olitics, finance, and se*ual re$ression. The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men#s institutions and institutional $ower. The /ualities that a gi%en $eriod calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female beha%ior that that $eriod considers desirable. The beauty myth is always actually $rescribing beha%ior and not a$$earance. Aom$etition between women has been made $art of the myth so that women will be di%ided from one another. Couth and Duntil recentlyE %irginity ha%e been 5beautiful- in women since they stand for e*$erimental and se*ual ignorance. Aging in women is 5unbeautiful- since women grow more $owerful with time, and since the links between generations of women must always be broken. Blder women fear young ones, young ones fear old, and the beauty myth truncates for all the female lifes$an. Most urgently, women#s identity must be $remised u$on our 5beauty-, so that we will remain %ulnerable to outside a$$ro%al, carrying the %ital sensiti%e organ of self esteem e*$osed to the air. Though there has, of course, been a beauty myth in some form for as long as there has been $atriarchy, the beauty myth in its modern form is a fairly recent in%ention. The beauty myth flourishes when material constraints on women are dangerously loosened. Before the industrial re%olution, the a%erage woman could not ha%e had the same feeling about 5beauty- that modern

women do who e*$erience the myth as a continual com$arison to a mass disseminated $hysical ideal. Before the de%elo$ment of technologies of mass $roduction(daguerreoty$es, $hotogra$hs, etc.(an ordinary woman was e*$osed to few such images outside the church. 2ince the family was a $roducti%e unit and women#s work com$lemented men#s, the %alue of women who were not aristocrats or $rostitutes lay in their work skills, economic shrewdness, $hysical strength, and fertility. 4hysical attraction, ob%iously $layed its $art) but beauty as we understand it, was not, for ordinary women, a serious issue in the marriage market$lace. The beauty myth, in its modern form gained ground after the u$hea%als of industriali3ation, as the work unit of the family was destroyed, and urbani3ation and the emerging factory system demanded what social engineers of the time termed the 5se$arate s$here- of domesticity, which su$$orted the new labor category of the 5breadwinner- who left home for the work$lace during the day. The middle class e*$anded, the standards of li%ing and of literacy rose, the si3e of families shrank) a new class of literate idle women de%elo$ed on whose submission to enforced domesticity the e%ol%ing system of industrial ca$italism de%elo$ed. Most of our assum$tions about the way women ha%e always thought about 5beauty- date from no earlier than the 7"#s when the cult of domesticity was first consolidated and the beauty inde* in%ented. 0or the first time, new technologies could re$roduce( in fashion $lates, daguerreoty$es, tinty$es, and rotogra%ures(images of how women should look. In the 1:F"#s the first nude $hotogra$hs of $rostitutes were taken) ad%ertisements using images of 5beautiful# women first a$$eared in mid( century. Ao$ies of classical artworks, $ostcards of society beauties and royal mistresses, Aurrier and I%es $rints, and $orcelain figurines flooded the se$arate s$here to which middle class women were confined. 2ince the industrial re%olution, middle(class Western women ha%e been controlled by ideals and stereoty$es as much by material constraints. This situation, uni/ue to this grou$, means that analyses that trace 5cultural cons$iracies- are uni/uely $lausible in relation to them. The rise of the beauty myth was 'ust one of se%eral emerging social fictions that mas/ueraded as natural com$onents of the feminine s$here, the better to enclose those women inside it. Bther such fictions arose contem$oraneously. a %ersion of childhood that re/uired continual maternal su$er%ision) a conce$t of female biology that re/uired middle(class women to act out the role of

hysterics and hy$ochondriacs) a con%iction that res$ectable women were se*ually anesthetic, and a definition of women#s work that occu$ied them with re$etiti%e, time(consuming, and $ainstaking tasks such as needle$oint and lace making. All such =ictorian in%entions as these ser%ed a double function(that is, though they were encouraged as a means to e*$end female energy and intelligence in harmless ways, women often used them to e*$ress genuine creati%ity and $assion. But in s$ite of middle(class women#s creati%ity with fashion and embroidery and child(rearing, and, a century later, with the role of the suburban housewife that de%ol%ed from these social fictions, the fiction#s main $ur$ose was ser%ed. +uring ac century and half of un$recedented feminist agitation, they effecti%ely counteracted middle(class women#s dangerous new leisure, literacy, and relati%e freedom from material constraints. Though these time, and mind(consuming fictions about women#s natural role ada$ted themsel%es to resurface in the $ostwar 0eminine Mysti/ue, when the second wa%e of the women#s mo%ement took a$art what women#s maga3ines had $ortrayed as the 5romance-, 5science-, and 5ad%enture- of homemaking and suburban family life, they tem$orarily failed. The cloying domestic fiction of 5togetherness- lost its meaning and middle(class women walked out of their front doors in masses. 2o the fictions sim$ly transformed themsel%es once more. 2ince the women#s mo%ement had successfully taken a$art most other necessary fictions of femininity, all the work of social control once s$read out o%er the whole network of these fictions had to be reassigned to the only strand left intact, which action conse/uently strengthened it a hundred fold. This reim$osed onto liberated women#s faces and bodies, all the limitations, taboos, and $unishments of the re$ressi%e laws, religious in'unctions and re$roducti%e ensla%ement that no longer carried sufficient force. Ine*haustible but ethereal beauty work took o%er from ine*haustible but e$hemeral housework. As the economy, law, religion, se*ual mores, education, and culture were forcibly o$ened u$ to include women more fairly, a $ri%ate reality coloni3ed female consciousness. By using ideas about beauty, it reconstructed an alternati%e female world with its own laws, economy, religion, se*uality, education, and culture, each element as re$ressi%e as any that had gone before.

2ince middle(class Western women can best be weakened $sychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological so$histication and reactionary fer%or than e%er before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal) although this barrage is generally seen as a collecti%e se*ual fantasy, there is in fact little that is se*ual about it. It is summoned out of $olitical fear on the $art of male dominated institutions threatened by women#s freedom, and it e*$loits female guilt and a$$rehension about our own liberation( latent fears that we might be going too far. This frantic aggregation of imagery is a collecti%e reactionary hallucination willed into being by both men and women stunned and disoriented by the ra$idity with which gender relations ha%e been transformed. a bulwark of reassurance against the flood of change. The mass de$iction of the modern women as a Gbeauty- is a contradiction. where modern women are growing, mo%ing, and e*$ressing their indi%iduality, as the myth has it, 5beauty- is by definition, inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is e%ident in the way 5beauty- so directly contradicts women#s real situation. And the unconscious hallucination grows e%er more influential and $er%asi%e because of what is now conscious market mani$ulation. $owerful industries( the H77 billion a year diet industry, the H6" billion a year cosmetics industry, the H7"" million cosmetic surgery industry, and the H! billion $ornogra$hy industry( ha%e arisen from the ca$ital made out of unconscious an*ieties, and are in turn able, through their influence on mass culture, to use, stimulate, and reinforce the hallucination in a rising economic s$iral. This is not a cons$iracy theory) it does not ha%e to be. 2ocieties tell themsel%es necessary fictions in the same way that indi%iduals and families do. Ienrik Ibsen calls them 5%ital lies-, and $sychologist +aniel ?oleman describes them working the same way on the social le%el that they do within families. 5The collusion is maintained by directing attention away from the fearsome fact, or by re$ackaging its meaning in an acce$table format-. The costs of these social blind s$ots, he writes, are destructi%e communal illusions. 4ossibilities for women ha%e become so o$en(ended that they threaten to destabili3e the institutions on which a male(dominated

culture has de$ended, and a collecti%e $anic reaction on the $art of both se*es has forced a demand for counter(images. The resulting hallucination materiali3es, for women, as something all too real. No longer 'ust an idea, it becomes three(dimensional, incor$orating within itself how women li%e and how they do not li%e. It becomes the Iron Maiden. The original Iron Maiden was a medie%al ?erman instrument of torture, a body(sha$ed casket $ainted with the limbs and features of a lo%ely, smiling, young woman. The unlucky %ictim was slowly enclosed inside her) the lid fell shut to immobili3e the %ictim, who died of star%ation, or less cruelly, of the metal s$ikes embedded in her interior. The modern hallucination in which women are tra$$ed, or tra$ themsel%es is similarly rigid, cruel, and eu$hemistically $ainted. Aontem$orary culture directs attention to imagery of the Iron Maiden, while censoring real women#s faces and bodies. Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by e%ading the face of real women, our faces and %oices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to those formulaic and endlessly re$roduced 5beautiful- images& Though unconscious $ersonal an*ieties can be a $owerful force in the creation of a %ital lie, economic necessity $ractically guarantees it. An economy that de$ends on sla%ery needs to $romote images of sla%es that 5'ustify- the institution of sla%ery. Western economies are absolutely de$endent now on the continued under$ayment of women. An ideology that makes women feel worthless was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not re/uire a cons$iracy) merely an atmos$here. The cor$orate economy de$ends right now on the re$resentation of women within the beauty myth. 9conomist John Kenneth ?albraith offers an economic e*$lanation for 5the $ersistence of the %iew of homemaking as a 5higher calling-. the conce$t of women as naturally tra$$ed within the 0eminine Mysti/ue, he feels,- has been forced u$on us by $o$ular sociology, by maga3ines and by fiction to disguise the fact that women in the role of the consumer has been essential to the de%elo$ment of our own industrial [email protected]%ior that is essential for economic reasons is transformed in to a social %irtue-. As soon as a woman#s $rimary social %alue could no longer be defined as the attainment of %irtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of %irtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new

consumer im$erati%e and a new 'ustification for economic unfairness in the work$lace where the old ones had lost their hold o%er newly liberated women. Another hallucination arose to accom$any that of the Iron Maiden. The caricature of the 1gly 0eminist was resurrected to dog the ste$s of the women#s mo%ement. unoriginal. it was coined to ridicule the feminists of the 1
th

The caricature is

century. ;ucy 2tone herself, whom

su$$orters saw as a 5$rototy$e of womanly grace@ fresh and fair as the morning,- was deri%ed by detractors with 5the usual re$ort about =ictorian feminists. 5 a big masculine woman, wearing boots, smoking a cigar, swearing like a troo$er.- As Betty 0riedan $ut it $resciently in 1 >", e%en before the sa%age re%am$ing of that old caricature. 5 the un$leasant image of feminists today resemble less the feminists themsel%es than the image fostered by the interests who so bitterly o$$osed the %ote for women in state after state.- Thirty years on, her conclusion is more true than e%er. That resurrected caricature, which sought to $unish women for their $ublic acts by going after their $ri%ate sense of self, became the $aradigm for new limits $laced on as$iring women e%erywhere. After the success of the women#s mo%ement#s second wa%e, the beauty myth was $erfected to checkmate $ower at e%ery le%el in indi%idual women#s li%es. The modern neurosis of life in the female body s$read to woman after woman at e$idemic rates. The myth is undermining(slowly, im$erce$tibly, without of our being aware of the real forces of erosion(the ground women ha%e gained through long, hard, honorable struggle. The beauty myth of the $resent is more insidious than any mysti/ue of femininity yet. a century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll#s house) a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer hea%en of the isolated multi(a$$lianced home) but where women are tra$$ed today, there is no door to slam. The contem$orary ra%ages of the beauty backlash are destroying women $hysically and de$leting us $sychologically. If we are to free oursel%es from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists, or $lacards that women will need first, it is a new way to see.